Remittances by country: who receives the most, in dollars and as a share of GDP

India received $150.71 billion in personal remittances in 2025, the most of any country in the World Bank's data and more than twice Mexico's $65.09 billion. This study ranks all 187 countries and territories with a World Bank figure for 2014 or later, each at its latest year, in two ways: by the dollars received and by what those dollars weigh against the size of the economy. The figures come from the World Bank's World Development Indicators, last updated on October 8, 2026, and were checked on November 1, 2026. What it costs to send the money is the subject of the companion study of the cost of sending $200 abroad, and the practical side of moving it is in the money transfer hub.

Key findings

• One country far ahead. India's $150.71 billion was about as much as Mexico, France and the Philippines received together ($65.09 billion + $44.54 billion + $41.56 billion = $151.19 billion).
• Concentrated at the top. The 10 largest recipients took 50.5% of the $986 billion total, while 94 of the 187 countries received less than $1 billion each.
• Heavy dependence in small economies. Inflows equaled 57.66% of GDP in Tajikistan, 39.32% in Tonga and 33.35% in Lebanon, whose figure is for 2023. Fifteen countries received more than a fifth of their GDP and 28 at least a tenth.
• Two different rankings. Only seven countries are in the top 25 on both measures: Egypt, Guatemala, Uzbekistan, Nepal, Honduras, Tajikistan and El Salvador.
• Regions. Europe and Central Asia received $263.2 billion, 26.7% of the total, and South Asia $207.7 billion; the 43 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa received $66.7 billion, 6.8%.
• A decade of growth, with exceptions. Among countries receiving at least $1 billion, inflows rose 296.1% in 10 years to Guatemala and 225.3% to Honduras, but fell 76.7% to Russia and 51.4% to Ghana.

How was the remittances ranking built?

Each row is the World Bank's figure for personal remittances received in a country's latest reported year, in billions of US dollars and as a share of GDP.

The World Bank builds the series from balance-of-payments data that national authorities report to the International Monetary Fund, supplemented by its own staff estimates. For 132 of the 187 countries the latest year is 2025; for 31 it is 2024, for 11 it is 2023, and for the other 13 it reaches back as far as 2014, Micronesia's last year. The remaining 30 economies on the World Bank's list of 217 have no figure for 2014 or later and are left out.

Totals add up each country's own latest year, so they mix 2025 with earlier years, and they are this study's sums, not the World Bank's regional or world aggregates. Amounts are in current dollars, not adjusted for inflation, so part of any 10-year rise is simply higher prices.

Which countries receive the most remittances?

India received the most, $150.71 billion in 2025, followed by Mexico with $65.09 billion and France with $44.54 billion.

Below the top three the order is tight. The Philippines ($41.56 billion), Egypt ($41.52 billion) and Pakistan ($40.48 billion) were within $1.08 billion of one another, close enough for a data revision to reorder them. Bangladesh, China, Guatemala, Germany and Nigeria fill places 7 to 11, with between $22.79 billion and $33.88 billion each. Egypt received $18.73 billion more than Nigeria ($41.52 billion − $22.79 billion), which makes it the largest recipient in Africa, a change IFAD also highlighted in September 2026.

Four of the top 20 are high-income European countries (France, Germany, Belgium and Italy), and their totals are mostly pay that residents earn from employers abroad rather than money sent home by emigrants.

The United States appears too, 27th with $9.35 billion, or 0.03% of GDP. It is also the largest source of remittances: the World Bank recorded $106.53 billion paid out of the US in 2025, ahead of the United Arab Emirates ($62.13 billion) and Saudi Arabia ($58.69 billion). Money arriving in the US has its own rules, covered in receiving money from abroad in the US.

Corridor guides cover the main routes into most of the largest recipients: from the US to India, Mexico, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Guatemala and Nigeria, and from the Gulf, home to the next two largest senders, to India from the UAE, India from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan from the UAE.

Where are remittances the biggest share of the economy?

In Tajikistan, where inflows equaled 57.66% of GDP in 2025, followed by Tonga at 39.32% and Lebanon at 33.35% in 2023.

Share of GDP measures dependence, not size. Many of the economies at the top are small: Tonga's 39.32% came from $0.27 billion and the Marshall Islands' 23.48% from $0.07 billion. Central America is the main exception. Honduras (30.12%), El Salvador (27.51%), Nicaragua (26.63%, for 2024) and Guatemala (20.82%) all received more than a fifth of GDP, and Guatemala's $25.68 billion is also the ninth-largest amount in dollars. Nepal, at 32.31%, is the only South Asian country in this table, while Central Asia contributes Tajikistan, the Kyrgyz Republic (17.6%, for 2024) and Uzbekistan (14.35%).

A high ratio can come from a shrinking economy as well as from rising remittances, because the same inflow weighs more when GDP falls. Ratios for small economies also move when GDP estimates are revised, so a shift of a point or two between years is not always a change in what families sent.

Which regions receive the most remittances?

Europe and Central Asia received the most, $263.2 billion or 26.7% of the total, then South Asia ($207.7 billion) and Latin America and the Caribbean ($180.7 billion).

The regional order depends on who sits in each group. Europe and Central Asia has 50 countries, more than any other region, and they include France, Germany, Belgium and Italy, whose totals are mostly cross-border pay, alongside Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic, whose inflows weigh heavily in their economies. South Asia ranks second with only six countries because India alone accounts for nearly three-quarters of its total ($150.71 billion of $207.7 billion).

The World Bank's regions are not continents. Pakistan and Afghanistan sit in its Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan group, so Pakistan's $40.48 billion counts there, with Egypt's $41.52 billion and Morocco's $13.66 billion. Sub-Saharan Africa has 43 countries but 6.8% of the money, and Nigeria's $22.79 billion is about a third of the region's $66.7 billion. North America has three entries: the United States, Bermuda and Canada.

Where have remittances grown the fastest?

Among countries receiving at least $1 billion, Venezuela's inflows grew fastest over 10 years, by 1,739.7%, followed by Malaysia (443.6%) and Portugal (424.2%).

Central America and Central Asia hold five of the top 11 places: Nicaragua (360.1%, to 2024), Tajikistan (350.9%), Uzbekistan (335.7%), Guatemala (296.1%) and Honduras (225.3%). In its December 2024 review, the World Bank's migration team tied the strength of flows to Latin America to US employment of foreign-born workers, then 11% above its pre-pandemic level, and Central Asia's recovery to the return to normal of flows mostly from Russia.

Some rows need care. Ethiopia's inflows rose 1,388.3% in five years but 297.3% in ten, so its 2019 figure was far below its 2014 one, and Malaysia's five-year rise (526.3%) is likewise larger than its ten-year rise (443.6%). Moves that large can come from money shifting between informal and formal channels, or from a change in what a central bank records, not only from families sending more. Declines are common too: 29 of the 179 countries with a five-year comparison received less than five years earlier, including Russia (down 83.7%), Ghana (down 43.5%) and Ukraine (down 35.1%).

What counts as a personal remittance?

Personal remittances are transfers between households across borders plus compensation of employees, the pay of people who work for employers in an economy where they do not live.

The definition follows the sixth edition of the IMF's Balance of Payments Manual, as the World Bank applies it. Personal transfers are all current transfers in cash or in kind between resident and nonresident households, so they cover any individual's transfers, not only migrants'. Compensation of employees covers border, seasonal and other short-term workers paid in an economy where they are not resident, and residents employed by nonresident entities. The figures are gross: money a country sends out is not subtracted, so Germany is both a large recipient ($23.90 billion) and a large payer ($26.67 billion in 2025).

World Bank data on personal transfers alone show how differently the totals are built:

The personal-transfers figures come from a separate World Bank indicator, retrieved on November 2, 2026; the rest of each total is compensation of employees. In France and Germany nearly all of the total is pay from employers abroad, so France's third place says little about emigrants sending money home: a total of $0.39 billion would rank 127th in this table. For Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh, 99% or more is personal transfers. The Philippines and Tajikistan sit in between, with about 24% and 70% of their totals counted as compensation of employees.

What the statistics miss is money that never passes through a bank or licensed transfer company that reports it, such as hawala and hundi networks or cash carried by travelers. The World Bank says the true size of remittances, including such informal flows, is believed to be even larger than the recorded figures.

How does the $986 billion compare with global estimates?

It is above the World Bank's 2025 world total of $925.6 billion, which adds up only economies with 2025 data; this study keeps each country's latest year.

The difference between this study and the World Bank's world figure, about $60 billion ($986 billion − $925.6 billion), is the money recorded by the 55 countries whose latest year is earlier than 2025, among them Ethiopia, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Jordan and Haiti. Neither number is wrong: the World Bank's is a single year with gaps, and this study fills those gaps with older figures.

The World Bank's last published estimate of the global flow came on December 18, 2024, when its migration team expected officially recorded remittances to low- and middle-income countries to reach $685 billion that year, more than foreign direct investment and official development assistance combined. KNOMAD, the World Bank-hosted partnership that produced its Migration and Development Briefs, ran from 2013 to 2024, and the World Bank's newest figures have come from its data portal since. IFAD, the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development, published its 2025 estimate on September 14, 2026, and put a typical transfer at $300 to $400, sent nine or ten times a year.

The last row of the table is a warning about the data as a whole. Every transfer has a sender and a receiver, yet in the World Bank's 2025 world totals recorded receipts exceed recorded payments by about $263 billion ($925.6 billion − $662.4 billion), so neither side is fully measured.

What can't remittance statistics tell you?

They can't capture money sent informally or show where each country's money comes from, and several large recipients have no recent figure at all.

• Informal transfers. Hawala, hundi and cash carried across borders do not appear, so recorded inflows understate the true amount by an unknown margin that varies from country to country.
• Missing countries. Vietnam's last World Bank figure is for 2004, $2.31 billion, so it is absent, yet the State Bank of Vietnam's Region 2 branch reported $10.34 billion in remittances to Ho Chi Minh City alone in 2025, more than Tajikistan's total and enough for 23rd place here. Syria's last figure is from 2010, Iran's from 2004 and Somalia's from 1983, and Cuba has never had one. The US to Vietnam guide covers that route.
• Mixed years. For 55 countries the latest figure is from 2024 or earlier, including Lebanon (2023), Afghanistan (2020) and Yemen (2016), so their ranks compare different years.
• No country pairs. The data show what each country receives, not where it comes from. The World Bank's Q3 2025 cost report notes that official data on flows between pairs of countries are not available, and it weights corridors with modeled estimates instead.
• Recording changes. A jump can reflect a new method rather than new money. Since April 2025, Bangladesh Bank has had banks record each remittance under the country it actually came from, not the country where the routing transfer company is registered, and its figures for money from the US fell sharply in FY26. The national total, which the World Bank uses, was not affected, but the by-country series is no basis for ranking sending countries; the US to Bangladesh guide has the details.
• Nominal dollars and GDP revisions. Amounts are not adjusted for inflation, and shares of GDP shift when GDP estimates are revised or an economy shrinks.
• National figures differ. Central banks publish their own measures, often for fiscal years, such as July to June in Bangladesh or April to March in India, and some also report narrower counts, such as the cash remittances the Philippines' central bank tracks alongside personal remittances, so their totals rarely match these.

What do the numbers mean for people sending money?

Mostly they show what is at stake in the price of a transfer: in 15 countries, the latest figures put remittances above a fifth of GDP.

Fees and exchange-rate margins come out of that money before it arrives. In the World Bank's Q3 2025 price survey, sending $200 from the US cost 4.19% on average to Guatemala, 3.99% to Honduras and 3.50% to El Salvador, three of the countries where remittances weigh most in the economy. The survey's average from the US fell from 5.04% on $200 to 3.44% on $500 in the same quarter, and IFAD's typical transfer of $300 to $400 sits between those two price points.

The size of a destination's inflows says nothing about which provider is cheapest on a given route. The guide to the cheapest way to send money abroad explains how to compare quotes, and mobile money explained covers payouts to phone wallets. US senders also face two federal rules. Since January 1, 2026, a federal tax has applied: 1% of the amount sent, on transfers paid with cash, a money order, a cashier's check or a similar physical instrument, as the remittance transfer tax guide explains. Senders can also cancel within 30 minutes after paying, for a full refund, one of the remittance transfer rights in federal law.

Six of the 10 largest recipients more than doubled their inflows over the decade, but past growth does not predict future flows. Remittances depend on jobs, wages and migration rules in the countries where senders work. Asked in September 2026 about tougher migration policies in the US and Europe, IFAD's Pedro de Vasconcellos said the impact was not yet visible as a broad decline.

All 187 countries, largest to smallest

The full list follows in the same order as the CSV download; n/a marks a change that cannot be calculated because the earlier figure is missing.

How to use and cite this data

Anyone may copy, chart or republish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license, provided they credit the source and link to this page.

• Download the CSV file: one row per country, with the eight columns of the main table. The region, share-of-GDP and growth tables can be quoted with the same credit.
• Put the year next to every figure, because 55 countries' latest data predate 2025: for example, remittances equaled 33.35% of Lebanon's GDP in 2023.
• Say which measure is quoted. Dollar ranks and GDP-share ranks differ, and a regional total here is a sum of countries, not a World Bank aggregate.
• Suggested credit: Source: Sonic Wallet analysis of World Bank World Development Indicators, personal remittances received (latest year per country, mostly 2025; checked November 1, 2026).
• The underlying figures are the World Bank's, drawn from IMF balance-of-payments data, so credit the World Bank as well and check its portal for revisions before republishing.

How we choose sources, check figures and handle corrections is set out in our editorial policy.