International Growth Index

Accuracast’s International Growth Index ranks Japan first, Singapore second and the United States third for cross-border expansion, across 248 markets, combining data from sources including the IMF, World Bank’s B-READY and Google search demand and advertising costs.

The index ranks 248 markets using business readiness, purchasing power, digital infrastructure, setup friction and search demand. Compared to data from 2025, Japan stays in the lead with 62.79 points out of 100, followed by Singapore up two spots, and the United States staying steady in third place.

Japan is ranked the most attractive market for international business growth, largely due to the continued high online search demand. The country benefits from high digital search volumes per 1,000 people, with a relatively moderate degree of competition and much lower advertising costs than other comparable markets – for reference, average costs per click in the U.S. are 232% higher than in Japan.

The United States’ third-place ranking is consistent when compared to data from 2025, with an overall score that’s gone up 1.2 points in spite of economic and political changes. The current trade turbulence due to wars and tariffs seems to have little effect on the attractiveness of the U.S, as a business expansion target. It recorded some of the study’s largest search volumes, though this comes at a significant premium – the U.S. has the highest weighted advertising costs in the world. The U.S. scored highly for digital readiness (93.01) and financial infrastructure (81.18). 

The United Kingdom ranked 28th in Accuracast’s International Growth Index, with a score of 54.57, despite ranking third for financial infrastructure with a score of 84.58. The U.K.’s high digital readiness score of 87.23, wasn’t sufficient to offset the hyper-competitive nature of the market, witnessed in the highest weighted competition score.

Each pillar’s score is computed from a number of metrics and then normalised on a scale of 0-100. Pillars whose metrics with lower values are better, including regulatory complexity and setup costs, are reverse-scored. View details on the pillars and the ranking methodology.

Google Ads Keyword Planner recorded an estimated 67 million monthly US searches across Accuracast’s pre-defined set of search terms, spanning multiple industries, the highest total in the dataset. The US also recorded some of the highest weighted average costs per click for search advertising, at $19.09 for financial services and $21.93 for BB keywords, making it the most expensive market for search advertising in the study. This impacted the U.S. ranking negatively.

China generated an estimated 52 million monthly searches, followed by India’s 34 million, and the UK registered 13 million searches for the re-defined keyword set. Normalising for population, however, China and India report only 37 and 26 searches per 1,000 people respectively, and the UK recorded 219 searches per 1,000 people, compared with 194 in the U.S., but the U.K. also had a much higher weighted Google Ads competition score (24.5) than the USA (19.9), China (4.3) and India (12.5).

Selecting the right market for cross-border expansion is difficult. Mistakes can be costly. We strongly recommend using our Market Entry Checklist to minimise the chances of failure.

The International Growth Index uses data from leading global institutions to evaluate market attractiveness and international growth potential based on the economic, regulatory, digital readiness, political risk and search demand data for each country.   

Sources include the World Bank’s B-READY project, the IMF World Economic Outlook and IMF economic datasets, the United Nations Population Division, the International Telecommunication Union, UNCTAD and ILOSTAT. Accuracast added Google Ads Keyword Planner data for total monthly search volume, searches per 1,000 people, weighted average CPC and weighted competition.

Data Recency: Market-demand and purchasing-power inputs include 2026 UN and IMF figures alongside the latest available growth, inflation, exchange-rate and labour data. Digital-readiness and World Bank B-READY measures primarily cover 2024–2025, while Google Ads data covers the last twelve months up to the latest quarter.

Google Search Demand Data: Accuracast’s international advertising agency team defined a set of 75 popular English-language search terms, covering financial services, software, technology, professional services, travel, hospitality, sports, fitness, ecommerce and retail. These terms were translated into twenty major global languages and were used in each market to keep the comparison consistent. Google search volumes are platform estimates rather than indicators of total consumer demand, and the language choice may understate demand in some non-English searches.

World Bank B-READY measures were used on their published 0-100 scale. Countries where data was not reported used a weighted average for that pillar. A 5-point penalty is applied within the demand pillar to markets with populations below 1 million, and a penalty of up to 20-points is applied where the model’s political-risk field was marked High Risk. Pillar scores were combined using the weights described in the ranking methodology section.

Full results and the technical methodology are available. Contact us to request access. Further research reports and white papers on cross-border growth are available in the Global Growth Lab.

The index is intended for market screening and does not replace country-specific legal, regulatory or financial advice.

To measure how attractive a market is for business expansion, our international marketing strategy consultants identified eight strategic pillars that influence international expansion success. Each pillar is scored based on a number of contributing factors, which are explained below.

Data for all the metrics contributing to a pillar is normalised on a scale of 0-100, and is combined to calculate a composite score for that pillar, in each country.

Examine country-specific data for each pillar by visiting the individual country overview pages from the list of countries. Remember, this index is designed as a market-screening tool, and you need to carry out additional due diligence when deciding on business expansion and go-to-market strategy.  

Each of the eight pillars contributing to the International Growth Index is composed of a number of metrics, as described above, that collectively indicate market attractiveness for cross-border expansion. When combining the composite pillar scores to determine the overall score for each country, we apply a weighting system, which is determined by Accuracast’s international growth specialists and data scientists. This section details the resulting ranking methodology.

Each non-pass-through metric is converted to a 0-100 min-max score across the markets with available data. Metrics where lower values are better, including cost per click, competition, inflation, unemployment, exchange-rate volatility and setup costs, are reverse-scored.

The overall score, which is calculated by applying the above weighting to the score of each pillar, determines where a country gets ranked compared to other markets. 

Use the International Growth Index ranking to quickly identify attractive markets for business growth. We provide a range of international digital marketing services to support your expansion goals.