MONEY PRINTER RANKING

Which Country Prints the Most Money? The Full Leaderboard

Zimbabwe’s money supply is growing 338.2% a year (2026-04), the fastest rate in the IMF broad money series — measured over the 47 months since a redenomination, not over ten years. South Sudan leads on a full decade at 69.6%/yr (2026-06), and Argentina averages 62.8%/yr over those same ten years. The United States is 115th of 159, at 6.6%/yr.

Three different clocks run on this page, and it names which one it is using every time. Sudan’s last year of YoY M2 growth ran far hotter than its ten-year average, 186.3%, on data from 2021-04; the United States’ last year ran cooler than its own, 6.0% YoY (2025-12). And Zimbabwe’s headline rate covers 47 months. Everything under it covers 120. That is why the table carries a Window column: a rate is only comparable to another rate measured the same way. Every row below carries its own window and its own observation date.

“Printing” Means Broad Money Growth, Not Banknotes

“Printing money” on this page never means banknote printing. It means money supply expansion — broad money (M2), currency plus bank deposits, expanding faster in one economy than another. The growth rates below come from the IMF’s M2 series compared against itself over time, not against a printing plant’s output. Most of that growth happens when a commercial bank issues a loan and credits a deposit — the deposit counts as new money the moment it posts, no press involved. The rest comes from a central bank balance sheet expanding through quantitative easing, crediting bank reserves rather than handing out cash. The agency that actually prints US banknotes, and how much it prints in a year, is a smaller, separate number covered on currency in circulation — go there if physical notes are what you meant. Everything from here down ranks currency debasement in the broad-money sense: each country’s stock of money measured against its own past.

The Fastest Money Printers, Ranked

Zimbabwe leads this ranking at 338.2%/yr (2026-04) — a pace that halves each existing unit’s claim on real goods roughly every 0.47 years. That rate covers 47 months, not ten years. The IMF series drops from 671.4 billion (2022-04) to 388.8 million (2022-05), a factor of 1,727. That is a currency reissued, not money destroyed. Measuring across it would price the redenomination instead of the printing, so we measure from the break forward and mark the row. South Sudan leads on a full decade at 69.6%/yr (2026-06), a true 10-year CAGR, doubling every 1.31 years. Argentina, Sudan, Venezuela and Türkiye follow it above 35%/yr across the same ten years.

† measured from a series break, not over ten years. Read the Window column before you read the rank: rates over different windows are not directly comparable. ⚠ observation older than 24 months, so the average is real and historically accurate, not this month’s rate.

Below the top row, this is close to the exact list the 2023 r/Infographics chart drew before its comment section turned into a scoreboard:

FIELD REPORT

“Come on Argentina. WE CAN DO IT FASTER AND BETTER. VAMOSS MESSIIIII!!!!!” — u/Srazza, r/Infographics (130 upvotes, 2024-03-24)

FIELD REPORT

“Wow, Zimbabwe is still rocking!” — u/andrewaaa7, r/Infographics (5 upvotes, 2024-03-24)

All 159 Economies, Ranked

The ten rows above are an excerpt of this table. They are kept separate because they carry two columns it does not: doubling time and latest YoY. Otherwise it is the same data. The full list runs to 159 rows: the 157 with a positive growth rate, then two shrinking economies at the foot, where doubling time turns undefined. Every row states the window its rate was measured over. Search for any country by name. Nothing here gets truncated to a top 10.

Three economies use the euro without being euro-area members, and they rank on their own IMF numbers: Kosovo 61st (10.4%/yr 10-year average, 2025-06), Montenegro 86th (8.7%/yr, 2026-01) and San Marino among the shrinking rows (−0.8%/yr, 2026-01). The 20 euro-area members are absent instead. They have no money supply of their own to rank. Money Supply Growth Rate by Country works through that distinction.

Five economies carry no computable growth rate, so they appear in neither table. Two are ones a reader comes here looking for. India holds the world’s sixth-largest broad money stock, $3.57T (2026-04), and grew 12.7% YoY to that date. It still gets no rank: its monthly series starts only in 2016-10, with annual figures before that, so nothing sits at the month a ten-year average would anchor to. Gambia drops from 87.2bn dalasi in 2025-09 to 14.0bn in 2025-10 — a break in the series, not an economy losing six-sevenths of its money in a month. The break leaves one month of comparable data, so we publish neither a growth rate nor a year-over-year figure for it. Grenada breaks the same way at 2025-01 and leaves 13 months, still too short to annualise. Panama stops at 2008-05 and Somalia starts at 2018-01, both too short for a ten-year window.

US, Canada and UAE — Answered by Name

Three commenters on that r/Infographics thread asked for these countries by name. One put two of them in a single question:

FIELD REPORT

“What about US and Canada? They probably printed a lot in 2020-2021 and stopped then🤣🤣🤣” — u/can_adams, r/Infographics (5 upvotes, 2024-03-24)

Here’s what each one actually shows.

United States

6.6%/yr averaged over the past decade — 115th of 159 economies, doubling every 10.85 years at that pace. The last 12 months ran cooler still, 6.0% YoY as of 2025-12. On a page whose top rows run above 35% a year, the US doesn’t come close to the top hundred.

FIELD REPORT

“US?” — u/johnny-T1, r/Infographics (22 upvotes, 2024-03-24)

Canada

Current, and unremarkable: 6.6%/yr averaged over the past decade, 116th of 159, doubling every 10.92 years at that pace, as of 2026-05. This row used to be the one we couldn’t bring current — the newest free figure we could reach was a 2008 World Bank reading of 11.2%/yr. It now comes monthly from the Bank of Canada’s own Valet API. Two commenters on a 2019 chart asked where Canada went, a day apart:

FIELD REPORT

“What’s the story behind Canada not being on this list? Based on population and the broad money of countries like the US, Australia and the UK, you would expect them to be there.” — u/Exactly18characters, r/dataisbeautiful (1 upvote, 2019-12-23)

FIELD REPORT

“Canada clearly leaves the list in error.” — u/HomoRoboticus, r/dataisbeautiful (1 upvote, 2019-12-24)

It was a sourcing gap, and it is closed. The Bank of Canada publishes M2++ through its Valet API (V41552801), and that is where this row now comes from — monthly, and current to 2026-05. The World Bank’s Canadian series still ends in 2008; we no longer use it.

United Arab Emirates

Current data, modest rank: 9.1%/yr averaged over the past decade, 79th of 159, as of 2026-04. The last 12 months ran hot against that average, 17.9% YoY (2026-04), but neither number puts the UAE anywhere near the top of this table.

FIELD REPORT

“UAE?” — u/No_Rough_2000, r/Infographics (4 upvotes, 2024-03-24)

Percentage vs Absolute: Two Different Leaderboards

Rank by percentage and China doesn’t make the top 60. Rank by dollar total and China leads everyone. Both rankings are correct; they answer different questions.

Zero overlap between the two lists. China averages 9.6%/yr over the past decade — 70th of 159, unremarkable by growth standards — while holding the largest pile of broad money on Earth, $42.64T, a $12T margin over the US. Canada and the UAE, both covered above, rank 11th and 16th by dollar total despite sitting nowhere near the growth top 10. Canada’s place on that list rests on the same 2008 figure, and will move when we can source a current one. The full dollar-total ranking, with its own staleness badges and its own FX-conversion notes, lives on Money Supply by Country; we don’t repeat that table here.

What This Ranking Does Not Mean

Two different clocks sit inside almost every row above, and they disagree more than most readers expect. Dominica’s 10-year average is the slowest in the entire set, 1.07%/yr — yet its last 12 months ran at 10.3% YoY (2026-02), faster than the United States’ own 6.0% YoY (2025-12). A country can hold the bottom rank on one clock and beat the reserve currency on the other, in the same month. Read the label on every number here, not just the number.

A high rank is not an inflation forecast, either. Money-supply growth is a stock measure — the total sitting in accounts — while CPI inflation prices a fixed basket of goods; the two correlate over long stretches but move independently within any single year. Nor does a high rank measure wealth: growth is fiat dilution, not wealth creation — it dilutes each existing unit’s claim on real goods, it doesn’t create real output. And it isn’t a collapse prediction — Zimbabwe has run the fastest rate on this page since its 2022-05 redenomination without repeating its 2008 collapse.

This is also exactly the kind of number a community that reads FRED for fun will correct in public. The claim that “since January 2020, the United States has printed nearly 80% of all US dollars in existence” earned a 325-upvote correction on r/wallstreetbets (2022-05-16) once someone traced the jump to a one-time accounting reclassification: roughly $11.2T of savings deposits were reclassified into M1 in May 2020, money that already existed. Naming the metric correctly the first time costs nothing; the correction thread costs a public one.

FAQ