Where to find free data for a stats video

Published data inside the maker

In the Data step, search the World Bank by topic, or paste a chart link from Our World in Data. The maker reads the figures from the publisher, as a ranking or as lines over time, and fills in the source line and the credit.

Keep that credit when you share the reel. The World Bank publishes most of its data under CC BY 4.0, which asks you to acknowledge the source; some indicators carry third-party data under other terms, so check the indicator's own page.

Or bring your own

Type the numbers, or paste them from Excel, Google Sheets or a CSV. Go to the publisher itself where you can: a statistics office, an agency or the organisation that measured it. A figure repeated on a news page is one step further from the source.

Put the publisher in the Source field. It is printed at the bottom of the reel.

Check before you chart

• The year: compare countries for the same year, and say which year it is.
• The unit: per person, a total, a percentage? A total mostly tells you about the size of a country.
• Measured or estimated: if the publisher models the figure, say it is an estimate.
• The newest year: the latest figures are often reported by only some countries. Use the newest year that most of them have.
• The licence: you need the right to use what you put in the video.

Explore before you build

The compare tool shows two or more countries side by side on ten World Bank measures, using the newest year every chosen country reported. The country pages show the key facts for each country, with their sources.