The poorest countries in the world· by GDP per capita
Measured by output per person, the poorest country in the world is Burundi, at about $234 of GDP per person a year, followed by Central African Republic and Madagascar. Across 186 economies with data, the scale runs from there all the way up to Luxembourg’s $147,252. All figures are nominal GDP per capita in current US dollars.
Two honest caveats up front. GDP per capita is not a poverty rate: it does not count how many people live below the World Bank line of $3.00 a day, which is a separate indicator. And nominal dollars understate poor countries, because prices there are far lower and a dollar buys more; on a PPP basis every figure on this page would be higher. Countries with no recent data, Afghanistan, Yemen and North Korea among them, are absent from the list entirely.
Where the poorest countries are
The deep color marks the countries that produce the least per person; most of it sits in Sub-Saharan Africa. The map and the ranked list beside it move together. The poorest are labeled; hover or tap any country to read its GDP per person.
Tap a country to read its figure.
Natural Earth 10m · Crimea shown as Ukraine · source: World Bank, CC BY 4.0
Every country, ranked from the poorest up
The complete table, poorest first. Click a column to sort. The first number is GDP per person; total GDP and world share sit beside it, because a country that is poor per head can still run a sizable economy.
| # ▲ | Country | GDP / person | GDP (total) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Burundi | $234 | $3,364,713,864 | 0.00% |
| 2 |  Central African Republic | $556 | $3,066,109,226 | 0.00% |
| 3 |  Madagascar | $599 | $19,620,352,036 | 0.02% |
| 4 |  Mozambique | $627 | $22,337,997,046 | 0.02% |
| 5 |  Somalia, Fed. Rep. | $661 | $12,995,200,000 | 0.01% |
| 6 |  Malawi | $672 | $14,918,276,698 | 0.01% |
| 7 |  Niger | $775 | $21,646,191,388 | 0.02% |
| 8 |  DR Congo | $807 | $91,030,531,317 | 0.08% |
| 9 |  Sierra Leone | $846 | $7,464,157,904 | 0.01% |
| 10 |  Liberia | $915 | $5,245,938,900 | 0.00% |
| 11 |  Gambia | $919 | $2,593,673,988 | 0.00% |
| 12 |  Ethiopia | $933 | $126,358,758,448 | 0.11% |
| 13 |  Chad | $1,022 | $21,472,835,225 | 0.02% |
| 14 |  Lesotho | $1,089 | $2,573,572,920 | 0.00% |
| 15 |  Rwanda | $1,124 | $16,372,132,990 | 0.01% |
What "poorest" really measures here
This ranking uses GDP per capita: a country's total economic output for the year, in nominal current US dollars, divided by its population. It is the standard one-number answer to "how poor is this country," and it is a genuine measure of how little an economy produces per head. It is not a count of poor people. The World Bank tracks that separately, as the share of a population living on less than $3.00 a day at 2021 prices, and the two figures can tell different stories about the same country.
Two distortions matter at the bottom of this list. First, these are nominal dollars. Prices in Burundi or Central African Republic are far lower than in rich economies, so a dollar of local income stretches further; on a PPP basis, which adjusts for those prices, every country here would post a higher figure and a few would swap places. Second, the list can only rank countries that report. There is no recent World Bank figure for Afghanistan, Yemen and North Korea and several others, so some of the world's most damaged economies are missing from the ranking entirely.
Neither point makes the ranking "wrong". Nominal GDP per capita is a well-defined figure from a single open source, and we show it as published. Just read it for what it is: the market value of what an economy produces per person. It is not a poverty headcount, not household income, and not a full census of the world's poorest places.
Poor per person is not the same as small
Some of the poorest countries by output per head are nations of tens of millions of people. The scatter puts total economy against output per person, so the difference is visible.
How to read: each dot is an economy. Far right = a large total economy. Low down = low output per person. Burundi sits at the bottom left, poorest and small. DR Congo and Ethiopia sit low but far to the right of it: little output per head, spread across huge populations.
Five numbers worth remembering
The same dataset, squeezed into the facts people actually retell.
Where does a country stand?
Numbers land harder when one of them is a place you know.
Frequently asked questions
What is the poorest country in the world?
By nominal GDP per capita, Burundi is the poorest country in the world, at about $234 of economic output per person in 2025, according to World Bank data. Central African Republic ($556) and Madagascar ($599) come next. The ranking covers the 186 economies the World Bank publishes a figure for; countries with no recent GDP data, such as Afghanistan, Yemen and North Korea, cannot be ranked.
Is GDP per capita the same as the poverty rate?
No. GDP per capita is a country's total output divided by its population, an average spread across everyone. The poverty rate is the share of people living below a set line; for extreme poverty the World Bank draws it at $3.00 a day at 2021 prices. A country can post a middling GDP per capita and still hold a large share of its people in extreme poverty if income is concentrated. This page ranks average output per head (about $234 per person for Burundi); it does not count poor people.
Why use nominal dollars instead of PPP?
Nominal figures convert local output to US dollars at market exchange rates, which understates poor countries: prices there are much lower, so a dollar buys more than it does in rich economies. PPP adjusts for those prices, and on a PPP basis Burundi's figure would be several times higher, with every country on this page moving up. We show nominal because it is the cleanest single-source series and reflects what an economy's output is worth on world markets. Just do not read it as a literal standard of living.
Which countries are missing from this ranking?
The World Bank publishes no recent nominal GDP per capita figure for Afghanistan, Yemen, North Korea, Syria, South Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Cuba, Lebanon and Eritrea. Together with 22 smaller states and territories, they are absent from the underlying dataset, so they do not appear here. Several of them are war-damaged economies that would very likely sit near the bottom of this list if reliable data existed.
Is Burundi really the poorest country in the world?
On this measure, yes: among the 186 economies with a World Bank nominal GDP per capita figure for 2025, Burundi posts the lowest, about $234 per person. On PPP measures the bottom of the table reshuffles somewhat, and countries that publish no data at all, Afghanistan, Yemen and North Korea among them, cannot be compared. So the careful claim is: the poorest country among those with reliable recent data.
How many countries produce less than $1,000 per person a year?
12 of the 186 economies on this list produce under $1,000 of GDP per person a year in 2025; 12 of them are in Sub-Saharan Africa. For scale, the median economy produces about $7,899 per person, and the richest, Luxembourg, about $147,252.
Sources & further reading
Every figure here is built on one open dataset: the World Bank's GDP per capita, current US$ (NY.GDP.PCAP.CD), released under CC BY 4.0.
- World Bank — GDP per capita, current US$ (NY.GDP.PCAP.CD)primary dataset
- World Bank — GDP, current US$ (NY.GDP.MKTP.CD)total-GDP input
- World Bank — Poverty headcount ratio at $3.00 a day (SI.POV.DDAY)poverty rate, for context
- World Bank Indicators API — NY.GDP.PCAP.CD, all countrieslive API
- World Bank Open Data — public licenses (CC BY 4.0)license