Countries by Military expenditure (% of GDP)
Ukraine ranks 1st with military expenditure equal to 34.48% of GDP, more than three times the value of second-ranked Israel at 8.78%. At the other end, Haiti spends just 0.07% of GDP on its military. The 50,000-percentage-point spread across 156 countries reflects the wide variation in how governments prioritize defense relative to their economies.
Ranking 2024
Values shown in %.
Analysis
This metric measures military expenditure by country as a percentage of gross domestic product, using World Bank World Development Indicators indicator code MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS. The unit is percent of GDP, where a higher value indicates greater military spending relative to the size of the economy. The dataset covers 156 countries, with 153 of those (98.1%) having data from within the last seven years. Data for the 2024 reference year is available for 147 of 156 countries (94.2%). All 156 datapoints are classified as official-quality, well above the 70% threshold. The average year-over-year change across the dataset is 13.3%, indicating moderate but not extreme volatility. The viability checks identified 17 extreme outliers at the 3-sigma threshold, reflecting genuine concentration at both ends of the distribution.
Ukraine leads all 156 countries at 34.48% of GDP, a value so far above the rest of the ranking that it registers as a statistical outlier. Israel ranks 2nd at 8.78%, followed by Algeria (3rd, 7.97%), Saudi Arabia (4th, 7.30%), and the Russian Federation (5th, 7.05%). The top ten also includes Myanmar (6th, 6.79%), Qatar (7th, 6.50%), Oman (8th, 5.59%), Armenia (9th, 5.48%), and Libya (10th, 5.29%). Many of these top-ranked countries are engaged in active conflicts, border disputes, or operate in high-tension regional environments, though the data alone shows only the spending ratio and not the reasons behind it.
Several notable placements appear in the middle of the ranking. Poland ranks 16th at 4.15%, placing it among the highest-spending NATO members in the dataset. The United States ranks 20th at 3.42%, below several smaller economies. Estonia (21st, 3.37%), Latvia (23rd, 3.26%), and Lithuania (25th, 3.12%) all rank higher than the United Kingdom (46th, 2.28%), France (57th, 2.05%), and Germany (68th, 1.89%). Switzerland, often associated with defense neutrality, ranks 134th at 0.72%. Ireland ranks 154th at 0.24%, and Mauritius (155th, 0.15%) and Haiti (156th, 0.07%) represent the lowest values in the dataset.
This metric captures only what governments report as military expenditure relative to GDP, and comparability across countries is limited by differences in national accounting practices, what each government classifies as military spending, and the completeness of official disclosures. A country with a large nominal military budget but an even larger economy can rank lower than a poorer country with a small but proportionally significant defense allocation. The metric does not reflect absolute spending levels, military capability, or the composition of expenditure. Countries in conflict or political crisis may have irregular or incomplete reporting, and the 17 extreme outliers identified at the 3-sigma threshold indicate that a small number of values heavily influence the distribution.
Methodology
Data is drawn from the World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator code MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS, for reference year 2024. The source defines this metric as: military expenditure by country as percentage of gross domestic product. The ranking covers 156 countries, all with official-quality data. Of those, 153 (98.1%) have data from within the last seven years, and 147 (94.2%) have data specifically from the latest reference year. The average year-over-year change is 13.3%, within the 50% volatility threshold. Viability checks identified 17 extreme outliers at the 3-sigma level, driven primarily by Ukraine at 34.48% and Haiti at the lower bound at 0.07%, producing a range spread of over 50,000%. No microstates (populations under 1 million) are included in the 156-country dataset.