World Military Spending 2025: $2,740.0bn Total

World military spending reached $2,740.0bn in 2025, our calculation summing SIPRI's country-level data across 149 countries. The United States alone accounted for 33.9% of that total — $929.2bn — and the five largest spenders combined made up 59.2% of global military expenditure.

01 How Much Did the World Spend on the Military in 2025?

Adding up every country SIPRI tracks for 2025 produces a world total of $2,740.0bn, expressed in constant 2024 US dollars. That figure comes from 149 individual national series summed together — it is not a number SIPRI itself publishes as a single global total.

The single largest contributor to that $2,740.0bn is the United States, at $929.2bn, or 3.12% of US GDP. China follows at $335.0bn (1.72% of GDP), and Russia is third at $158.2bn — but 7.5% of Russian GDP, the highest burden among the largest economies. The full breakdown, ranked and sortable, is available in the 2025 world rankings.

02 The Top 10 Military Spenders by Share of the World Total

Ten countries account for nearly three-quarters of everything the world spent on its militaries in 2025. Each row below shows that country's share of the $2,740.0bn total and the running cumulative share as you move down the list.

By the tenth country, 72.8% of the $2,740.0bn world total is accounted for — meaning the other 139 countries in the dataset split the remaining 27.2% between them.

03 Concentration: How the Top Five Account for 59.2% of Spending

The clearest way to read this data is as a story of concentration rather than a ranking of "winners." Military expenditure measures budget size, not capability, intent, or security outcome — a high share simply means a larger slice of the $2,740.0bn total was spent by that country.

• United States — 33.9% of the $2,740.0bn total on its own, more than the next three countries combined.
• United States + China — 46.1% of the world total between the two largest spenders.
• Top five (US, China, Russia, Germany, India) — 59.2% of the $2,740.0bn total, meaning the remaining 144 countries in the dataset share the other 40.8%.

04 Spending as a Share of GDP, Not Just Dollars

Ranking by dollar totals favors large, wealthy economies. Ranking the same ten countries by military spending as a share of their own GDP tells a different story. Ukraine spent the equivalent of 39.56% of its GDP on its military in 2025 — by far the highest burden in the top ten, reflecting its ongoing war rather than the size of its $77.6bn budget, which ranks only eighth by dollar value. Russia's 7.5% of GDP and Saudi Arabia's 6.48% are the next-highest burdens, both well above the United States' 3.12% despite the US spending far more in absolute dollars. At the other end, Japan devotes just 1.41% of its GDP to its $59.5bn military budget, and China 1.72% of GDP to its $335.0bn budget — large dollar totals sitting on comparatively low shares of much larger economies.

05 Data Coverage: Why This Total Is a Floor, Not the Whole World

The $2,740.0bn figure is a sum of every country SIPRI reports data for in 2025 — 149 in total. It is not, and cannot be, a complete picture of everything every state spends on its military.

Any country missing from SIPRI's series — North Korea among them — is missing from the $2,740.0bn total too, and any country with a data gap for 2025 is likewise excluded from that year's sum. That makes $2,740.0bn a documented lower bound on world military spending, not an upper one: the true global figure, if every state's spending were known, would be at least this large and likely somewhat larger. The full country-by-country detail behind this total is in the 2025 world rankings.