Average Sleep Time by Country: 2026 Global Rankings

France sleeps the most and Japan the least. In the largest like-for-like study of its kind, people in France reported 7 hours 52 minutes a night while people in Japan reported 6 hours 18 minutes, a gap of 1 hour 34 minutes. Averaged across the 20 countries, nightly sleep lands around 7 hours 15 minutes.

Most rankings online mix surveys, app numbers, and wearable scores, and one widely-shared table is simply wrong. This page uses one peer-reviewed survey and labels every other dataset for what it is.

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Key Takeaways

• France leads, Japan trails: 7 hours 52 minutes versus 6 hours 18 minutes, a 1 hour 34 minute nightly gap (Ou et al., PNAS, 2025 data).
• Across the 20 countries, sleep averages about 7 hours 15 minutes a night, below the 8 hours most people treat as the target.
• Canada reported 7 hours 27 minutes in that study. Statistics Canada puts the national self-reported average at 7.9 hours for adults aged 18 to 64.
• Everyone falls short: all 20 countries sleep at least an hour less than their own culture's ideal.
• The viral "China sleeps 9 hours" ranking is wrong. Every sleep-specific dataset puts China near 7 hours 18 minutes.
• Surveys and wearables disagree because they measure different things: reported sleep, device-logged sleep, and time-in-bed diaries.
• Lost sleep is expensive: insufficient sleep costs the United States up to $411 billion a year, 2.28% of GDP, and Canada about $21.4 billion (RAND, 2016 data).
• The long trend is down: American adults hit a record-low 6.5 hours in 2023 (Gallup), and 30.5% now sleep under 7 hours (CDC, 2024 data).

About This Data

The country ranking comes from one source on purpose. Ou and colleagues surveyed 4,933 adults across 20 countries and asked how long they slept, so every figure sits on the same measurement. Wearable and time-use numbers appear in their own sections, labelled, because they measure sleep differently and cannot be ranked against survey answers. Every source is linked once, the first time it appears. Figures are current as of October 2026.

Average Sleep Time by Country: The 2026 Ranking

France, the Netherlands, and Belgium top the ranking, while Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea sit at the bottom. These are self-reported sleep figures from Ou and colleagues in PNAS, recomputed from the study's public dataset of 4,933 adults across 20 countries.

Source: Ou et al., PNAS, 2025 data.

The spread from top to bottom is 1 hour 34 minutes. Averaged across the 20 countries, the mean is about 7 hours 15 minutes, and none averaged a full 8 hours.

France, the Netherlands and Belgium top the 20-country ranking, while South Korea, Taiwan and Japan sit at the bottom. The spread from top to bottom is 1 hour 34 minutes. Source: Ou et al., PNAS, 2025 data.

Why East Asia Sleeps the Least

East Asia reports the shortest sleep in the world, and the pattern holds across every dataset. Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore cluster at the bottom of the survey ranking, while Western Europe and Oceania fill the top.

Long working hours and late bedtimes are the usual explanation. Japan even coined the word "karoshi" for death from overwork, which the World Economic Forum ties to its sleep deficit. A global analysis found that a country's average bedtime, not its wake time, predicts how long its people sleep (Walch et al., Science Advances). Late bedtimes without matching late alarms are the main mechanism behind East Asia's short nights.

Why Country Sleep Rankings Disagree: Surveys vs Wearables

Sleep rankings disagree because they come from different kinds of measurement that are not interchangeable. Reading a ranking without knowing which one it uses is how people end up quoting numbers that contradict each other.

Wearables read lower because they strip out time spent lying awake. Fitbit's annual review logged a global average of 6.5 hours, under the roughly 7 hours 15 minutes people report in surveys, and sleep-app makers like Oura rank countries on quality scores that cannot be compared to hours at all.

Wearables read lower than surveys and time-use diaries read higher, because each method measures something different. Sources: Ou et al.; Fitbit, 2021 data; UK time-use survey.

Time-use diaries push the other way. The UK time-use survey records 8 hours 56 minutes under a combined "sleep and rest" category because it counts rest and time in bed. It answers a different question than "how long did you sleep."

The Viral "China Sleeps the Most" Stat Is Wrong

The top Google result claims China sleeps the most in the world at 9.01 hours a night. It does not. Every sleep-specific dataset places China near the middle or lower.

The 9.01-hour figure comes from World Population Review, an aggregator that lists no methodology, survey, or year. Its own sources point to an AI-generated statistics site that disclaims its accuracy, plus a wearable study that actually found Asia sleeps shorter than the West (Willoughby et al., Sleep Medicine). The number contradicts the paper cited to support it. The likeliest origin is a mislabelled time-use diary: older OECD data put China near 9 hours a day of "sleep," but that counts time in bed and rest. Treat any ranking with no named survey behind it as decoration, not data.

The viral 9.01-hour figure for China comes from an aggregator with no stated method. Sleep surveys put China near 7 hours. Sources: World Population Review; Ou et al.; national health studies; OECD.

Everyone Sleeps Less Than Their Country's Ideal

No country sleeps as much as its own people think they should. The study behind the ranking also asked how much sleep each culture considered ideal, and in all 20 countries people slept at least an hour short of their own target (UVic News).

In all 20 countries studied, people slept at least an hour short of the amount their own culture considered ideal. Source: Ou et al., via UVic News.

More surprising: a nation's average sleep had no link to its health. Countries that slept less showed no worse rates of obesity, diabetes, or heart disease, and longer-sleeping countries actually had higher obesity nationally. That is a correlation between country averages, not advice for individuals, and it matches the researchers' point: fitting your own norm matters more than a universal number (UBC News).

That universal number was never 8 hours. The National Sleep Foundation recommends 7 to 9 hours for adults; "8 hours" is the midpoint, and the top of the separate 8-to-10 hour range for teenagers. See our guide to how much sleep you need for the full age breakdown.

What Time the World Goes to Bed

Bedtime, more than wake time, decides how long a country sleeps. The earliest-to-bed countries log the most sleep. The figures here are device-estimated bedtimes from sleep-app tracking, not survey answers.

Source: aggregated sleep-app tracking data; bedtimes are device-estimated, not survey-reported.

Fitbit put the global average bedtime at 11:18 PM with a 7:03 AM wake. Later nights are not offset by later mornings, so the countries that stay up latest lose the most sleep.

New Zealand and Australia go to bed before 11:35 PM on average, while China and Japan go to bed after 12:30 AM. Source: aggregated sleep-app tracking data; bedtimes are device-estimated.

Do Men or Women Sleep More?

Women sleep slightly more than men, but the short-sleep rate is nearly identical between the sexes. In the United States, 30.4% of women and 30.6% of men sleep under 7 hours (CDC, 2024 data). Statistics Canada's clinical measured survey and global wearable data from Oura both find women's average sleep runs modestly longer than men's, mainly because women schedule it earlier, going to bed sooner and waking later.

The short-sleep rate is nearly identical between the sexes: 30.4% of US women and 30.6% of US men sleep under 7 hours. Source: CDC, 2024 data.

How Sleep Changes With Age

Sleep need falls with age, and the recommended "8 hours" belongs to teenagers more than adults. The National Sleep Foundation sets teens at 8 to 10 hours, working-age adults at 7 to 9, and adults over 65 at 7 to 8.

Source: National Sleep Foundation (recommendations); CDC, 2024 data (short sleep).

Short sleep peaks in midlife, then eases after 65. Canadian adults 65 and over average 8.1 hours, the most of any age group (Statistics Canada).

Short sleep peaks in midlife, then eases after 65. Source: CDC, 2024 data.

How Average Sleep Has Changed Over Time

Average sleep in the United States has fallen for 80 years. Gallup has tracked the same question since 1942, and the share getting 8 or more hours has collapsed while short sleep has climbed.

Source: Gallup.

By 2023 the American average slipped to 6.5 hours, which Gallup called historically low. The share of US adults sleeping under 7 hours eased from about 33% in 2020 to 30.5% in 2024 (CDC), still far above mid-century levels.

In 1942, 59% of US adults got 8 or more hours of sleep. By 2023 it was 25%. Source: Gallup.

The trend is not universal. Time-use studies suggest sleep rose modestly in South Korea since 2004 and in the United Kingdom since the mid-1970s, while Japan's long decline appears to have reversed around 2020. These come from separate national surveys, so read them as individual country trends, not one comparable series.

What Lost Sleep Costs Each Country

Insufficient sleep drains hundreds of billions of dollars a year from major economies. RAND Europe modelled five countries, all figures in US dollars: the United States loses the most in dollar terms, Japan the largest share of its economy.

Source: RAND Europe, 2016 data.

The combined bill across those five countries runs up to $680 billion a year. The mechanism is partly mortality: RAND found people sleeping under six hours a night carried a 13% higher risk of death than those sleeping seven hours or more. RAND also estimated that moving the shortest sleepers up to six or seven hours could return up to $226.4 billion a year to the US economy alone. For the Canadian picture in detail, see our breakdown of the economic cost of poor sleep.

The United States loses the most to insufficient sleep in dollar terms, up to $411 billion a year. Canada loses up to $21.4 billion. All figures in US dollars. Source: RAND Europe, 2016 data.

How Canada Compares

Canada sits mid-pack, close to Australia and the United States. In the 20-country study it reported 7 hours 27 minutes, ranking 8th. Its own national statistics run a little higher because they use a different survey.

The gap between 7 hours 27 minutes and 7.9 hours is a measurement difference, not a contradiction: the study used an online panel about last night's sleep, while Statistics Canada ran a national probability survey. Higher-income Canadians were more likely to meet the recommendation than lower-income ones. See our Canadian sleep statistics for the full national picture.

Sleep duration is shaped mostly by culture and work hours, things no one controls on a Tuesday night. The sleep surface under you is one of the few levers you do control.

The Bottom Line

There is no universal sleep number. The 20-country range runs from 6 hours 18 minutes in Japan to 7 hours 52 minutes in France, and every country sleeps less than its own ideal, yet none of that tracks national health. The honest target for most adults is a range, 7 to 9 hours, not a single magic figure, and your own country's average is a cultural fact rather than a health goal.

What you can act on is the environment you sleep in. At Fawcett Mattress, we are Canada's natural mattress company, building mattresses for Canadians who want to know what they sleep on, made to order on Vancouver Island since 2014 from natural Talalay latex and organic cotton. If better sleep is the goal, start with our natural latex mattresses.

Sources

1. Ou et al., Healthy Sleep Durations Appear to Vary Across Cultures, PNAS
2. Ou et al., deposited dataset, OSF
3. UBC News: What's a Healthy Amount of Sleep?
4. UVic News: Healthy Sleep Varies Widely by Country
5. Statistics Canada: Sleep Behaviours Among Canadian Adults
6. Statistics Canada: Duration and Quality of Sleep Among Canadians
7. RAND Europe: Why Sleep Matters, the Economic Costs of Insufficient Sleep
8. Gallup: Americans Sleeping Less, More Stressed
9. CDC NCHS: Short Sleep Duration Among Adults
10. The National Sleep Foundation: Sleep Duration Recommendations
11. Walch et al., A Global Quantification of Normal Sleep Schedules, Science Advances
12. Willoughby et al., Country Differences in Nocturnal Sleep Variability, Sleep Medicine
13. World Economic Forum: Which Countries Get the Most Sleep
14. UK Office for National Statistics: Time Use in the UK

The Author: Duane Franklin