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Military spending

See all data and research on:
Military Personnel & Spending

What you should know about this indicator

This data includes military and civil personnel, operation and maintenance, procurement, military research and development, infrastructure, and aid. Civil defense and current expenditures for previous military activities are excluded.

How is this data described by its producer?

Military expenditure by country, in constant (2023) US$, 1949-2024 Figures are in US, at constant 2023 prices and exchange rates

Although the lack of sufficiently detailed data makes it difficult to apply a common definition of military expenditure on a worldwide basis, SIPRI has adopted a definition as a guideline. Where possible, SIPRI military expenditure data include all current and capital expenditure on: (a) the armed forces, including peacekeeping forces; (b) defence ministries and other government agencies engaged in defence projects; (c) paramilitary forces, when judged to be trained and equipped for military operations; and (d) military space activities. This should include expenditure on: i. personnel, including: a. salaries of military and civil personnel; b. retirement pensions of military personnel, and; c. social services for personnel; ii. operations and maintenance; iii. procurement; iv. military research and development; v. military infrastructure spending, including military bases. and; vi. military aid (in the military expenditure of the donor country). SIPRI’s estimate of military aid includes financial contributions, training and operational costs, replacement costs of the military equipment stocks donated to recipients and payments to procure additional military equipment for the recipient. However, it does not include the estimated value of military equipment stocks donated. Civil defence and current expenditures on previous military activities, such as veterans' benefits, demobilization, conversion and weapon destruction are excluded. In practice it is not possible to apply this definition for all countries, and in many cases SIPRI is confined to using the national data provided. Priority is then given to the choice of a uniform definition over time for each country in order to achieve consistency over time, rather than to adjusting the figures for single years according to a common definition. In the light of these difficulties, military expenditure data is most appropriately used for comparisons over time, and may be less suitable for close comparison between individual countries. Reference should always be made, when comparing data for different countries, to the footnotes and special notes attached to the data for these countries, which indicate deviations from the SIPRI definition, where these are known.

Regional estimates

Figures do not always add up to totals because of the conventions of rounding.

Notes regarding estimates and regional coverage

  1. The temporal coverage varies by region, based on data availability. A meaningful world total is not possible before 1988 due to the lack of data for the USSR.
  2. All world totals and most regional totals include estimates for at least one country.
  3. The estimates exclude certain countries due either to data being missing for too many years to make meaningful estimates, or to an absence of economic data to enable conversion to constant (2023) US$. These are shown in the column to the right of the data for each region.
  4. The set of countries excluded from the totals for Africa has changed compared to the previous SIPRI data release in April 2016. Therefore, the estimates for World, Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa have changed.
Military spending
This data is expressed in US dollars. It is adjusted for inflation but does not account for differences in the cost of living between countries.
Source
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
April 28, 2025
Next expected update
April 2026
Date range
1949–2024
Unit
constant 2023 US$

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – SIPRI Military Expenditure Database

The SIPRI Military Expenditure Database contains consistent time series on the military spending of countries for the period 1949–2024. The database is updated annually, which may include updates to data for any of the years included in the database.

Military expenditure in local currency at current prices is presented according to both the financial year of each country and according to calendar year, calculated on the assumption that, where financial years do not correspond to calendar years, spending is distributed evenly through the year. Figures in constant (2023) and current US dollars, as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) and per capita are presented according to calendar year. Figures given as a share of government expenditure are presented according to financial year.

The availability of data varies considerably by country, but for a majority of countries that were independent at the time, data is available from at least the late 1950s. Estimates for regional military expenditure have been extended backwards depending on availability of data for countries in the region, but no estimates for total world military expenditure are available before 1988 due to the lack of data for the Soviet Union.

SIPRI military expenditure data is based on open sources only.

Retrieved on
April 30, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Information from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Military Expenditure Database, https://doi.org/10.55163/CQGC9685

The SIPRI Military Expenditure Database contains consistent time series on the military spending of countries for the period 1949–2024. The database is updated annually, which may include updates to data for any of the years included in the database.

Military expenditure in local currency at current prices is presented according to both the financial year of each country and according to calendar year, calculated on the assumption that, where financial years do not correspond to calendar years, spending is distributed evenly through the year. Figures in constant (2023) and current US dollars, as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) and per capita are presented according to calendar year. Figures given as a share of government expenditure are presented according to financial year.

The availability of data varies considerably by country, but for a majority of countries that were independent at the time, data is available from at least the late 1950s. Estimates for regional military expenditure have been extended backwards depending on availability of data for countries in the region, but no estimates for total world military expenditure are available before 1988 due to the lack of data for the Soviet Union.

SIPRI military expenditure data is based on open sources only.

Retrieved on
April 30, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Information from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Military Expenditure Database, https://doi.org/10.55163/CQGC9685

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Military spending”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre and Pablo Arriagada (2013) - “Military Personnel and Spending”. Data adapted from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260325-171315/grapher/military-spending-sipri.html [online resource] (archived on March 25, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Military spending” [dataset]. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “SIPRI Military Expenditure Database” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260325-171315/grapher/military-spending-sipri.html (archived on March 25, 2026).

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-spending-sipri.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-spending-sipri.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-spending-sipri.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-spending-sipri.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-spending-sipri.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-spending-sipri.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-spending-sipri.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-spending-sipri.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear