English Proficiency by Country: The EF English Proficiency Index 2025, Explained

What is the EF English Proficiency Index?

The EF English Proficiency Index is an annual ranking of countries and regions by the English skills of their adults, published by EF Education First, an international education company. Each country gets a score out of 800 and a proficiency band from "very high" to "very low". The scores come from people who took the EF Standard English Test (EF SET), a free online test.

Key facts about the 2025 edition, all from EF's own report and press release:

• Release date: November 19, 2025 (EF press release).
• Coverage: 123 countries and regions.
• Sample: 2.2 million EF SET test takers, based on tests taken in 2024.
• New this year: speaking and writing were assessed for the first time, using AI scoring technology from Efekta Education Group, part of EF. Earlier editions measured only reading and listening.
• Global average score: 488, which sits in the "low" band.
• Number 1: the Netherlands, with a score of 624.

The 2025 edition is the latest one on ef.com as of October 2026. We will update this page when a new edition is published.

Sources for every number on this page: the EF EPI 2025 full report (PDF) and EF's per-country 2025 fact sheets, for example the India fact sheet (PDF). All figures checked on October 23, 2026.

How the proficiency bands work

The CEFR column follows the conversion EF publishes in its methodology appendix. The CEFR, the Common European Framework of Reference, is the six-level scale (A1 to C2) used by most schools and exams; our CEFR levels guide explains each level.

Top 10 countries for English proficiency in 2025

Europe dominates the top of the table, as it has for years. EF's press release notes that the Netherlands kept first place, that Croatia and Austria both improved their rankings to take second and third, and that Germany climbed to fourth with one of the biggest gains in Europe.

The first non-European countries are South Africa and Zimbabwe, tied at 13th with 602, followed by Kenya at 19th. Malaysia, at 24th with 581, is the highest-ranked country in Asia. The Philippines (28th) and Nigeria (29th) are the next large countries outside Europe.

Note that countries where English is the main native language, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada and Australia, are not ranked. The index measures English as a second or foreign language.

Bottom 10 countries in the 2025 index

Ties at 113th and 116th mean the bottom 10 places hold 11 countries. Several of these are francophone African countries where French, not English, is the main language of schooling and administration, which is part of the story. Others are countries where English plays a smaller role in the education system or the job market. A low rank describes the adults who took the test, not a judgement on a country's education as a whole, as the section on limits below explains.

The full English proficiency ranking: all 123 countries

This is the complete EF EPI 2025 ranking, transcribed from the report's main table. Countries with the same score share a rank.

English proficiency in Asia

Asia is the region where English proficiency varies the most in practical terms, from Malaysia in the "high" band to Cambodia at the bottom of the index. EF ranks 25 Asian countries and regions in 2025.

Three things stand out.

Asia is stable. EF's report says scores across Asia were broadly stable, with no country gaining or losing significant ground compared with the previous year, while Central Asia's progress stalled, with every country in that sub-region losing some ground.

Japan's ranking surprises people. Japan, a wealthy country with compulsory English at school, sits at 96th with 446, in the "very low" band. Its fact sheet shows why speaking is the issue: Japan scores 454 for reading and 437 for listening, but 394 for writing and 393 for speaking. That pattern, decent understanding but weak production, is exactly the "I understand but I can't speak" problem many learners describe.

Asia has the narrowest skills gap. According to EF, Asia as a whole has the smallest gap between receptive skills (reading and listening) and productive skills (speaking and writing), only 2 points, and is the only region where productive skills slightly outpace receptive ones.

India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal

South Asia is one of the largest English-learning populations on earth, and the five countries sit close together in the middle of the table. These figures come from each country's 2025 fact sheet.

The global average is 488, so Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan sit above it and Sri Lanka and India just below it.

India: rank 74, score 484

India scores 484, ranked 74th, which places it in the "low" band and four points below the global average of 488. Its fact sheet shows a score change of minus 6 compared with the previous edition. Across the four skills, India scores 494 for reading, 457 for listening, 500 for speaking and 504 for writing.

Two caveats matter for India in particular. First, India is enormous and varied, and a single national score hides big differences between cities, states and age groups; the full report includes some regional detail. Second, EF explains in its methodology that regional scores are population-weighted, so India's score carries much more weight than smaller countries' scores when EF calculates Asia's average.

The South Asian pattern: listening is the weak spot

Look at the listening column. In all five countries, listening is the lowest skill, between 457 and 495, while writing is the highest. This matches a finding EF highlights in the report: listening comprehension is the weakest skill in 31 countries, "especially in South Asia and West Africa". EF suggests one possible reason: the test's recordings use speakers from the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia, and learners who mostly hear English spoken with local accents may find those accents harder to follow.

EF also notes that Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal are among the 10 countries where writing is the strongest skill, which may point to education systems or workplaces that prize written English.

For learners in the region, the practical lesson is clear. Practise listening to a range of accents, including American, British and Australian speakers, and practise speaking with someone who answers back in real time. Our guide to improving English speaking skills has a daily routine that does both.

Latin America, the Middle East and Africa

The 2025 report groups countries into five regions: Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Here are the other regions outside Europe and Asia, using the scores from the main table. We grouped the countries below by geography ourselves, so EF's own regional groupings may differ slightly for a few countries, such as Egypt, Sudan and Israel.

Latin America

Argentina leads Latin America at 26th, in the "high" band, and Honduras (32nd) is the only other Latin American country above 550. The region's two largest countries sit lower down: Brazil at 75th with 482 and Mexico at 103rd with 440. EF's headline finding for the region is about age rather than country: the youngest adults trail working adults by almost 100 points in several countries, the widest age gap anywhere in the index, and men outscore women in every Latin American country except Argentina.

Middle East and North Africa

Israel is the highest-ranked country in this group at 46th, and no country in it reaches the "high" band. Gulf states are spread widely, from the United Arab Emirates at 72nd to Saudi Arabia at 115th. EF reports that the Middle East's average declined slightly this year, with almost all countries losing some ground, and that gaps between age groups there are narrower than average.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Africa has the widest spread of any region. South Africa and Zimbabwe tie at 13th, ahead of most of Europe, while several French-speaking countries sit near the bottom of the index. Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria stand out for having both high scores and small gaps between their four skills, and Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe are the only three countries in the world to reach the "high" band in speaking.

Speaking vs listening vs reading vs writing: the skills gap

The biggest change in the 2025 index is that it measures all four skills. That makes it possible, for the first time, to compare how well people understand English with how well they produce it. EF's headline findings on skills:

• Speaking is the weakest skill in a majority of countries and has the lowest worldwide average score of the four skills.
• Only three countries reached the "high" band for speaking: Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe, all of which have English as an official language. No country reached "very high" for speaking.
• Reading is the strongest skill in nearly 80% of countries.
• Listening trails reading by more than 20 points worldwide.
• Countries with higher proficiency have bigger gaps between their strongest and weakest skills, with the average gap almost twice as wide in "very high" countries as in "low" and "very low" ones.
• Only seven countries have a nearly even level across all four skills.

Here is what that looks like for a selection of countries, using each country's 2025 fact sheet:

A note on reading this table: a country's overall EF EPI score is not a simple average of its four skill scores. EF calculates national scores as a three-year rolling average, and the speaking and writing sections are optional, so fewer people take them. Compare a country's skills with each other, not with its headline score.

Some patterns worth noticing:

• The Netherlands and Germany read and listen at an exceptional level, but speak about 100 points lower. Even in the best-performing countries, speaking lags.
• Saudi Arabia and Egypt have their weakest scores in writing. EF's report observes that most countries where writing is the weakest skill use a non-Latin writing system that runs right to left, such as Arabic script, and suggests the direction of the script, rather than a non-Latin alphabet in general, appears to be the factor.
• Nigeria and the UAE are unusually even. Nigeria, like Kenya and South Africa, is among the few high-proficiency countries with narrow gaps between skills, which EF links to the history of English use in those countries.

Why speaking lags almost everywhere

EF's explanation is practical. Speaking has historically been the hardest skill for schools to develop and is often left out of national exams, because it is difficult to assess students' speaking one by one. Reading, by contrast, suits large classes and can be practised alone with books, translation tools and, increasingly, AI.

The report's conclusion is that anyone trying to raise English proficiency, whether a country, a company or an individual, would do well to invest in the weakest skill, which in most cases is speaking. That is good advice for individual learners too. If your reading is ahead of your speaking, more reading will not fix the gap. Speaking practice will.

Other findings from the 2025 index

The gender gap is narrowing

The gap in favour of men that opened at the start of this decade is closing, according to EF. It is narrower on every continent than the year before, and fewer countries have a significant gap between genders: 37 in 2025, down from 48 in 2024. EF links the earlier widening to the Covid pandemic. The Middle East is the exception, where the gap widened slightly. Africa stands out as the region where women consistently outperform men.

Young adults are not catching up

EF reports that proficiency among the youngest adults is still lower than before the pandemic, and more countries saw further declines for this group than improvements. In many countries, adults under 25 score lower than older age groups. Latin America shows the widest gap between age groups, with the youngest group trailing working adults by almost 100 points in several countries.

Regional trends

• Europe plateaued overall, while the EU gained modestly, with France, Germany and Poland posting larger than average improvements.
• Asia was broadly stable, with the narrowest gap between skills.
• Latin America made slight gains, especially in South America.
• The Middle East declined slightly, with almost all countries losing some ground.
• Africa remained the most varied region, with more than 200 points between its most and least proficient countries.

What the index measures, and its limits

The EF EPI is useful, widely cited and honest about its own weaknesses. Before you quote it, understand what it is.

The sample is self-selected. EF states clearly that the test takers are not guaranteed to be representative. Only people who want to learn English or are curious about their level take the EF SET. The average age of test takers was 26, and 85% of those who gave their age were under 35.

It is online only. The test is free but needs an internet connection, so people without internet access are excluded. EF notes that in places with low internet use, this would tend to push scores upward, because poorer and less educated people are less likely to be in the sample.

Scores are smoothed. National scores are a three-year rolling average, which reduces year-to-year noise but also means real changes show up slowly.

It measures adults, not schools. It does not tell you about children or how good a school system is. National school exams measure that, though they cannot be compared across countries.

Speaking and writing are new and optional. Most test takers still certify only reading and listening, so the new skill scores rest on a smaller group, and EF itself notes that adding them shifted some scores slightly.

It correlates with other tests. EF reports that EF EPI 2025 scores correlate strongly with TOEFL iBT 2023 scores (r = 0.74) and with IELTS Academic 2024 scores (r = 0.61), which suggests the rankings reflect real differences, even if individual scores should not be over-read.

The fair way to use the index is as a rough, large-scale picture of adult English learners, country by country. It is not a precise measurement of every adult in a country.

What this means if you are learning English

Rankings are interesting, but your own level matters more than your country's. Three takeaways from the 2025 data for individual learners:

1. If speaking feels like your weakest skill, you are in the majority. It is the weakest skill in most countries in the world, including the top-ranked ones.
2. Gaps between skills are normal and fixable. They show where practice has been missing, not a lack of ability.
3. Speaking practice is the highest-value thing you can add. Reading and listening come more easily from everyday exposure; speaking needs deliberate practice with feedback.

You can check your own level against the CEFR scale with any reputable test, then build a routine around your weakest skill. If that skill is speaking, an AI speaking tutor lets you practise every day without waiting for a class or a conversation partner.