Estonia has the world's freest internet, Freedom House index finds
In Freedom House's Freedom on the Net 2026 index, Estonia scored 91 out of 100, the highest result for internet freedom. Myanmar, Iran, China and Russia have the least free internet.
Estonia has the freest internet in the world, according to the Freedom on the Net 2026 index from Freedom House, a Washington-based nonprofit that tracks political freedoms and human rights. Estonia scored 91 points out of a possible 100, ahead of Costa Rica, Taiwan, Australia and France.
The index covers only 38 countries this year. Freedom House said it paused coverage of 34 countries in this edition, and that the countries assessed were chosen to represent a range of geographies, regime types and forms of internet control. As a result, many European and other countries, including Finland, Latvia and Lithuania, were not assessed.
The least free
The least free internet environments in this year's index are in Myanmar, Iran, China and Russia. According to the index, global internet freedom declined for the 16th consecutive year.
Freedom House said Iran joined the world's worst environments and recorded the most significant deterioration during the coverage period. It linked this to authorities' brutal repression of an antigovernment protest movement in January and to extreme online censorship introduced after the United States and Israel attacked the country in February, which started a war lasting several months.
The AI era
Freedom House argued that internet freedom should serve as a guidepost in the era of artificial intelligence. It said the rapid adoption of agentic AI services, which perform tasks independently, is already transforming the internet, and that societies will have to decide how to shape it in response. Such efforts, it said, should preserve open exchange and free expression as fundamental values.
About the organisation
Freedom House was founded in October 1941, and most of its funding comes from the US State Department and other government grants. Its annual Freedom in the World report assesses countries' political freedoms and civil liberties, while Freedom on the Net is its yearly survey and analysis of internet freedom.
