Military Spending by Country, Historical Data 1990-2024

About This Dataset

Military expenditure in billions of current US dollars for twelve countries at benchmark years from 1990 to 2024, from World Bank Open Data, which publishes the SIPRI series. Russia has no 1990 entry in this series and Ukraine has none before 1992.

✨ AI Insight

The United States has spent more than the next three countries combined at every benchmark year here, rising from 325.1 billion dollars in 1990 to 997.3 billion in 2024. What has changed is who is behind it. China spent 9.9 billion in 1990, about a quarter of the 43.5 billion spent by the United Kingdom and roughly level with the 10.5 billion spent by India; by 2024 it was at 313.7 billion, a rise of roughly 32 times and more than the United Kingdom, Germany and France put together. The fastest move in the whole chart belongs to Ukraine, which went from 6.8 billion in 2020 to 64.7 billion in 2024, almost exactly level with France. Russia reached 149.0 billion in 2024, its highest figure in the series. Western Europe shows the opposite pattern for most of the period: Germany was lower in 2015 at 38.2 billion than it had been in 1990 at 39.7, and only turns upward at the end, reaching 88.5 billion in 2024.

Source: World Bank Open Data (SIPRI)

Key Findings

Auto-computed highlights from this dataset

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United States leads with 997 in 2024.

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Ukraine grew fastest: +6370% from 1995 to 2024 (1 → 64.70).

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Average value in 2024: 173 · median: 81.

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2024 recorded the highest combined total across all categories.

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Gap in 2024: United States is 21.4× larger than Israel.