The World's Biggest Exporters of Arms

The SIPRI Arms Transfers Database is a record of all major arms deals around the world since 1950. The database can be used to determine which countries are the biggest exporters of weapons and which countries are the biggest buyers of arms. It can also reveal where individual countries buy their arms and where countries sell their weapons around the world.

With data on the world's arm trade going back nearly 70 years SIPRI is a great resource for interesting mapped visualizations. For example in 2016 The Independent used data from SIPRI to map the five biggest exporters and importers of arms over the previous five years (2011-2015). The Independent map reveals that the biggest seller of weapons was the USA and the biggest importer of arms was India.


Big Think also used the same data (from 2011-2015) to map the largest exporters of arms. Big Think created a series of maps showing where the major sellers of arms sell the most weapons. So for example the USA, who are the largest exporters of arms, sold the most weapons to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. Russia, the second biggest exporter of weapons, sold the most weapons to India. While China and Vietnam were the second and third buyers of arms from Russia during this period.

The Price of War is another mapped visualization of SIPRI arms trade data. The Price of War visualizes the role that the United States plays in the global arms trade by mapping where the U.S. exported arms around the world between 2001 and 2015.


The Price of War interactive map colors countries across the globe based on the amount of arms each country bought from the the United States. The darker the shade of blue then the more arms were bought. You can hover over individual countries on the map to view the total number of dollars spent on buying arms from the USA.

The Small Arms and Ammunition Chrome Experiment is probably the best visualization of the SIPRI database. This interactive globe allows you to select countries around the world to view who they buy and sell weapons from and the size of their trade in arms.


If you click on an individual country on the interactive globe you can see all the countries it is involved with either for buying or selling arms. You can click on the imports and exports button to view which countries it buys arms from and which countries it sells arms to. The data shown on this map is from 1992 to 2010.

You may have noticed that all the above maps are using rather old data. SIPRI was last updated in March 2018 so there is huge scope for someone to map the latest arms trade data around the globe.