The 2026 State Freedom Index: Which States Are Most Free?

Every year the same argument plays out at kitchen tables and on moving-company quotes: which state is actually the freest? We built the FreedomRankings index to answer it with numbers instead of vibes — scoring all 50 states from 0 to 100 across ten different freedoms, from gun rights and taxes to drug policy and due process. This is the 2026 edition: who came out on top, who landed at the bottom, and what the data says about how divided the country really is.

The short version

• Utah is the freest state in 2026 at 74.0 out of 100, narrowly ahead of New Hampshire (73.7) and Montana (72.1).
• Hawaii ranks last at 40.9, behind New York (41.3) and Delaware (43.0).
• The gap between first and last is 33.1 points — nearly a third of the whole scale.
• No state finishes first in more than two of the ten categories. Freedom is a basket of trade-offs, not a single dial.

How the 2026 ranking breaks down

The index scores each state on ten categories — the four big constitutional freedoms (1st, 2nd, and 4th Amendment protections, plus due process inside criminal justice) and six policy areas where states diverge sharply: economic freedom, drug policy, property rights, religious liberty, education choice, and regulatory burden. Each category is scored 0–10, and the ten add up to a 0–100 overall score.

Gap between #1 and #50

33.1 ptsGap between #1 and #50

Top score — Utah

74.0Top score — Utah

Lowest score — Hawaii

40.9Lowest score — Hawaii

The average state scores 57.6 and the median is 57.5, so the typical state sits just above the midpoint of the scale. But the spread is the real story: a 33-point gap between Utah and Hawaii means the freest and least-free states are living under genuinely different policy regimes, not minor variations on the same theme.

The 10 freest states

The top of the table is dominated by the Mountain West and northern Plains — low-tax, light-regulation states that also tend toward permissive gun and drug laws. New Hampshire is the lone Northeastern entry, carried by the strongest economic-freedom and property-rights scores in the country.

Rank	State	Score
1	Utah	74.0
2	New Hampshire	73.7
3	Montana	72.1
4	North Dakota	70.8
5	Arizona	69.3
6	South Dakota	69.0
7	Missouri	66.2
8	North Carolina	65.4
9	Florida	64.6
10	Indiana	64.2

What unites them isn't any single policy — it's breadth. Utah doesn't top a single one of the four big amendment categories, but it scores respectably across all ten and avoids the bottom of any. That consistency is what wins the overall title; the index rewards states that are broadly free over states that are absolutist about one freedom and restrictive about the rest.

The 10 least free states

The bottom of the table is just as regional. Eight of the ten lowest-scoring states are coastal — the Northeast corridor (New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Massachusetts) plus the Pacific (Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington). These are typically high-tax, high-regulation states with restrictive firearm laws, which costs them across several categories at once.

Rank	State	Score
41	Washington	51.6
42	Illinois	50.3
43	Oregon	50.1
44	Kentucky	47.6
45	New Jersey	45.5
46	Massachusetts	44.1
47	California	43.9
48	Delaware	43.0
49	New York	41.3
50	Hawaii	40.9

A low overall score doesn't mean a state is restrictive everywhere — and that's the most important thing the index reveals.

No state is free across the board

Here's the finding that surprises people most: no state finishes first in more than two of the ten categories. Freedom, measured honestly, is a set of trade-offs — and almost every state that's a national leader on one freedom is a national laggard on another.

• Massachusetts has the best criminal-justice score in the country (a perfect 10.0, driven by the nation's lowest incarceration rate) — yet ranks 46th overall and posts one of the weakest 4th Amendment scores (1.5).
• Wyoming earns a perfect 10.0 on gun rights, the only flawless 2nd Amendment score in the index — but lands at just #13 overall, dragged down by middling marks elsewhere.
• Oregon tops the 1st Amendment category and leads on drug policy, but finishes 43rd overall once taxes and regulation are counted.
• Maine has the strongest 4th Amendment protections in the country (9.5) at #15 overall, while Idaho owns the lightest regulatory burden (a perfect 10.0) at #14.

New Hampshire is the closest thing to an all-rounder: it tops both economic freedom (a perfect 10.0) and property rights (9.5) while staying out of the cellar anywhere, which is how a Northeastern state cracks the top two.

The most divided freedoms

Some freedoms split the country in half; others barely vary. We can measure this directly as the spread — the gap between the highest- and lowest-scoring state in each category. The widest spreads mark the freedoms Americans most disagree about:

• Gun rights (2nd Amendment) — the single most polarized freedom. The spread runs the full 10 points, from Wyoming's perfect 10.0 to New York's 0.0.
• Economic freedom — also a full 10-point spread, from New Hampshire (10.0) to New Mexico (0.0).
• Criminal justice — another 10-point gap, from Massachusetts (10.0) to Mississippi (0.0).
• Regulatory burden — a 9.6-point spread, from Idaho (10.0) to California (0.4).

These four categories are where your zip code matters most. Move across the right state line and your tax bill, your ability to carry a firearm, or the number of occupational-licensing hoops you face can swing from the national best to the national worst.

1. 1WYWyoming
   10.0A+
2. 2IDIdaho
   9.8A+
3. 3MTMontana
   9.6A+
4. 4UTUtah
   9.4A+
5. 5NDNorth Dakota
   9.2A+
6. 6AZArizona
   9.0A+
7. 7SDSouth Dakota
   8.8A
8. 8TNTennessee
   8.6A
9. 9TXTexas
   8.4A-
10. 10KSKansas
    8.2A-

See all 50 states ranked on gun rights

Where states mostly agree

Not every freedom divides the country. The narrowest spreads in the index are in the 1st Amendment (just 2.5 points, from Oregon's 8.0 to Mississippi's 5.5) and religious liberty (4.5 points). On core speech and conscience protections, states cluster much closer together — partly because these protections are heavily backed by federal constitutional law that every state shares, which sets a floor no state falls far below.

Where these scores come from

The index is deliberately not our opinion of which states are "good." Eight of the ten categories are anchored to independent, published datasets, and we update each one as its publisher releases a new edition:

• Economic freedom — the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom of North America.
• Education choice — EdChoice's ABCs of School Choice.
• Criminal justice — the Vera Institute's incarceration data.
• 4th Amendment & property rights — the Institute for Justice's forfeiture and eminent-domain research.
• Drug policy — a composite of NORML, DISA, and NCSL cannabis-law trackers.
• Regulatory burden — the Mercatus Center's RegData.
• Gun rights — Guns & Ammo's "Best States for Gun Owners."

The two remaining categories — 1st Amendment and religious liberty — are editorial, as flagged above. Every score on the site carries a provenance label so you can see exactly which is which, and our full methodology walks through how the categories are weighted and combined.

How to read the index

The single overall ranking is a useful headline, but it's not how most people should actually use the index. If you only care about taxes, a state's gun score is noise; if you're a gun owner, Wyoming's #13 overall finish matters far less than its perfect 2nd Amendment score. That's the whole point of building it as ten separate categories rather than one black-box number.

So treat this report as the starting point, not the verdict. Re-weight the categories to match what you value and the ranking recomputes around your priorities — a gun-owning entrepreneur and a privacy-focused remote worker will get very different "freest states," and both are right.

Build your own ranking

Re-weight all ten freedoms by what matters to you and watch the 50-state ranking recompute live.

The numbers in this report reflect the index as of June 2026 and update automatically as each source publishes a new edition — so the live rankings and interactive map are always the current source of truth.