Help · Common questions
How the atlas works
Where the numbers come from, why some fields are honestly empty, and what you may do with the data.
Where does the data come from?
Exclusively from official institutions: the BIS, ECB, IMF, OECD, Eurostat, the World Bank, FRED and national statistics offices such as SSB (Norway), SCB (Sweden) and the Bank of England. Every value on the site names its source and observation date, and the full registry — with licences and update cadence — is on the sources page.
Why is a field empty for my country?
Because no official figure exists that fits the field’s definition. We never fill gaps with estimates, interpolations or crowd-sourced numbers — an honest blank tells you more than a made-up value. Coverage grows as official sources publish more.
How often is the data updated?
The pipeline runs daily and picks up whatever the sources have published. How fresh a number can be depends on the source itself: exchange rates move daily, interest rates monthly, house prices quarterly, and tax rates once a year. Each value shows the date it was last observed, and values past their expected lifetime are flagged as possibly outdated.
Why do some countries show more numbers than others?
Coverage follows the sources. OECD members appear in the tax and wage statistics (~38 countries); the IMF’s harmonised interest rates reach ~150 economies; Eurostat covers Europe. A small economy outside these systems will honestly show fewer fields — not worse data, just less of it.
Why don’t you use Numbeo or Trading Economics?
Numbeo is crowd-sourced and unverifiable; Trading Economics, Statista and Global Property Guide are aggregators whose numbers we could neither license nor audit. All four are banned in our codebase, and the ban is enforced by automated tests. If we can’t trace a number to an official series, we don’t publish it.
Can two countries always be compared directly?
Only within one field, and only because we keep one definition per field. A house price index with a 2015 base is never mixed with a 2010 base; monthly minimum wages in euros are never blended with annual PPP figures. Where definitions differ slightly between sources — like the loan mix behind IMF lending rates — the reading guide on each page says so.
Can I reuse or embed the data?
Yes. Figures we derive ourselves are published under CC BY 4.0 — reuse them with attribution to Fiatmap and a link. Ranking pages have CSV downloads and a ready-made citation, and the widgets page has embeddable versions of the maps and tables. The underlying institutions’ own licence terms apply to their series.
Is the driving licence checker legal advice?
No. It is built on the UN treaty framework (the 1949 and 1968 road traffic conventions) plus documented national exceptions, and we review it against official sources. But rules change and border officers have discretion — always confirm with the embassy or road authority of the country you are driving in.
Is Fiatmap free? Are there ads?
Free, and no ads. The site is operated by TORSTONE OÜ (Estonia), the company behind SatsAtlas, and exists because we wanted this atlas ourselves.
I found a number that looks wrong — what do I do?
First click its source link — every value has one — and check the official series. If we disagree with the source, mail [email protected] with the page URL; corrections feed straight into the data pipeline, not a suggestion box.
Not answered here? [email protected] · About Fiatmap · Sources