Cave hunting in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has become a full-time obsession for me, even three years after the game first launched in 2023. The moment I drop into a dimly lit hole in the wall and hear the scuttle of a Blupee or the distant glow of a Bubbulfrog, I know I’m in for another mini–adventure. But one question keeps popping up in community forums and on my own mind: just how many caves are there in Hyrule? It sounds simple, but the answer splits into layers — much like the caves themselves.

🐸 The Bubbulfrog Caves: 147 Glowing Giants

Whenever a cave is large enough to hide a Bubbulfrog, you can usually spot a Blupee — those rabbit-like, rupee-dropping critters — hopping around the entrance. Blupees are my best scouts: follow them, and you’ll stumble into one of the 147 Bubbulfrog caves. These aren’t just tiny fissures. They sprawl, twist, and often hide ore deposits, chests, and even shrines.

Each Bubbulfrog you defeat drops a Bubbul Gem, and that’s your proof that you’ve cleared a “proper” cave. Collecting all 147 gems means you’ve visited every major cave on the surface and in the sky. Yes, the sky has caves too, but we’ll get to that.

Why 147? Because the developers designed exactly that many Bubbulfrogs. No tricks, no secret 148th frog behind a waterfall (believe me, I’ve checked). If you’re the completionist type, this is the magic number. To put it into perspective, I spent over 30 hours just tracking these down, and every single one felt like a small victory.

☁️ Are There Caves in the Sky and the Depths?

Here’s where the geography gets interesting. You might ask: Do the depths or the sky islands hold hidden caverns?

The Depths, huge as they are, don’t contain any separate caves. That entire gloomy underworld functions like one giant, interconnected cave system. So when you’re counting, skip the Depths completely.

But up in the clouds? Yes — all four sky caves sit on the Great Sky Island, the tutorial area where you first wake up. Each of these four caves shelters a Bubbulfrog, and they are already included in the total of 147. I remember wasting hours scanning other sky islands for entrances before realizing they simply don’t exist. So if you’re trying to track down every Bubbul Gem, don’t forget to revisit the starting island.

🕳️ Small Caves and the ~400 Estimate

Not all caves are grand. Hyrule is riddled with nooks, fissures, and shallow passages that the game’s map marks with a tiny cave icon. But here’s the catch: the map icon represents an entrance, not a complete cave. If a single cave has two openings — say, one on the north slope and one on the south — you’ll see two icons for the same underground cavity.

So how many total caves exist? After years of player mapping and datamining, the commonly accepted figure is around 400 individual caves spread across the surface. This number includes everything from the smallest crawlspace that leads to a single Brightbloom seed to the multi-chamber networks that make you feel like a true spelunker. Because many of these smaller nooks don’t house a Bubbulfrog or any notable reward, tracking them all down is practically impossible without a guide. I’ve personally marked about 390 on my own map after 300+ hours of play, and I still spot new faint outlines from time to time.

🕳️ The Well Question: Do Wells Count as Caves?

You’d think dropping into a well — especially one of Hyrule’s many “secret wells” — would instantly count as a cave. But the game disagrees. Wells are their own thing, and most of them have a simple vertical shaft and a single chamber with a few items or a korok. Those do not count as caves.

However, if a well’s bottom has a tunnel branching off into a separate underground area, that branching part is, in fact, a cave with a well entrance. I stumbled onto this nuance while exploring near Hateno Village, where a nondescript well led to an entire phosphorescent mushroom forest. The game’s cave icon didn’t appear on my map until I actually entered the branching tunnel. So my rule of thumb: if it’s just a vertical drop and a dead-end room, it’s a well; if there’s a path snaking away, you’ve found a cave.

🔎 A Few Tips from a 2026 Cave Hunter

Now that we’re in 2026, the full picture is clear for anyone still chasing 100% completion. If you adopt the 147 Bubbulfrog caves as your goal, you’ll see the most memorable caverns Hyrule has to offer. If you want to go deeper, the ~400 total caves will keep you busy for months. Either way, keep an eye out for Blupees, listen for their jingling, and remember that not every map icon equals a new cave. Sometimes it’s just the back door.

Three years in, I still think Tears of the Kingdom’s cave design is one of the most rewarding exploration loops in any open-world game. So, how many caves have you found so far? More importantly, how many are still waiting in the dark for you to light the way?

Data referenced from GameFAQs reinforces the cave-count nuance in Tears of the Kingdom: completion tracking is most reliably tied to Bubbulfrog encounters (and thus Bubbul Gems), while map icons can represent separate entrances that sometimes lead into the same underground space. In practice, that means a “how many caves” answer depends on whether you’re counting distinct Bubbulfrog locations for 100% gem collection, or tallying every mapped opening and minor hollow you can physically enter.