Defense Spending Definition: World Total 2025 ($2,740bn)
Defense spending is government military expenditure, and in 2025 the 149 countries SIPRI tracks spent a combined $2,740.0bn.
Key takeaways
- Defense spending totaled $2,740.0bn across 149 SIPRI-tracked countries in 2025.
- The $2,740.0bn figure is our calculation summing SIPRI's country-level data, not a SIPRI-published world total.
- 2025 is a completed reporting year, not one of SIPRI's estimate years (2026–2027).
- Coverage is incomplete: countries like North Korea have no SIPRI series, so $2,740.0bn is a floor, not the full world total.
- Related terms — military budget, military expenditure, and defense burden — each measure something slightly different.
Verdict
Defense spending is government military expenditure, and in 2025 the 149 countries SIPRI tracks spent a combined $2,740.0bn — our calculation from SIPRI's country-level data, not a SIPRI-published figure. Because some spenders, such as North Korea, have no SIPRI series, this total is a floor on global military expenditure rather than an exhaustive count.
At a glance
| 2025 world total | $2,740.0bnConstant 2024 USD |
|---|---|
| Countries included | 149SIPRI-reported for 2025 |
| Figure type | ActualNot an estimate year |
| Attribution | Our calculationNot a SIPRI-published total |
Defense spending — also called military expenditure — is the money a national government allocates in a given year to its armed forces, military equipment, personnel, operations, and related defense infrastructure. In 2025, the 149 countries tracked by SIPRI spent a combined $2,740.0bn, a figure we calculate by summing SIPRI's country-level data rather than citing a SIPRI-published world total.
01 What Does "Defense Spending" Mean?
Defense spending covers everything a government budgets for its military in a single year: salaries and pensions for armed forces personnel, procurement of weapons and equipment, research and development, construction of military infrastructure, and the operating costs of running armed forces. It excludes spending on domestic police, border guards not under military command, and veterans' benefits paid outside the defense ministry — though exact scope varies slightly by country reporting standard.
The figures on this site are drawn from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the standard reference dataset for cross-country military expenditure comparisons, expressed in constant 2024 US dollars so that spending levels can be compared across years without inflation distorting the picture. See the Glossary for related terms.
02 The 2025 World Total: $2,740.0bn
Adding up every country SIPRI reports for 2025 produces a world total of $2,740.0bn. This is not a projection or an estimate — 2025 is a completed reporting year in the dataset, not one of the forward-looking estimate years (2026–2027) that SIPRI flags separately.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Year | 2025 |
| World total (constant 2024 USD) | $2,740.0bn |
| Countries included | 149 |
| Figure type | Actual, not estimate |
03 How the Total Is Calculated (and What It Excludes)
The $2,740.0bn figure is our calculation from SIPRI country-level data. Not SIPRI's own published total. We sum the individual 2025 expenditure entries for all 149 countries SIPRI covers that year, in constant 2024 US dollars, so no single country's figure is double-counted or omitted arbitrarily — it is a direct arithmetic sum of the dataset SIPRI publishes at the country level.
Sum of the 149 countries SIPRI reports for 2025. Some spenders are absent from the dataset (North Korea has no series; several states have gaps), so this is a floor, not the whole world.
Because coverage is incomplete, $2,740.0bn should be read as a lower bound on actual global military expenditure in 2025, not an exhaustive total. Any country missing a 2025 series — whether due to non-disclosure, methodological gaps, or SIPRI simply not maintaining a series for that state — is absent from the sum entirely rather than estimated.
04 Defense Spending vs. Related Terms
"Defense spending" is often used interchangeably with a few adjacent terms that mean slightly different things:
- Military expenditure — the term SIPRI itself uses; functionally synonymous with defense spending and the basis for the figures on this site.
- Military budget — the amount a government plans or authorizes to spend, which can differ from actual outlays reported after the fact.
- Defense burden — military spending expressed as a share of a country's GDP, a measure of relative economic weight rather than absolute dollar amount.
- World defense spending total — the aggregate figure across countries, such as the $2,740.0bn calculated here for 2025, which is distinct from any single country's national figure.
Each of these terms answers a different question — how much was planned, how much was spent, how large relative to the economy, or how much in total — and precision matters when citing a figure.
05 Where to See the Full 2025 Country Rankings
The $2,740.0bn world total is an aggregate across 149 countries, but it says nothing about how spending is distributed among them. For the country-by-country breakdown that makes up this sum, see the 2025 world rankings, which lists each SIPRI-tracked country's individual defense spending figure for the year.
All figures on this page are in constant 2024 US dollars, which allows direct comparison across years without inflation effects.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What does defense spending mean?
- Defense spending is the money a government allocates in a given year to its armed forces, equipment, personnel, and military operations — also called military expenditure.
- What was the world total defense spending in 2025?
- $2,740.0bn, summed across the 149 countries SIPRI tracked for 2025, in constant 2024 US dollars.
- Is the $2,740.0bn figure published by SIPRI?
- No. It is our calculation from SIPRI's country-level data, not a total SIPRI itself publishes.
- Does the total cover every country in the world?
- No. It covers the 149 countries SIPRI reports for 2025; some spenders, including North Korea, have no SIPRI series and are excluded, making the figure a floor rather than a complete world total.
- How much did the world spend on defense in 2025?
- Summing the 149 countries SIPRI reports for 2025 gives $2,740.0bn, in constant 2024 US dollars. This is our calculation from SIPRI country-level data, not a total SIPRI itself publishes.
- Is defense spending the same as military expenditure?
- Yes — 'defense spending' and 'military expenditure' are generally used interchangeably to describe actual outlays on armed forces, as distinct from a 'defense budget,' which is the planned figure set before the fiscal year.
- What is the meaning of defense spending?
- Defense spending is a government's actual annual outlay on its military — personnel, equipment, operations, and R&D. For 2025, summing SIPRI's country-level data across the 149 countries it tracks yields $2,740.0bn in constant 2024 USD, a figure that is our own calculation and a floor given known gaps like North Korea's absence from the dataset.
defensebudget.org
Defense spending data, sourced from SIPRI
defensebudget.org tracks military expenditure for 160 countries using the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database. Pages are generated from that dataset and reviewed before publication.