Countries by population, 2025

What the table lists

Every row is a country or area for which the World Bank publishes a total population for 2025. Rows are sorted by that figure, largest first. "People" is the full count, "Share" is that count divided by the 8.19 billion obtained by adding all 217 rows, and "Since 1960" divides the 2025 figure by the 1960 figure. The share is therefore a share of the entries on this site, which is close to, but not guaranteed to equal, the number of people in the world; a place missing from the source would be missing from the total too.

How concentrated the list is

The ten largest entries hold 57% of the total. The first, India, has 17.9% on its own, and 16 entries have more than 100 million people. At the other end, 57 entries have fewer than a million people. A ranking this uneven is why the site also offers the same table for 2050: in the middle of the list a few percent of growth moves a country several places, while at the top the order changes only slowly.

The fastest and slowest since 1960

Of the entries with a figure for both years, 147 have at least doubled since 1960. The largest multiple is United Arab Emirates at 87.7×. At the other extreme, Bulgaria stands at 0.82× of its 1960 population. Small territories and places that gained or lost many people through migration produce most of the extremes, so a big multiple tells you about the change but not about its cause.

Reading it correctly

• Values up to 2025 are estimates, so the order of two countries that are close together can differ in another edition of the source.
• The list mixes sovereign states with territories and special administrative regions, because the source does. Do not read the position as a ranking of recognised countries.
• The population is the number of residents counted in the source. It is not the number of citizens and says nothing about density, income or area.
• The table is a snapshot of one year. For the history of a single country, open its name; for a head-to-head, use the comparer.

Where the numbers come from

The series is "Population, total" (SP.POP.TOTL) from the World Bank's population estimates and projections database, which is built from United Nations and national statistics and released under CC BY 4.0. Nothing here is recalculated except the share and the multiple in the last two columns. The sources page lists every indicator used across the site.

Regions inside the list

The data attaches a World Bank region to each entry: Europe & Central Asia (58), Sub-Saharan Africa (48), Latin America & Caribbean (42), East Asia & Pacific (37), Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan (23), South Asia (6), North America (3). Looking at the table by region is a quick way to see where the large populations are, but the table itself is sorted by size only, so a region's entries are spread through the list. The comparer lets you choose any two entries regardless of region, which is useful when the interesting comparison is between neighbours that rank far apart.

How to use the table

To find a country, use the browser's find-in-page: every name is a link in the first column. To understand why a country sits where it does, open its name; the country page explains the history since 1960, the peak year, density, fertility and the closest neighbours in the ranking. To check a claim such as "country X is bigger than country Y", note both ranks here and then open the comparer for the pair, where the ratio, the gap and the crossover year are written out. For a single snapshot in a presentation, the first column and "People" are enough; for a trend, the last column shows the multiple since 1960.

The numbers are printed in full rather than rounded so that nothing is hidden by rounding, but that precision is not a claim of accuracy. A census count and an estimate for a country with an old census can both be printed to the last digit, and only the first is a count. Treat differences of less than one percent between two entries as ties.

Questions

Why is my country's figure different from its government's?

Governments may report a census on a different date, count different groups or use a later revision. This table uses one series for every country so the entries can be compared with each other.

Why is there no row for a place I expected?

Only entries the World Bank publishes with a 2025 figure are included, and a few places have gaps in some years.

Can I sort it differently?

The table is fixed to size. To see two entries side by side, click a name and use the comparer.