Independent rankings built from public data — every figure traceable to the body that published it.
Report year 2013Data year 2013
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 2013 — 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.
95 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 | 4.1065 |
| South Korea | KOR | 3.7749 |
| Finland | FIN | 3.2846 |
| Japan | JPN | 3.2790 |
| Sweden | SWE | 3.2756 |
| Austria | AUT | 2.9799 |
| Denmark | DNK | 2.9615 |
| Germany | DEU | 2.7807 |
| United States | USA | 2.6959 |
| Slovenia | SVN | 2.5943 |
| Belgium | BEL | 2.3205 |
| France | FRA | 2.2337 |
| Australia | AUS | 2.1773 |
| Netherlands | NLD | 2.1395 |
| China | CHN | 1.9625 |
| Singapore | SGP | 1.9210 |
| Czechia | CZE | 1.8674 |
| Canada | CAN | 1.7062 |
| Estonia | EST | 1.7014 |
| Iceland | ISL | 1.6924 |
| Norway | NOR | 1.6422 |
| United Kingdom | GBR | 1.6210 |
| Ireland | IRL | 1.5356 |
| Hungary | HUN | 1.3845 |
| Portugal | PRT | 1.3233 |
| Italy | ITA | 1.2943 |
| Spain | ESP | 1.2686 |
| Luxembourg | LUX | 1.2338 |
| Brazil | BRA | 1.1957 |
| New Zealand | NZL | 1.1528 |
| Russia | RUS | 1.0273 |
| Lithuania | LTU | 0.9532 |
| Poland | POL | 0.8807 |
| Greece | GRC | 0.8229 |
| Slovakia | SVK | 0.8184 |
| Türkiye | TUR | 0.8121 |
| Croatia | HRV | 0.7916 |
| Saudi Arabia | SAU | 0.7907 |
| Ukraine | UKR | 0.7330 |
| Hong Kong | HKG | 0.7302 |
| Malta | MLT | 0.7264 |
| India | IND | 0.7064 |
| South Africa | ZAF | 0.6633 |
| Serbia | SRB | 0.6557 |
| Belarus | BLR | 0.6519 |
| Egypt | EGY | 0.6390 |
| Tunisia | TUN | 0.6370 |
| Latvia | LVA | 0.6354 |
| Bulgaria | BGR | 0.6342 |
| Argentina | ARG | 0.6185 |
| Ethiopia | ETH | 0.6047 |
| Botswana | BWA | 0.5610 |
| Costa Rica | CRI | 0.5425 |
| Tanzania | TZA | 0.5146 |
| Cyprus | CYP | 0.4849 |
| Cuba | CUB | 0.4747 |
| Palestine | PSE | 0.4543 |
| Thailand | THA | 0.4416 |
| North Macedonia | MKD | 0.4389 |
| Puerto Rico | PRI | 0.4386 |
| Mexico | MEX | 0.4081 |
| Chile | CHL | 0.3903 |
| Romania | ROU | 0.3902 |
| Montenegro | MNE | 0.3743 |
| Ecuador | ECU | 0.3742 |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | BIH | 0.3213 |
| Venezuela | VEN | 0.3185 |
| Kuwait | KWT | 0.3015 |
| Vietnam | VNM | 0.2993 |
| Moldova | MDA | 0.2978 |
| Uruguay | URY | 0.2912 |
| Pakistan | PAK | 0.2618 |
| Colombia | COL | 0.2576 |
| Iran | IRN | 0.2360 |
| Mongolia | MNG | 0.2325 |
| Armenia | ARM | 0.2222 |
| Azerbaijan | AZE | 0.2097 |
| Bermuda | BMU | 0.1963 |
| Kazakhstan | KAZ | 0.1713 |
| Uzbekistan | UZB | 0.1550 |
| Kyrgyzstan | KGZ | 0.1491 |
| Oman | OMN | 0.1485 |
| Philippines | PHL | 0.1321 |
| Tajikistan | TJK | 0.1185 |
| Nicaragua | NIC | 0.1028 |
| Sri Lanka | LKA | 0.0973 |
| Indonesia | IDN | 0.0847 |
| Peru | PER | 0.0817 |
| Georgia | GEO | 0.0771 |
| Paraguay | PRY | 0.0716 |
| El Salvador | SLV | 0.0639 |
| Panama | PAN | 0.0603 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | TTO | 0.0541 |
| Macau | MAC | 0.0512 |
| Guatemala | GTM | 0.0392 |