Monaco leads Gapminder’s 2025 comparison, with 78.9 billionaires per million inhabitants. Liechtenstein and Guernsey are next. This is a per-capita ranking—not a list of places with the most billionaires overall—and its top ten includes jurisdictions as well as sovereign countries.
Top 10 places with the most billionaires per capita
Gapminder calculates the rate by dividing each place’s billionaire count by its population and expressing the result per million people. Its 2025 table uses billionaire counts based on Forbes’ The World’s Billionaires, downloaded in March 2026, and 2025 population estimates from the UN Population Division’s World Population Prospects 2024. Gapminder explains the dataset and measure.
| Rank | Country or jurisdiction | Billionaires per million | Billionaires | Population (millions) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Monaco | 78.9 | 3 | 0.04 |
| 2 | Liechtenstein | 25.0 | 1 | 0.04 |
| 3 | Guernsey | 15.6 | 1 | 0.06 |
| 4 | Hong Kong | 8.9 | 66 | 7.40 |
| 5 | Singapore | 8.4 | 49 | 5.85 |
| 6 | Cyprus | 7.3 | 10 | 1.37 |
| 7 | Switzerland | 4.7 | 42 | 8.95 |
| 8 | Israel | 4.3 | 41 | 9.45 |
| 9 | Sweden | 4.2 | 45 | 10.63 |
| 10 | Barbados | 3.5 | 1 | 0.28 |
“Countries” is used loosely in the table title: Guernsey and Hong Kong appear alongside sovereign states. Gapminder does not provide a separate top ten restricted to sovereign countries, so the list above retains the source’s scope rather than implying that it does.
Why the per-capita ranking differs from a billionaire count
A rate accounts for population size; a raw count does not. Monaco’s three billionaires translate to 78.9 per million in a population listed as 0.04 million. By comparison, the United States has 902 billionaires but a rate of 2.6 per million in Gapminder’s table. A place can therefore rank highly by density without having the largest number of billionaires.
Quick wins for a faster PC:
Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →#1 Best Overall
Small populations make the rate especially sensitive to a small change in the count. In the table, one billionaire is enough to place Liechtenstein, Guernsey, and Barbados in the top ten. The rate is useful for comparing relative concentration, but it should be read alongside the count and population rather than as a measure of total wealth or typical household finances.
How current are these figures?
Gapminder labels the results as 2025 data, but the inputs have different vintages: its billionaire counts come from Forbes data downloaded in March 2026, while the population denominator is a UN estimate for 2025. The table is therefore a dated comparison built from those inputs, not a continuously updated live ranking.
Rank #2
Forbes describes its separate Real-Time Billionaires ranking as a live estimate: public holdings are updated every five minutes while markets are open, with a 15-minute stock-price delay, while fortunes significantly tied to private companies are updated once daily. Those update practices explain why billionaire totals can move; they do not change the stated vintage of Gapminder’s table.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the ranking can—and cannot—tell you
The table answers where billionaires are most numerous relative to population under Gapminder’s definition and source inputs. It does not establish why billionaires live in particular places, give a detailed account of how every person is assigned to a location, or compare wealth distribution across the wider population.
For broader historical context, a 2025 World Bank report says the global billionaire count rose from 355 in 2001 to 2,615 in 2023—about one billionaire per three million people worldwide in 2023. That is a separate global figure from a different year and aggregation, not a directly comparable country-level rate for Gapminder’s 2025 table. The World Bank report provides that global context.
Quick Recap
Best Value
Rank #4
- Publicaffairs
- Language: english
- Book - the billionaire who wasn't: how chuck feeney secretly made and gave away a fortune
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
