Methodology and sources

Sources

Indicators come from World Bank Open Data: World Development Indicators, Worldwide Governance Indicators and Health Nutrition and Population Statistics. The licence of every series is checked automatically: only series published under CC BY 4.0 are used.

Reference data: capitals, languages, currencies, neighbours and codes come from mledoze/countries; names of countries, languages and currencies from Unicode CLDR; capital names in the languages of the site, heads of state and government, plugs, voltage, driving side and emergency numbers from Wikidata; form of government, independence, religions, elevation, natural hazards, airports and railways from the archive of the CIA World Factbook; the climate of capitals by month from NASA POWER; borders from Natural Earth; time zones from the IANA database; weather from MET Norway. The full list with licences is at the end of this page.

Which value is shown

Each indicator shows its latest available value, with the year next to it. Countries publish data at different speeds, so the year can differ from country to country.

We do not fill gaps or mix sources: if the World Bank has no value for a country, the field is empty. Territories for which the World Bank publishes no data: 34, including Taiwan and Vatican City.

Values are rounded to two decimal places, and numbers above 100 to whole numbers.

Calculated indicators

Price level (USA = 100) is the purchasing power parity conversion factor divided by the market exchange rate for the same year. It shows how much more or less goods and services cost than in the United States.

Governance indicators (World Bank WGI) are shown on a scale from 0 to 100: the higher, the better.

Rankings

A country’s place is calculated among the countries whose latest value is no more than five years behind the most recent year of that indicator, so that a figure from 2005 does not compete with one from 2024.

Place 1 is the largest value; for indicators where less is better, such as infant mortality, it is the smallest. Countries with equal values share a place. The regional place is calculated within the same part of the world. The “In brief” paragraph mentions places only when at least 10 countries have data.

Better and worse

For some indicators more is better (life expectancy, internet access), for others less is better (mortality, unemployment). Many have no “better” at all: population, area, inflation, the shares of economic sectors, spending. The table below shows the rule for each indicator; comparisons use it to mark the leader in each row.

A country is “better than all its neighbours” when its value is better than that of every land neighbour. An indicator is compared only if every neighbour has data for it.

Changes over ten years

The “In brief” paragraph compares the latest value with the value exactly ten years earlier. One common year is used for all figures in the sentence, so that “from 2015 to 2025” is true for each of them.

Maps, names, time and weather

Country maps use an equal-area azimuthal projection centred on the country, so areas are not distorted; the world map uses the Equal Earth projection. Borders and names on the maps are for orientation only and do not express a position on disputed territories.

Country names come from Unicode CLDR. Official names and capitals are translated using mledoze/countries, checked and corrected by us, and Wikidata; where there is no translation, the English name is shown.

Local time is calculated from the IANA time zone database. The weather in the capital is the current MET Norway forecast, refreshed every hour.

Updates and citation

The World Bank updates its databases several times a year. The data on this site was last rebuilt on October 22, 2026.

How to cite CountryScope, and free downloads of all the data, are on the download page.

All indicators

Code: the World Bank series. Years and countries: what the source covers.

Sources and licences

• World Bank Open Data — Population, economy, governance, education, health, environment and technology. CC BY 4.0
• mledoze/countries — Capitals, languages, currencies, neighbours, country codes. ODbL 1.0
• Unicode CLDR — Names of countries, languages and currencies in every language of the site. Unicode License
• CIA World Factbook — Form of government, independence, religions, elevation, natural hazards, airports and railways (archive of the closed reference). CC0
• Wikidata — Capital names in every language of the site, heads of state and government, plugs, voltage, driving side and emergency numbers. CC0
• Natural Earth — Country borders and capital locations. Public domain
• world-atlas — Borders converted for web maps. ISC
• NASA POWER — Climate of capitals by month. CC BY 4.0
• MET Norway — Current weather in capitals. CC BY 4.0
• IANA Time Zone Database — Time zones. Public domain
• flag-icons — Flags. MIT