Ranking
Best Countries to Start a Business
A weighted ranking of country business environments across formation, taxation, banking, payments, compliance, operations, and founder mobility.
Ranking
| Rank | Country | Score | Corporate tax | VAT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Estonia | 78.7 | 22% | 22% |
| #2 | Singapore | 75.7 | 17% | 9% |
| #3 | United Kingdom | 72.5 | 25% | 20% |
| #4 | Portugal | 68.7 | 19% | 23% |
| #5 | Netherlands | 59.7 | 25.8% | 21% |
| #6 | United Arab Emirates | 58.9 | 9% | 5% |
| #7 | Czech Republic | 57.9 | 21% | 21% |
| #8 | Poland | 57.4 | 19% | 23% |
| #9 | Canada | 56.9 | 26.5% | 5% |
| #10 | France | 53.8 | 25% | 20% |
| #11 | Spain | 52.5 | 25% | 21% |
| #12 | United States | 50.4 | 21% | 0% |
| #13 | Germany | 46.8 | 30% | 19% |
How we calculate this ranking
Founder-friendliness combines company formation ease, tax competitiveness, banking access, SaaS payment infrastructure, compliance simplicity, hiring overhead, and founder mobility.
| Factor | Weight | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Company formation simplicity | 25% | Captures how quickly a founder can actually start operating. |
| Tax competitiveness | 20% | Effective corporate-tax burden on retained earnings. |
| Banking access | 15% | Ease of opening and operating a business bank account. |
| SaaS / payments infrastructure | 15% | Availability of Stripe, PayPal, and Wise. |
| Compliance simplicity | 10% | Ongoing reporting and filing overhead. |
| Hiring and operations | 10% | Friction of payroll, accounting, and employment law. |
| Founder mobility (EU / EEA) | 5% | Ability to operate across the EU single market. |
Normalization: Each input is normalized to 0–100. Difficulty fields (1–5) are inverted into ease (0–100). Tax rates are converted to competitiveness via 100 − rate × 2 with a floor at 0. Boolean factors (Stripe, EU membership) map true → 100 and false → 0.
Related
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Other rankings
- Best Countries for AI Startups
- Best Countries for E-commerce
- Best Countries for Freelancers
- Best Countries for Online Business
- Best Countries for SaaS Founders
- Best Countries for Startups
- Best EU Countries for Business
- Best Low-Tax Countries
- Easiest Countries for Company Formation
- Lowest Corporate Tax Countries
Sources
- OECD — OECD — economic and tax statistics (accessed )
- Eurostat — Eurostat — official statistics of the European Union (accessed )
- European Commission — European Commission — policy and country information (accessed )
- World Bank — World Bank — open data and country profiles (accessed )
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