What time of year do people fax the most?

In U.S. search data, the time of year people fax the most is February and March, and the least is Thanksgiving through the end of December. The busy months run only about 5% above a typical week, while Thanksgiving and Christmas weeks run 22% to 34% below it.

Fax searches by month, 2022 to 2025

We know of no public monthly count of faxes sent, so we measured how often people in the U.S. searched Google for "send a fax", "fax" and "fax near me". Google Trends gives each week a number from 0 to 100 for a term's share of all searches. We took the weekly numbers from January 2, 2022 to June 14, 2025, compared each week with the median of the year around it, and averaged the weeks by month.

We stopped in mid-June 2025 because searches for "fax" jumped to four or five times their usual level for two weeks in July 2025. That spike didn't repeat in other years, and keeping it would have squashed every other week into a few points of Google's scale.

Searches for "send a fax", likely the phrase closest to someone with a document ready to go, peak in February and March. Plain "fax" is highest in August, at 5% above a typical week, with February and March close behind at 4%. "Fax near me" moves differently. People likely type it when they need a store or library with a fax machine. It rises through spring and summer, tops out in August at 10% above a typical week, and falls in the fall. We list those places in our guide on where to fax near me.

Thanksgiving and Christmas weeks are the low points

The holiday drop is the clearest pattern in the data. In 2022, 2023 and 2024, searches for "send a fax" in Thanksgiving week ran 29% to 34% below a typical week, and in Christmas week 22% to 34% below. Searches for "fax" fell by about as much, 24% to 35%. Google's 5-year view shows the same two dips in late 2025.

Fax companies see the same dip in their own numbers. Consensus Cloud Solutions owns eFax. Its annual report for 2025 describes "marginally lower than average usage and customer sign-ups in the fourth quarter" as the usual pattern. The report adds that revenue is affected by the number of business days in a period. Ten years earlier, eFax's owner at the time, j2 Global, reported seasonal weakness in the fourth quarter for the division that ran eFax. Offices close for the holidays, so fewer people likely have a reason to fax.

Tax and health paperwork in February and March

The two busiest months fall inside tax season and the first months of a new year of health coverage, which likely explains part of the rise. Search data can't show how much comes from each.

The first is tax season. The IRS opened the 2026 filing season on January 26, and 2025 returns were due April 15, 2026. The IRS takes some forms and notice replies by fax. Its page on the CP2000 notice, for example, lists seven fax numbers for replies, one for each processing location. We keep the numbers for common IRS forms in our guide to the IRS fax number.

The second is the new year of health coverage. Medicare plan changes made in Open Enrollment, October 15 to December 7, start on January 1. People already in a Medicare Advantage plan can switch plans from January 1 to March 31. CoverMyMeds, writing for doctors' offices in December 2022, said requests for benefits checks and prior authorizations spike in the first three months of the year.

In the 2025 CAQH Index, 40% of medical prior authorizations were fully electronic. CAQH's 2024 report counts telephone, mail, fax and email as the manual ways to send one, without a share for fax alone. We explain why healthcare holds on to fax in our guide on why doctors still use fax.

Faxing by day of the week

The weekly rhythm is much stronger than the yearly one. Daily searches for "send a fax" from August 2 to November 7, 2026 make the gap plain. On Saturdays and Sundays they averaged under a quarter of the weekday level, about 13 against 56 on Google's scale. Tuesday through Thursday ran highest, within a few points of each other. Google shows a day with too few searches as 0, and half of the weekend days came out that way. The true weekend level is a little higher than that average, but still far below a weekday.

What search data can and can't tell you

Google Trends uses a sample of Google searches, and each number is a term's share of all searches at that time. A month that runs 5% higher means a 5% larger share of searches, not 5% more faxes.

Most fax traffic likely never touches a search engine. A clinic or law office sends from the same machine or fax service every day without looking anything up, so these numbers mostly reflect people who fax now and then. They're also the people most likely to need a fax at a store or online.

Differences of about 5% between months are small, and a different set of years could move them by a few points. The holiday drops of 22% to 35%, which came back every year, are the part we'd rely on.

Timing a fax around the busy and quiet weeks

If you need someone to act on a fax before Thanksgiving or the end of December, we'd send it early in the week before. A fax sent to a closed office likely still prints or lands in its fax inbox, but nobody may read it until the office opens again.

In tax season, answer an IRS letter by the date on it. For a CP2000 notice, the IRS says to fax your reply to the location at the top left of the notice. It also offers an upload tool, which it calls the fastest way. Keep the fax's transmission report either way. We explain what that report proves in our guide to fax confirmations.

Need to send one today? You can upload PDFs or photos on this website, and you don't need an account. As of November 2026, a fax of up to 40 pages costs $2.49 here, to any fax number in the US or Canada. For paper pages, the FaxFair iPhone app scans them with the camera.

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