Ranked: The Countries Investing the Most in R&D

Dorothy Neufeld
2025-04-17 10:44:00
www.visualcapitalist.com

Visualizing R&D Investment by Country

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Globally, research and development (R&D) spending totaled $2.8 trillion in 2023—growing from $1 trillion, adjusted for inflation, since the turn of the century.

Overall, Asian economies accounted for 46% of this spending, followed by North America (29%) and Europe (21%). As a critical driver of innovation, R&D investment shapes countless industries, from defense and healthcare to tech and green energy.

This graphic shows R&D investment as a percentage of GDP by country, based on data from the OECD.

Ranked: The R&D Intensity of OECD Countries

Below, we show OECD countries by R&D spending as a share of GDP in 2023, based on the most recent data available:

Country	R&D Spending as a % of GDP 2023
Israel	6.3
South Korea	5.0
Taiwan	4.0
Sweden	3.6
United States	3.4
Japan	3.4
Belgium	3.3
Switzerland	3.3
Austria	3.3
Germany	3.1
Finland	3.1
Denmark	3.0
United Kingdom	2.8
Iceland	2.7
China	2.6
Netherlands	2.2
France	2.2
Slovenia	2.1
Norway	1.9
Singapore	1.8
Estonia	1.8
Czechia	1.8
Canada	1.8
Portugal	1.7
Australia	1.7
Ireland	1.6
Poland	1.6
Spain	1.5
Greece	1.5
New Zealand	1.5
Türkiye	1.4
Croatia	1.4
Hungary	1.4
Italy	1.3
Lithuania	1.0
Slovak Republic	1.0
Luxembourg	1.0
Latvia	0.8
Bulgaria	0.8
South Africa	0.6
Argentina	0.6
Romania	0.5
Chile	0.4
Colombia	0.3
Costa Rica	0.3

Since 2020, OECD countries have spent an average of 2.7% of their GDP on R&D, altogether spending $1.9 trillion in 2023.

Israel stands out globally—not only for leading in R&D intensity, but also for having the highest number of high-tech startups per capita. Overall, it spent $28.3 billion on R&D, with about 92% driven by the private sector.

Also seeing among the highest R&D to GDP are South Korea, Taiwan, and Sweden.

In Taiwan, corporate R&D investment rose by 3.7% in 2023, a slowdown compared to the 8.8% annual average over the previous five years—largely fueled by the semiconductor sector. The small island nation spent $59.9 billion on R&D in 2023, the eighth-highest in the OECD.

When it comes to China, R&D investment has surged nearly eighteenfold since 2000, to reach $723 billion—the second-highest globally. To look at it another way, China’s share of global R&D spending grew from 4% to 26% over the period. Overall, the private sector contributed 77.6% of this spending in 2023, a similar level seen in America.

Learn More on the Voronoi App

To learn more about this topic from a tech sector perspective, check out this graphic on R&D investment growth across global tech giants.

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