Countries With the Most Religiously Unaffiliated People 2020
About This Dataset
Countries With the Most Religiously Unaffiliated People 2020
What this chart shows. The 25 countries with the most religiously unaffiliated people in 2020, in millions. China had 1,278.1 million, 67.1% of the world's 1,905.4 million people with no religion. The United States was second with 100.9 million and Japan third with 72.6 million.
How the data is collected. Pew's "religiously unaffiliated" category, sometimes called the "nones", consists of people who do not identify with any religion. It is one of seven groups into which Pew divides each country's population, using national censuses, demographic and general population surveys, and population registers.
Background. The number of unaffiliated people in the United States nearly doubled between 2010 and 2020, up 97.2% from 51.2 million, moving the country from fourth to second place; their share of Americans rose from 16.5% to 29.7%. The fastest growth among the 25 was in Chile, up 151.5%, and Mexico, up 145.5%. Worldwide the group grew 16.5%, and its share of all people rose from 23.3% to 24.2%.
Limits. Brazil and France had the same rounded count, 28.1 million each. China also had 43.1 million people in Pew's "other religions" category, which includes folk or traditional religions; they are not counted as unaffiliated. Counts below 10,000 are not given in Pew's file.
How the data is collected. Pew's "religiously unaffiliated" category, sometimes called the "nones", consists of people who do not identify with any religion. It is one of seven groups into which Pew divides each country's population, using national censuses, demographic and general population surveys, and population registers.
Background. The number of unaffiliated people in the United States nearly doubled between 2010 and 2020, up 97.2% from 51.2 million, moving the country from fourth to second place; their share of Americans rose from 16.5% to 29.7%. The fastest growth among the 25 was in Chile, up 151.5%, and Mexico, up 145.5%. Worldwide the group grew 16.5%, and its share of all people rose from 23.3% to 24.2%.
Limits. Brazil and France had the same rounded count, 28.1 million each. China also had 43.1 million people in Pew's "other religions" category, which includes folk or traditional religions; they are not counted as unaffiliated. Counts below 10,000 are not given in Pew's file.
Analysis
China had 67.1% of the world's religiously unaffiliated people in 2020, 1,278.1 million; the United States, second, nearly doubled its count after 2010, to 100.9 million.
Key Findings
🏆
China leads in Religiously unaffiliated population (millions) with 1,278.12 in 2020.
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Average Religiously unaffiliated population (millions) in 2020: 72.80 · median: 13.22.
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Gap in 2020: China is 284× larger than Belgium.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- Pew Research Center, Religious Composition by Country 2010-2020
- Coverage
- 25 entities · 2020 · 25 observations
- Measure
- Religiously unaffiliated population (millions)
- Last updated
- 2 October 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 2020.
An article using this data
Which countries have the most Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists? Religion by country in 2020
Pew Research Center's 2020 estimates: Indonesia has the most Muslims, the United States the most Christians, India 94.5% of all Hindus, Thailand the most Buddhi...
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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