The U.S., China, Germany, Japan, and India are some of the top economies in the world based on gross domestic product (GDP). Gross domestic product is an estimate of the total value of finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders during a specified period, usually a year. GDP is popularly used to estimate the size of a country’s economy and its impact on the global economy.
GDP is most commonly measured by using the expenditure method, which calculates GDP by adding up spending on new consumer goods, new investment spending, government spending, and the value of net exports.
Throughout most of the world, countries’ GDPs fluctuate with the phases of different economic cycles, against a backdrop of longer-term economic growth over time. However, despite these ups and downs, the top economies as measured by GDP don’t budge easily from the positions that they hold.
There have been some big movers within the list in the last 20-plus years. China was in 13th place in 2000 but has been sitting in second place since 2010. Further down the list, Indonesia vaulted forward from the 27th largest economy in 2000 to the 16th as of 2025.12
Countries began to recover in 2021 from massive GDP drops in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a major impact on economies around the world. Overall, countries have continued that growth while global GDP rose to $115.49 trillion as of 2025.3
Key Takeaways
- Gross domestic product is the total value of finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders during a specified period.
- There are different ways to measure GDP, such as nominal GDP, real GDP, GDP per capita, and purchasing power parity.
- The U.S. has the largest GDP in the world and China has the second largest.
Measuring GDP
There are several popular ways to measure GDP:
- Nominal GDP in current U.S. dollars: This is the most basic and common way of measuring and comparing GDP among countries, using local prices and currencies converted into U.S. dollars by using currency market exchange rates. This is the number that was used to determine the countries’ rankings in the top 25 list.
- Purchasing power parity (PPP) adjusted GDP in current international dollars: This is an alternative way of comparing nominal GDP among countries, adjusting currencies based on what basket of goods they could buy in those countries rather than currency exchange rates. This is a way to adjust for the difference in the cost of living among countries.
- GDP growth: This is the annual percentage growth rate of nominal GDP in local prices and currencies, which estimates how fast a country’s economy is growing.
- GDP per capita in current U.S. dollars: This is nominal GDP divided by the number of people in a country. GDP per capita measures how much a country’s economy produces per person, rather than in total. This can also act as a very rough measure of income or standard of living for individuals living in a country.