Terms of use

Who we are

Nations Inquiry is the website at nationsinquiry.com. It publishes country statistics collected from the organisations that produce them, and rankings built from those statistics. These terms describe what you may do with what you find here. If anything in them is unclear, write to us and we will answer in plain language.

Using the site means you accept these terms. They are short on purpose. Where a page states a licence for a particular dataset, ranking or photograph, that statement is the one that applies to it.

Three kinds of material

Almost everything on this site falls into one of three groups, and each group is treated differently, because each has a different owner.

1. Numbers published by other organisations. Every figure in a table, a chart or a country profile was produced by a statistical agency, a UN body, a research institute or a similar publisher. We copy it exactly as published. It stays theirs.
2. Rankings and positions we build from those numbers. The Country Index, the topic standings, the region standings and every position marked derived are our own arithmetic. The inputs belong to their publishers; the ordering is ours.
3. Our own writing and drawings, and other people's photographs. The articles, the explanatory text, the drawn topic plates and the maps were made for this site. The photographs on the country pages were taken by other people and are used under the licence printed beside each one.

The data

Each dataset on this site is published under its publisher's own licence, and that licence is named on the dataset's page along with the date we last checked it. Most are a Creative Commons Attribution licence, which lets you copy, share and adapt the numbers for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as you credit the publisher. A few are the publisher's own terms, which we have read and which permit the same.

When you reuse a figure you found here, credit the organisation that published it, not us. Their name, the edition and a link to their release are on every dataset page. You are welcome to add "via Nations Inquiry", and we appreciate it, but the credit that matters belongs to the publisher.

We add no restrictions of our own to any publisher's data. We also add no rights: if a publisher's licence does not permit a use, appearing on this site does not change that.

We only publish a dataset when its publisher's terms allow us to. Datasets whose publishers restrict reuse, or publish no terms at all, are not on the site. The Sources & publishers page lists every organisation and licence in one place.

Our rankings and positions

A ranking made from other people's numbers is a derivative work, and some of the numbers that feed the Country Index are published under ShareAlike licences. That obliges the whole ranking to carry the same licence. Each edition of the Country Index therefore states its licence on its own page, and for the 2026 edition that licence is Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. You may copy, share and adapt an edition under that licence if you credit Nations Inquiry, name the edition and its method version, and release anything you build on it under the same terms.

A position marked derived on a statistics page is one published statistic put in order by us. Reuse it under the statistic's own licence, with the publisher credited for the numbers and Nations Inquiry credited for the ordering.

Please cite an edition rather than a page. An edition does not change once it is published, so a citation keeps pointing at the numbers it was written about. The exact wording is on the Press & citation page.

Our writing, charts and drawings

The articles, the explanatory text on every page, the chart images in the articles, the drawn topic plates and the maps are the work of Nations Inquiry. You may quote from them, take a screenshot, share a link and use short extracts in your own work, as long as you credit Nations Inquiry and link to the page you took them from. Please do not remove the source line from a chart.

Republishing a whole article or a whole chart, in print or online, needs our written permission. Write to us; we usually say yes, and we ask for a credit and a link.

Automated readers, search engines and AI tools may index this site. If you quote it, credit it, and treat the figures the way the Methodology page describes them: a standing is a relative place among the countries measured, and never a score.

Photographs, flags and borders

The photographs on the country and region pages come from Wikimedia Commons. Each is shown with its photographer's name and its licence, and each may be reused under that licence with the photographer credited. The credit belongs to them, not to us.

The flags are open-source drawings published under the MIT licence. The country outlines are drawn from Natural Earth, which is in the public domain. Natural Earth draws borders as they are administered on the ground, and so do we; a line on our maps is a description, not a position on a dispute.

Accuracy

We take care. Every number is stored digit for digit as its publisher released it, every page names its source and its edition, and the method behind every ranking is published in full. Even so, publishers restate their series, a file can be misread, and a rule can have a gap nobody saw. We do not guarantee that everything here is free of error, and we do not accept liability for decisions taken on the strength of it.

When we find a mistake, or you tell us about one, we fix it and record the fix on the Corrections page. That page is part of these terms in the sense that it is where we keep our word about accuracy.

What a standing is not

Nothing on this site is investment, legal, medical, immigration or travel advice. A country's standing says where it places against the other countries measured on the same statistics, in one edition, under one published method. It is not a verdict on a nation or its people, and it is not a prediction. Read it beside the field it is a position of and the sources it rests on, both of which are printed with it.

Linking and embedding

Link to any page freely; that is what the pages are for. Please do not present the site inside a frame that makes it look like part of another site, and please do not load our images directly into your own pages, which costs us bandwidth without telling your readers where the picture came from. Save a copy and credit it instead.

The name and the logo

"Nations Inquiry" and the N mark identify this site. You may use them to refer to us and to credit us. Please do not use them in a way that suggests we produced, checked or endorsed something we did not. The Press & citation page has the logo files and the few rules for using them.

Other sites

Every dataset page links to the publisher's own website, and articles sometimes link elsewhere. Those sites have their own terms and privacy practices, and we are not responsible for them.

Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. The date at the top of this page is the date the text was last read through and confirmed, and any change that affects what you may do is noted on the Updates page. The version in force is the one on this page.

Contact

Questions about these terms, permission requests and anything else go to the address at the top of this page, or through the contact page. A person reads every message.