This page hosts data on real military expenditure using estimates of military purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates.
The figure below shows real military spending adjusting for differences in defense sector costs. These are preliminary estimates for 2025.
See the Analysis page for more recent data on specific countries and discussions. Further discussion about China’s defense spending are discussed here in Foreign Policy, The Economist and the Resources page.
The full data for 2025 are given in the following table.
The data can be downloaded in an Excel file. Please cite as Robertson, Peter .E., (2022). “The real military balance: International comparisons of defense spending.” Review of Income and Wealth, 68(3), pp.797-818. https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12536.
