Military Spending as % of GDP by Country (2025)

Ukraine spent 39.56% of its GDP on its military in 2025 — the highest defense burden of any country in the SIPRI dataset. Algeria followed at 8.83% of its GDP and Israel at 7.81%, with a wider cluster of Middle Eastern, Caucasus, and Eastern European states rounding out the top 12.

01 Which country spends the highest share of GDP on its military in 2025?

Ukraine's military spending reached 39.56% of its own GDP in 2025, equivalent to $77.6bn, driven by its ongoing war effort. No other country in the dataset comes close: Algeria is second at 8.83% of its GDP ($24.1bn), and Israel third at 7.81% of its GDP ($43.7bn). Wartime spending has pushed Ukraine's burden into a category by itself, distinct even from other high-spending states.

02 The full ranking: top 12 countries by military burden

The table below ranks the top 12 countries by military spending as a percentage of their own GDP in 2025, alongside each country's spending in constant 2024 US dollars.

03 Why % of GDP tells a different story than dollar totals

Measuring spending against a country's own GDP surfaces a different set of leaders than measuring dollar totals. Russia, for instance, spends $158.2bn — more than double Ukraine's $77.6bn in absolute terms — yet its 7.5% GDP share puts it fourth on the burden ranking, well behind Ukraine's 39.56%. Small economies can post high burdens on modest budgets: Armenia's $1.6bn amounts to 6.09% of its GDP, a heavier relative load than Poland carries with a $42.5bn budget at 4.5% of its GDP. The percentage figure isolates fiscal strain and prioritization; the dollar figure isolates scale. Neither alone tells the full story, which is why this page pairs each country's GDP share with its spending in constant 2024 US dollars.

04 Regional patterns: conflict zones, the Gulf, and the Caucasus

• Active or recent conflict — Ukraine's 39.56% of GDP reflects a wartime economy; no other country in the top 12 is close to that level.
• The Caucasus — Azerbaijan (6.47% of GDP) and Armenia (6.09% of GDP) both rank in the top 7, consistent with the two countries' history of military confrontation over Nagorno-Karabakh.
• The Gulf and North Africa — Algeria (8.83%), Saudi Arabia (6.48%), Oman (5.68%), and Kuwait (4.69%) form a cluster of oil-economy states with high GDP shares despite differing absolute budgets, from Saudi Arabia's $81.5bn down to Kuwait's $7.9bn.
• Eastern Europe — Poland's 4.5% of GDP ($42.5bn) reflects sustained defense build-up amid regional security concerns, placing it 11th on burden despite being one of Europe's larger absolute spenders.

05 How burden ranking compares to the absolute-spending leaders and methodology

This ranking uses SIPRI country-level military expenditure data in constant 2024 US dollars, dividing each country's 2025 spending by its 2025 GDP. It is our calculation from SIPRI country-level data, not a total or ranking published by SIPRI itself. The full absolute-dollar leaderboard for 2025 — where large economies like Russia and Saudi Arabia rank far higher than they do here — is available in the 2025 world rankings. Readers comparing the two should expect the order to shift substantially: a country's burden ranking depends on the size of its economy as much as the size of its military budget.