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Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI)

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Corruption

What you should know about this indicator

  • The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranks countries and territories based on the perceived level of public sector corruption, as judged by experts and business leaders.
  • Depending on the country, it combines data up to 13 independent sources, including expert assessments and business surveys from trusted institutions.
  • Each source is converted to a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 means very corrupt and 100 means very clean.
  • A country’s CPI score is the simple average of the available sources for that year.
  • The method has stayed the same since 2012, so scores can be compared over time.
  • The CPI includes a 90% confidence interval (margin of error) to reflect differences between sources and possible inconsistencies.
  • The CPI does not measure corruption directly. It measures perceptions, because there are no fully objective national measures of corruption.

How is this data described by its producer?

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) aggregates information from several sources that capture how business professionals and country experts perceive corruption in the public sector.

To build the CPI, eligible data sources are first selected. A source qualifies only if it measures public‑sector corruption perceptions; relies on a sound, comparable scoring method; is produced by a credible institution; shows enough score variation to differentiate countries; covers a substantial number of nations; bases its ratings on the views of country experts or businesspeople; and is updated at least every two years. The current CPI draws on 13 data sets supplied by 12 separate institutions, each reflecting perceptions recorded during the preceding two years (the accompanying source‑description document details them).

Next, every source is converted to a 0–100 scale, where 0 represents the highest perceived corruption and 100 the lowest. This standardisation subtracts the source’s baseline‑year mean from each country’s raw score and divides the result by that source’s baseline‑year standard deviation. The standardised value is then rescaled by multiplying by the CPI’s 2012 standard deviation (20) and adding the CPI’s 2012 mean (45), ensuring scores remain comparable across years while fitting the CPI’s 0–100 range.

Finally, a country or territory enters the CPI only when at least three separate sources assess it. The country’s CPI figure is the arithmetic mean of all its available standardised scores, rounded to the nearest whole number.

Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI)
A country’s score, from 0 (most corrupt) to 100 (least corrupt), that reflects the average of expert surveys on public sector corruption, including misuse of office and bribery.
Source
Transparency International (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 13, 2025
Next expected update
May 2026
Date range
2012–2024

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Transparency International – Corruption Perceptions Index

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), produced by Transparency International, ranks countries and territories based on the perceived level of corruption in their public sectors, as evaluated by experts and business executives. It is a composite index that combines data from at least three and up to thirteen independent sources specializing in governance and business climate analysis. These sources provide perception-based assessments, which are necessary since corruption is largely clandestine and cannot be directly measured at a national level. The CPI uses a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean) and has been consistently comparable year-to-year since a methodological revision in 2012. The CPI captures perceptions of public sector corruption in areas such as bribery, diversion of public funds, abuse of office, red tape, meritocracy in public appointments, and protections for whistleblowers. It does not measure private sector corruption, tax fraud, money laundering, or citizens’ personal experiences of corruption. Countries are included only if sufficient data is available, and changes of one or two points in the index are generally not considered statistically significant. The methodology has undergone independent audits, confirming its validity and reliability.

Retrieved on
May 13, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024
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.
Corruption Perceptions Index (2024) by Transparency International, https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024.

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), produced by Transparency International, ranks countries and territories based on the perceived level of corruption in their public sectors, as evaluated by experts and business executives. It is a composite index that combines data from at least three and up to thirteen independent sources specializing in governance and business climate analysis. These sources provide perception-based assessments, which are necessary since corruption is largely clandestine and cannot be directly measured at a national level. The CPI uses a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean) and has been consistently comparable year-to-year since a methodological revision in 2012. The CPI captures perceptions of public sector corruption in areas such as bribery, diversion of public funds, abuse of office, red tape, meritocracy in public appointments, and protections for whistleblowers. It does not measure private sector corruption, tax fraud, money laundering, or citizens’ personal experiences of corruption. Countries are included only if sufficient data is available, and changes of one or two points in the index are generally not considered statistically significant. The methodology has undergone independent audits, confirming its validity and reliability.

Retrieved on
May 13, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024
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.
Corruption Perceptions Index (2024) by Transparency International, https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024.

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.

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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: Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI)”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre, Veronika Samborska, and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (2016) - “Corruption”. Data adapted from Transparency International. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260325-171315/grapher/ti-corruption-perception-index.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:

Transparency International (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Transparency International (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI)” [dataset]. Transparency International, “Corruption Perceptions Index” [original data]. Retrieved April 6, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260325-171315/grapher/ti-corruption-perception-index.html (archived on March 25, 2026).

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Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ti-corruption-perception-index.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ti-corruption-perception-index.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/ti-corruption-perception-index.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/ti-corruption-perception-index.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/ti-corruption-perception-index.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

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

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