Independent rankings built from public data — every figure traceable to the body that published it.
Report year 2005Data year 2005
Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (% of GDP)Higher is better — rank 1 leadsPublished by UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
28 editions (1996–2023), 52 to 102 countries. Gross domestic expenditure on research and development as a share of GDP, counting business, government, higher education and non-profit spending together. The standard measure of how much of an economy is aimed at producing new knowledge, and SDG indicator 9.5.1. ⚠ It counts money in, not discoveries out — Israel leads 2023 at 6.35%, which says what the country spends and nothing about what it found. ⚠ Editions reporting fewer than 50 countries are not written — that drops UIS’s trailing stub year, which opens with a handful of early reporters, and any thin historical year. ⚠ UIS ranks nobody, so no rank is stored; the POSITION on the statistics page is derived here by ordering the score and labelled as ours.
Research and Development Spending 2005 — UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
Cite as: UNESCO Institute for Statistics. UIS Data Browser. Montreal: UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0
UIS release 20260507-91260335. Read from the UIS API at full precision, as published — nothing is rounded here. ⚠ Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, so anything derived from it carries the same ShareAlike obligation. UIS publishes no rank, so none is stored and none is derived here.
93 rows × 3 columns · imported from the publisher’s published data file on
Select any column heading to sort by it; select it again to reverse.
| Country | ISO Code | Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (% of GDP) |
|---|---|---|
| Israel | ISR | 3.91123 |
| Sweden | SWE | 3.36410 |
| Finland | FIN | 3.32412 |
| Japan | JPN | 3.13092 |
| Iceland | ISL | 2.67969 |
| United States | USA | 2.50192 |
| South Korea | KOR | 2.42725 |
| Germany | DEU | 2.40266 |
| Austria | AUT | 2.38942 |
| Denmark | DNK | 2.38721 |
| Singapore | SGP | 2.14806 |
| France | FRA | 2.05599 |
| Canada | CAN | 1.97127 |
| Belgium | BEL | 1.79060 |
| Netherlands | NLD | 1.76670 |
| Luxembourg | LUX | 1.55873 |
| United Kingdom | GBR | 1.55004 |
| Norway | NOR | 1.47715 |
| Slovenia | SVN | 1.42797 |
| China | CHN | 1.29008 |
| Ireland | IRL | 1.19197 |
| Czechia | CZE | 1.15998 |
| New Zealand | NZL | 1.12043 |
| Spain | ESP | 1.09866 |
| Russia | RUS | 1.06797 |
| Italy | ITA | 1.04057 |
| Brazil | BRA | 1.00247 |
| Ukraine | UKR | 0.99518 |
| Montenegro | MNE | 0.92443 |
| Hungary | HUN | 0.92043 |
| Estonia | EST | 0.91687 |
| Croatia | HRV | 0.84799 |
| India | IND | 0.82411 |
| Hong Kong | HKG | 0.77343 |
| South Africa | ZAF | 0.77024 |
| Portugal | PRT | 0.75755 |
| Lithuania | LTU | 0.74799 |
| Tunisia | TUN | 0.71195 |
| Belarus | BLR | 0.67852 |
| Iran | IRN | 0.62284 |
| Greece | GRC | 0.59224 |
| Türkiye | TUR | 0.56381 |
| Poland | POL | 0.56121 |
| Latvia | LVA | 0.54958 |
| Cuba | CUB | 0.54920 |
| Botswana | BWA | 0.53286 |
| Malta | MLT | 0.53008 |
| Slovakia | SVK | 0.49537 |
| Uruguay | URY | 0.46031 |
| Bulgaria | BGR | 0.44269 |
| Argentina | ARG | 0.42075 |
| Romania | ROU | 0.41262 |
| Moldova | MDA | 0.39865 |
| Serbia | SRB | 0.38621 |
| Mexico | MEX | 0.38103 |
| Cyprus | CYP | 0.36727 |
| American Samoa | ASM | 0.36692 |
| Mauritius | MUS | 0.35574 |
| Pakistan | PAK | 0.32946 |
| Seychelles | SYC | 0.28393 |
| Kazakhstan | KAZ | 0.28361 |
| Armenia | ARM | 0.25761 |
| Guam | GUM | 0.25610 |
| Egypt | EGY | 0.24141 |
| Mongolia | MNG | 0.23775 |
| Uzbekistan | UZB | 0.23741 |
| Panama | PAN | 0.22835 |
| North Macedonia | MKD | 0.22825 |
| Sudan | SDN | 0.22500 |
| Azerbaijan | AZE | 0.21994 |
| Thailand | THA | 0.21889 |
| Uganda | UGA | 0.21514 |
| Kyrgyzstan | KGZ | 0.19861 |
| Venezuela | VEN | 0.18907 |
| Ethiopia | ETH | 0.17917 |
| Georgia | GEO | 0.17658 |
| Colombia | COL | 0.16557 |
| Burkina Faso | BFA | 0.15166 |
| Madagascar | MDG | 0.15096 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | TTO | 0.11431 |
| Philippines | PHL | 0.10692 |
| Kuwait | KWT | 0.10083 |
| Tajikistan | TJK | 0.09570 |
| Macau | MAC | 0.08760 |
| Algeria | DZA | 0.06367 |
| Paraguay | PRY | 0.06091 |
| DR Congo | COD | 0.05799 |
| Saudi Arabia | SAU | 0.04230 |
| Monaco | MCO | 0.03821 |
| Guatemala | GTM | 0.03556 |
| United States Virgin Islands | VIR | 0.02936 |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | BIH | 0.02697 |
| Zambia | ZMB | 0.02493 |