It’s only when you open the debugger that the count request is run. It’s not loaded when the data is retrieved. When you search for items 1-4 in a larger list, you cannot tell how many items are left - all that Bubble returns is a boolean saying ‘is this the end of the list’.
When you open the debugger, a new aggregate search is run to get the list in the RG. You’ll see that if you load the page, turn off your internet, then open the RG in the debugger, the count will be empty as it couldn’t make the count request.
So, yes the count is available, but only because you asked for it in the debugger.
TLDR, when you open debugger on an RG, it makes a :count request to get the count. It’s not accessing something that’s already been requested.