Countries That Spend the Most on Research and Development 2023
About This Dataset
Countries That Spend the Most on Research and Development 2023
Countries ranked by R&D spending (% of GDP) in 2023, using World Bank figures for the 56 countries that reported that year. Israel leads on 6.35, ahead of Liechtenstein (6.01) and South Korea (4.94). Gross domestic spending on research and development as a share of GDP, counting business, government and university research. Countries report in different years and the newest figure is often two or three years old.
Analysis
Israel (6.35), Liechtenstein (6.01) and South Korea (4.94) take the top three. Across the twenty shown, values run from 6.35 down to 1.84, a spread of 4.51. Only 0.34 separates Israel from Liechtenstein in second, 5.4% of the leading figure. 9 of the 20 reach half the leading figure, 3.18 or more. The chart shows the twenty highest of 56 reporting countries, so it describes the top of the distribution rather than the world average.
Source:
World Bank
Key Findings
🏆
Israel leads in R&D Spending (% of GDP) with 6.35 in 2023.
📊
Average R&D Spending (% of GDP) in 2023: 3 · median: 3.
↔️
Gap in 2023: Israel is 3.5× larger than Estonia.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- World Bank
- Coverage
- 20 entities · 2023 · 20 observations
- Measure
- R&D Spending (% of GDP)
- Last updated
- 6 September 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value in 2023.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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