Others have already tried to compile a list of political salaries from around the globe.

Wikipedia’s ‘list of salaries of heads of state and government‘ isn’t bad, but many salaries are outdated or obtained from questionable sources.

Media organisations often have a go but normally only attempt a ‘top 20 highest-paid world leaders‘ list or similar.

Commercial firms occasionally compile lists of highest-paid leaders but don’t generally publish their workings.

Sometimes the data gets completely screwed up in the process, such as this widely-reported 2018 research that muddled up Australian and US dollars before wrongly claiming Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was the best-paid leader in the OECD.

PoliticalSalaries.com is a non-commercial open data project that hopes to improve the range and accuracy of information about politicians’ pay.

We can’t guarantee 100% accuracy because politicians’ salaries constantly change. But we can provide a one-stop-shop for political salaries that is fully referenced and regularly updated.

Where possible, we will always go directly to official sources.

This website began with a small spreadsheet set up several years ago to work out who were the best-paid politicians in the world.

The spreadsheet grew over time – more countries, better sources, more ways of comparing the data – until it became so big and complex that I thought I should do something useful with it.

I don’t know who wants to look at this data. Perhaps nobody.

But at least I’ve finally done something with it.

Who created PoliticalSalaries.com?

This site was created by William Summers, a professional fact-check journalist and open data advocate based in Melbourne, Australia (find me on Twitter here).

This is a personal hobby project. PoliticalSalaries.com has no association with my employer or any other organisation.

If you find this website useful, please consider throwing a few dollars into our Tip Jar to help pay web hosting fees.