How Many Episodes of Naruto Are There?
The television story of Naruto is two series that form one continuous run. The original Naruto premiered on TV Tokyo on October 3, 2002 and ran for 220 episodes, ending on February 8, 2007. It adapts Part I of the manga, through the Sasuke retrieval mission, and then continues with anime-original stories while it waits for the manga to build a lead.
Its sequel, Naruto Shippuden, began a week later on February 15, 2007 and ran for 500 episodes, concluding on March 23, 2017. Shippuden adapts Part II, volumes 28 to 72, and its subtitle borrows the language of the story itself: shippu means a swift wind or hurricane, so the title promises the hurricane chronicles of an older, stronger Naruto.
Both series were animated by Studio Pierrot, with Hayato Date directing much of the original run. Seven hundred and twenty episodes across fifteen years makes Naruto one of the longest continuous anime adaptations of a single manga, and the two-part structure means the episode count question always needs both numbers: 220, or 500, or the honest 720.
What the 720 does not include
The count above covers the two television series only. Around them sit eleven theatrical films, a run of original video animations made for events and game bundles, the 51-episode Rock Lee spinoff, and the Boruto sequel series, which has its own episode count and its own shelf. Listings that advertise a complete Naruto set sometimes fold the films in and sometimes do not; the series count of 720 is the fixed point everything else attaches to.
Two series, two products
The 220 plus 500 shape is also a packaging fact. The original series was sold on Japanese DVDs in arc-based sets of a few discs each, while the English Uncut box sets gathered twelve to fifteen episodes per box. A collector shelving the whole anime is shelving two differently designed products that happen to tell one story, which mirrors the manga's own Part I and Part II split.