Countries With the Highest R&D Spending as % of GDP (2025)
Photo: Chokniti Khongchum / Pexels
Research and development spending is one of the most widely used indicators of how much an economy invests in new knowledge. Statisticians call the main measure GERD, gross domestic expenditure on R&D: all the money spent on R&D performed inside a country in a year, by businesses, governments, universities and non-profits. Divide it by GDP and you get R&D intensity, the number this ranking is built on.
Intensity lets small and large economies be compared on the same scale. It answers the question "how much of its output does this country put into research?" rather than "who spends the most?" Those two questions have different answers, and this article covers both: the intensity ranking first, then absolute spending, then what each measure misses.
Key Takeaways
- Israel had the highest R&D intensity in 2023, at 6.35% of GDP, followed by South Korea (4.94%) and Sweden (3.60%), according to UNESCO Institute for Statistics data published by the World Bank.
- The world as a whole spent 2.60% of GDP on R&D in 2023, up from 2.00% in 2010. The OECD member average was 2.93%.
- In absolute terms the United States led in 2022 with $923 billion (purchasing power parity), and China was second with $812 billion. Together they accounted for about 57% of global R&D, according to the US National Science Board. The Board's May 2026 update, using 2024 data, shows China slightly ahead ($1.028 trillion versus $1.009 trillion).
- Businesses perform most R&D in the leading economies. In the US, business performed 78% of R&D in 2023.
- Figures differ between sources by a few tenths of a percentage point because of revisions, different reference years and different GDP estimates. Each row below names its source and year.
Top 20 Countries by R&D Intensity
All values are GERD as a share of GDP from the World Bank indicator GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS, which republishes data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. The year shown is the most recent year available for each country as of October 2026.
| Rank | Country | R&D as % of GDP | Data year | 2010 value | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Israel | 6.35% | 2023 | 3.84% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 2 | Liechtenstein | 6.01% | 2023 | n/a | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 3 | South Korea | 4.94% | 2023 | 3.18% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 4 | Sweden | 3.60% | 2023 | 3.19% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 5 | United States | 3.45% | 2023 | 2.71% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 6 | Japan | 3.44% | 2023 | 3.10% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 7 | Belgium | 3.27% | 2023 | 2.06% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 8 | Austria | 3.26% | 2023 | 2.74% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 9 | Switzerland | 3.22% | 2023 | n/a | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 10 | Germany | 3.15% | 2023 | 2.68% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 11 | Finland | 3.09% | 2023 | 3.71% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 12 | Denmark | 3.05% | 2023 | 2.91% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 13 | United Kingdom | 2.68% | 2023 | 1.64% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 14 | Iceland | 2.64% | 2023 | n/a | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 15 | China | 2.58% | 2023 | 1.68% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 16 | Netherlands | 2.27% | 2023 | 1.69% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 17 | France | 2.18% | 2023 | 2.18% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 18 | Slovenia | 2.13% | 2023 | 2.07% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 19 | Australia | 1.86% | 2021 | 2.37% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
| 20 | Norway | 1.85% | 2023 | 1.64% | UNESCO UIS via World Bank |
Source: World Bank, Research and development expenditure (% of GDP), data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, retrieved October 2026. "n/a" means no 2010 value is published in this series. Taiwan is not included in World Bank data; the US National Science Board puts its 2022 intensity at 3.96%, which would place it between South Korea and Sweden.
Just outside the top 20 are Estonia (1.84%), Czechia (1.83%), Singapore (1.81%, 2022) and Canada (1.79%, 2024). Several large emerging economies are well below the world average: Brazil at 1.19% (2023), Türkiye at 1.42% (2023), Russia at 0.94% (2024) and India at 0.65% (2020, the latest year in this series).
How R&D Intensity Is Measured
R&D statistics follow the OECD's Frascati Manual, the international rulebook that defines what counts as research and experimental development. Under it, an activity counts as R&D if it is novel, creative, uncertain in outcome, systematic, and transferable or reproducible. Routine software maintenance, quality control and market research do not count. Clinical trials, prototype development and basic science do.
Countries collect the data mainly through surveys of businesses, universities and government labs. National statistics offices send the results to the OECD (for its Main Science and Technology Indicators database) and to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, which covers non-OECD countries as well. The World Bank republishes the UNESCO series. Because the surveys are national, quality varies. Countries with long-running mandatory surveys produce stable figures; others rely on partial surveys and estimates.
Three practical consequences follow:
- Numbers get revised. When a statistics office improves its survey, past figures can jump. The UK is the clearest recent case: in 2022 the Office for National Statistics found that its business survey had missed many small firms that were claiming R&D tax credits, reweighted its estimates from 2018 onward, and raised its estimates of UK business R&D by roughly £15 billion to £17 billion a year. That is why the UK's intensity rises from 1.64% in 2010 to 2.68% in 2023 in the table. Part of that rise is real, but a large part is a change in measurement, and the series before and after 2018 are not directly comparable.
- Sources disagree slightly. The US National Science Board, using OECD data for 2022, gives intensities of 6.0% for Israel, 5.2% for South Korea, 3.6% for the United States, 3.4% for Japan, 3.1% for Germany and 2.6% for China. The World Bank's 2023 figures above are close but not identical. Different reference years, revised GDP figures and different data vintages all play a part. Neither source is wrong; always compare like with like.
- Defence R&D is uneven. Some countries include large military R&D programmes in GERD; others classify part of that spending or report it incompletely. Our ranking of countries spending the most on military R&D looks at that slice separately.
Intensity also depends on the denominator. A recession that shrinks GDP raises intensity even if R&D spending does not change, and fast GDP growth can lower it. If you want to understand how GDP itself is built, see what GDP is and why it matters.
Absolute Spending: A Different Leaderboard
Intensity rewards concentration. Absolute spending rewards size. To compare money across countries, analysts convert local currency using purchasing power parity (PPP), which adjusts for the fact that a researcher's salary or a lab building costs different amounts in different places.
| Economy | GERD, 2022 (billion current PPP $) | R&D as % of GDP | Source, year |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 923.2 | 3.59% | NSB / NCSES, 2022 |
| China | 811.9 | 2.56% | NSB / NCSES, 2022 |
| EU-27 (combined) | 542.1 | 2.11% | NSB / NCSES, 2022 |
| Japan | 200.8 | 3.41% | NSB / NCSES, 2022 |
| Germany | 174.9 | 3.13% | NSB / NCSES, 2022 |
| South Korea | 139.0 | 5.21% | NSB / NCSES, 2022 |
| United Kingdom | 102.6 | 2.90% | NSB / NCSES, 2021 |
| France | 85.2 | 2.18% | NSB / NCSES, 2022 |
| Taiwan | 64.0 | 3.96% | NSB / NCSES, 2022 |
Source: National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators: Research and Development: U.S. Trends and International Comparisons, Figure DISC-17, and Global R&D and International Comparisons. The UK value is for 2021.
According to the same report, global R&D reached about $3.1 trillion in 2022 at PPP. The United States accounted for 30.1% of it, China for 26.5%, the EU-27 for 17.7% and Japan for 6.6%. The eight largest R&D-performing economies together accounted for 82%.
Israel does not appear in this table, even though it leads on intensity. Its economy is far smaller than those listed, so even at 6% of GDP its total spending is a fraction of Germany's or South Korea's. That is the core trade-off between the two measures: intensity tells you how research-focused an economy is, while absolute spending tells you how much research it can actually buy.
Nominal and PPP figures also differ. For the United States, the NSB reports $892 billion of R&D in 2022 in nominal dollars and an estimated $940 billion in 2023, while the internationally comparable PPP figure for 2022 is $923 billion. Mixing the two kinds of number is a common source of error in published rankings.
Who Pays and Who Performs
GERD can be split two ways: by who performs the research and by who funds it. A government grant to a university counts as government-funded and university-performed.
In the United States in 2023, businesses performed 78% of all R&D ($735 billion) and funded 75%. The federal government performed only 8% ($74 billion, including $44 billion in federal agencies and $29 billion in federally funded R&D centres) but funded 18%, because much federal money flows to universities and companies. Across the OECD area, the business sector accounted for about 74% of GERD in 2022, according to the OECD's March 2024 Main Science and Technology Indicators.
The countries at the top of the intensity ranking are, almost without exception, countries where large companies spend heavily on research. South Korea's electronics and semiconductor firms, Sweden's telecom and pharmaceutical companies, Japan's carmakers and electronics groups, Germany's automotive and chemical industries, Belgium's pharmaceutical sector and Switzerland's drug companies all fit that pattern. Semiconductor manufacturing is a good example of why: building a leading-edge chip process takes years of expensive development before any product ships, as our explainer on how semiconductor fabs work describes.
This also explains why intensity can move quickly. A few large firms changing their budgets, or relocating their research abroad, can shift a small country's figure by tenths of a point in a year.
Israel: Why the Top Spot
Israel's R&D intensity rose from 3.84% in 2010 to 6.35% in 2023 in World Bank data, the largest increase among the leading countries. Most of it is performed by businesses, including many research centres owned by multinational technology companies. Israel's government supports R&D through the Israel Innovation Authority, which runs grant and co-funding programmes for companies, and the country has a dense network of research universities and institutes such as the Technion and the Weizmann Institute.
Israel's high intensity is not explained by size of spending; it is explained by the structure of the economy. A large share of output comes from software, semiconductors, cybersecurity and medical devices, sectors that are research-heavy by nature. Defence also plays a role, both through military R&D and through the technical skills that military service gives many young people.
South Korea: Industrial Strategy at Scale
South Korea combines high intensity with large absolute spending. It is the only country that ranks in the top three on intensity and in the top six economies by total GERD. Its intensity rose from 3.18% in 2010 to 4.94% in 2023. The NSB's 2022 figure, 5.21%, is higher because of the different reference year and data vintage.
Korean R&D is dominated by business, and especially by a handful of large manufacturing groups in semiconductors, electronics and cars. That concentration is a strength while those industries are growing, and a risk if any of them falters. Korea also ranks near the top of rankings for industrial robots in manufacturing, another sign of an economy built on advanced manufacturing.
The United States: The Largest Total
The United States was the largest R&D spender in the NSB's 2022 comparison (China moved narrowly ahead in the Board's 2024 data), and its intensity has risen from 2.71% in 2010 to 3.45% in 2023. Most of that increase came from business R&D, particularly in software, information technology and pharmaceuticals. Federal R&D, which dominated during the Cold War and space race, now funds a smaller share of the total than it once did, though it remains the main funder of basic research through agencies such as the NIH, NSF, DOE and DARPA.
The US system is also unusually good at turning research into companies, through venture capital, university technology transfer and a large domestic market. Our ranking of countries with the most patents shows how that output compares internationally.
China: The Fastest Riser
China's R&D intensity rose from 0.88% in 2000 to 1.68% in 2010 and 2.58% in 2023. Because its GDP grew rapidly over the same period, the absolute increase is even larger: China's GERD reached $812 billion at PPP in 2022, up 16% from 2021, according to the NSB, compared with 12% growth for the United States.
China's intensity is now below the OECD average (2.93%) and above the EU-27's (2.26%). Much of its spending is on experimental development, the stage of turning known science into products, while its share devoted to basic research has historically been lower than in the US or Europe. That mix is changing slowly. Chinese institutions have also become major producers of AI research, covered in countries leading AI research and development.
Europe: High in the North, Lower in the South
Europe shows a wide spread. Sweden, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Finland and Denmark all exceed 3%. The EU as a whole sits at 2.26% (2023), short of the 3% target it has set for itself for more than two decades.
Finland is a cautionary example. Its intensity was 3.71% in 2010, among the highest in the world, largely because of Nokia's research spending. When Nokia's phone business collapsed, Finland's intensity fell, reaching 3.09% by 2023. Belgium moved the other way, from 2.06% in 2010 to 3.27% in 2023, helped by growth in its pharmaceutical and biotech sector. Both cases show how much a few companies can move a small country's figure.
What R&D Intensity Does and Does Not Tell You
Intensity is a measure of input, not output. It says how much money goes into research, not what comes out. Several limits are worth keeping in mind:
- Efficiency varies. Two countries spending the same share can produce very different numbers of patents, papers or products, depending on how research is organised and how easily results are commercialised.
- Multinationals blur borders. A company headquartered in one country may perform research in many. GERD counts R&D where it is performed, not where the owner is based.
- Tax incentives change behaviour. Generous R&D tax credits can lead firms to classify more activity as R&D. That can raise measured intensity without changing the underlying work.
- Services are undercounted. Innovation in finance, logistics or retail often does not meet the Frascati definition, so economies built on services can look less innovative than they are.
- Outcomes take decades. Basic research often pays off a generation later. Countries with long histories of high spending tend to win more science prizes, as our list of countries with the most Nobel Prize winners suggests, but the link is slow and noisy.
R&D Intensity Bands at a Glance
| Band | Countries (2023 unless noted) | Typical profile |
|---|---|---|
| Above 4% | Israel, Liechtenstein, South Korea | Economies dominated by research-heavy industries |
| 3% to 4% | Sweden, US, Japan, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, Denmark | Large business R&D in manufacturing, pharma or IT |
| 2% to 3% | UK, Iceland, China, Netherlands, France, Slovenia | Mixed economies; OECD average is 2.93% |
| 1% to 2% | Australia (2021), Norway, Estonia, Czechia, Singapore (2022), Canada (2024), Türkiye, Brazil | Resource or service-heavy economies, or fast-growing ones |
| Below 1% | Russia (2024), India (2020), most low-income countries | Limited business R&D; government and universities dominate |
Source: World Bank / UNESCO UIS indicator GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS, retrieved October 2026.
Common Misconceptions
"Israel spends the most on R&D." It spends the largest share of its GDP. In total dollars, the United States and China spend far more.
"China already outspends the US." It depends on the year. On the NSB's internationally comparable data for 2022, the US led: $923 billion versus $812 billion for China at PPP. In the Board's newer 2024 data, China is narrowly ahead ($1.028 trillion versus $1.009 trillion), though the US still has the higher intensity (3.44% versus 2.69%).
"A higher intensity means a country is more innovative." It means more money is going into research. Innovation output depends on many other factors, including talent, capital markets and regulation. Our ranking of countries with the most AI startups is one example of an output measure that does not track intensity closely.
"The UK's R&D jumped after 2018." Much of the apparent jump comes from the ONS correcting its survey to capture small firms, not from a sudden surge in research.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Which country spends the highest share of GDP on R&D? A: Israel, at 6.35% of GDP in 2023 according to UNESCO data published by the World Bank. South Korea is next at 4.94%, followed by Sweden at 3.60%. Liechtenstein reports 6.01%, but its economy is very small.
Q: Which country spends the most on R&D in total? A: The United States and China are the two largest, and which is first depends on the year. The National Science Board puts US gross domestic expenditure on R&D at $923 billion in 2022 at purchasing power parity, ahead of China at $812 billion; together they accounted for about 57% of the world's roughly $3.1 trillion that year. The Board's newer 2024 data show China narrowly ahead, at $1.028 trillion versus $1.009 trillion.
Q: What is the world average R&D intensity? A: The world as a whole spent 2.60% of GDP on R&D in 2023 in World Bank data, up from 2.00% in 2010. The OECD member average was 2.93% in the same series.
Q: Why do different sources give different numbers? A: They use different reference years, different data vintages and sometimes different GDP estimates. National statistics offices also revise past figures when they improve their surveys. Differences of a few tenths of a percentage point are normal, so compare figures from the same source and year.
Q: Who pays for most R&D? A: In the leading economies, businesses. In the United States in 2023, business performed 78% of R&D and funded 75%, while the federal government funded 18%. Across the OECD area, business performed about three-quarters of R&D in 2022.
Q: Does more R&D spending guarantee more innovation? A: No. R&D spending is an input. How much innovation it produces depends on research quality, the ability to commercialise results, access to risk capital and the supply of skilled people. Countries with similar intensity can differ widely in output.
The Bottom Line
Israel, South Korea and Sweden lead the world in the share of their economies they devote to research. The United States and China dominate in total spending (the US led in 2022 data, China narrowly in 2024 data), together accounting for more than half of global R&D. Both rankings are useful, and they answer different questions. When you read any R&D figure, check three things: whether it is a share of GDP or a total, which year it refers to, and which source produced it. Most of the disagreement between published rankings comes from mixing those up. For how the countries in this table compare on economic size, see the largest economies in the world by GDP.
Related Reading
- Countries Leading in AI Research Output (2025)
- Countries With the Most Software Developers Per Capita (2025)
- Countries With the Fastest Internet Speeds (2025)
- Countries With the Most Industrial Robots Per Worker (2025)
- Countries With the Best 5G Coverage (2025)
Sources
- World Bank, Research and development expenditure (% of GDP), indicator GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS, source UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
- National Science Board / NCSES, Research and Development: U.S. Trends and International Comparisons.
- National Science Board / NCSES, Global R&D and International Comparisons.
- World Bank data API, most recent values by country, retrieved October 2026.
- National Science Board / NCSES, Discovery: R&D Activity and Research Publications (NSB-SEP-2026-1, May 2026), for the 2024 US and China figures.
- OECD, Frascati Manual and Main Science and Technology Indicators.
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About the Author
SciHub101 is an independent science and technology publication founded and edited by Buğra Sözeri, a software engineer and app developer based in Türkiye. AI tools assist with drafting and research. Source documentation in the existing archive is uneven, and articles are being reviewed and corrected. The Editorial Team byline identifies editorial responsibility; it does not certify specialist or independent human review. Where we compare products, anything built by our own team is labelled as such — see the editorial guidelines and About page for how corrections and disclosures work.
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