What FreedomRankings is — and what it isn’t.

Liberty is measurable. The Fraser Institute has measured economic freedom across North America for over twenty years. The Cato Institute published Freedom in the 50 States from 2009 through 2023. EdChoice grades every state on school choice. The Institute for Justice tracks civil asset forfeiture. Vera tracks criminal-justice outcomes. Each of those projects is excellent and each of them only answers part of the question.

FreedomRankings stitches them together. We take ten freedom categories — speech, guns, due process, economic liberty, criminal justice, drug policy, property rights, religious liberty, education choice, and regulatory burden — pull a current, attributed third-party score for each, and let you decide how much weight each one carries. The result is a 50-state ranking that’s yours, not ours.

Every number on this site comes from a named, third-party publication that’s linked from the methodology page. When a publisher releases a new edition, we re-ingest it; the site shows the edition year and ingestion date on every score.

For categories where no recent third-party score exists (a few niche policy areas in a small handful of states), we mark the cell as “awaiting data” and fall back to an editorial placeholder rather than silently inventing a number. The placeholder is visually muted in every ranking table; you’ll never see one used to push a state up or down the leaderboard without the disclaimer.

Score weights default to equal across categories. That choice matters — anyone who tells you the “most free” state is X is implicitly claiming a weighting. We disclose ours and let you change it.

• Sources are named.Every score links to its publisher. If we can’t cite it, we don’t publish it.
• No advocacy. We do not lobby, endorse candidates, accept donations from political organizations, or campaign for legislation. The site is a reference tool.
• Errors get fixed in public. If a state or a source flags a data error, we update the score and post a correction note dated at the change.
• Officials data is read-only. Voting records and campaign-finance data come from public APIs (Congress.gov, FEC, OpenStates). We do not edit or moderate them.

FreedomRankings is a solo project — built, hosted, and edited by one person. It is not affiliated with any of the publishers whose data it ingests. The site funds itself through Google AdSense display advertising and an optional paid tier (see pricing) that unlocks deeper data tables, exports, and a higher number of state comparisons. There are no sponsored rankings, no paid placement of states or officials, and no advertiser influence on scoring.

FreedomRankings does not:

• Sell or share user data. See the privacy policy.
• Track readers across other sites.
• Provide legal, financial, or relocation advice. Scores are informational.
• Rank political parties or specific politicians’ agendas.
• Use AI to generate scores. Every number is from a published, attributed source.

For data corrections, source suggestions, or general questions: support@freedomrankings.com

For privacy or data-deletion requests, see the privacy policy for the dedicated address.