Defense budgets are where geopolitics becomes arithmetic. The 2024 military spending data contains one number that dwarfs everything else on the chart — and a few entries that tell you exactly what kind of decade the world is having.

The American outlier

The United States spent $916 billion on its military in 2024. The next seven countries on the list — China ($296B), Russia ($109B), India ($83B), Saudi Arabia ($75B), the United Kingdom ($73B), Germany ($66B) and Ukraine ($64B) — spent about $766 billion combined. In other words, one country outspends the next seven put together.

This has been true, in varying degrees, for decades. It funds a global network of bases, eleven aircraft carriers, and research budgets larger than most countries' entire defense allocations.

China: a third of the US, and climbing

China's $296 billion is less than a third of American spending, but the trend line matters more than the snapshot: Chinese defense budgets have grown almost every year for three decades, roughly tracking its economic rise. Most analysts also note that China's costs per soldier and per ship are far lower, so raw dollars understate its actual capability.

Ukraine's budget tells the story of the war

Perhaps the most striking entry is Ukraine at $64 billion — a country whose entire economy is a fraction of the others on this list, now spending at the level of Germany. War compresses decades of budget debates into emergency spending, and Ukraine's presence in the global top eight is the clearest illustration of that anywhere in the data.

Europe rearms, the Gulf keeps pace

The United Kingdom ($73B) and Germany ($66B) both reflect a broader European rearmament that followed 2022 — Germany in particular had spent decades below NATO's 2%-of-GDP target. Saudi Arabia's $75 billion, meanwhile, keeps it among the world's top military spenders relative to the size of its economy.

The takeaway

Global military spending is at record highs, and the 2024 ranking shows two separate races: the superpower gap between Washington and Beijing, and a regional scramble everywhere else. Neither race shows any sign of slowing down.

Explore the full interactive data: Countries by Military Spending 2024.