Most Abundant Rare Earth Elements in Earth's Crust
Key Findings
About This Dataset
Most Abundant Rare Earth Elements in Earth's CrustThe 'rare earth' label is misleading. Cerium, the most abundant, occurs at 66.5 ppm in Earth's crust, making it more common than copper, tin or lead. Neodymium (41.5 ppm), the key ingredient in high-strength permanent magnets, and lanthanum (39 ppm) are also relatively plentiful, as is yttrium (33 ppm). A clear divide separates these four leaders from the rest: praseodymium drops to 9.2 ppm, and the heavier rare earths, samarium, gadolinium, dysprosium, erbium and ytterbium, fall between 3 and 7 ppm. The real challenge with rare earths is not scarcity but dispersion, they are thinly spread and rarely concentrated into economically minable ore. That is why supply chains, not geology, dominate their strategic importance in electronics, wind turbines and electric vehicles.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- Rare-earth element (crustal abundance)
- Coverage
- 10 entities · 10 observations
- Measure
- Crustal Abundance (ppm)
- Last updated
- 7 July 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
- 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.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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