Guides
Background and how-tos: what happened to the Factbook, how to repair citations, and how to read country data without being misled.
- CIA World Factbook Alternatives in 2026 Updated August 11, 2026 Where to find country data after the Factbook shutdown: Wayback Machine, factbook.json (CC0), worldfactbookarchive.org, World Bank, UN Data, and this site.
- GEC Country Codes Explained (Why ch Means China) Updated August 11, 2026 Why the CIA Factbook's GEC codes make ch mean China and kr mean Kiribati, how they differ from ISO 3166, and how to decode all 269 codes in old cia.gov URLs.
- How Current Is Country Data, Really? Updated August 11, 2026 Why 2026 population figures are usually 2024-2025 estimates, how publication lags work, and why frozen CIA data is already 45 million off for India.
- How to Compare Countries Properly Updated August 11, 2026 How to compare countries fairly: nominal vs PPP GDP, per capita framing, median age, military burden, and matching data years (2023 vs 2025 figures).
- What Happened to the CIA World Factbook? Updated August 11, 2026 The CIA World Factbook shut down on February 4, 2026, after a final update on January 22. What happened, why it mattered, and how to reach the old data now.
- The World Factbook in 2026: What Still Updates Updated August 11, 2026 What a 2026 World Factbook means after the CIA's Feb 4, 2026 shutdown: which fields still update from live sources and which stay frozen at January 2026.
- How to Cite the World Factbook (After the Shutdown) Updated August 11, 2026 Working APA 7, MLA 9, and Chicago 17 citations for the CIA World Factbook after the Feb 4, 2026 shutdown, using Wayback Machine archived pages.
- Where to Download the CIA World Factbook Archive Updated August 11, 2026 Four verified sources for CIA World Factbook data after the 2026 shutdown: factbook.json (CC0), Wayback snapshots, and 1990-2025 bulk exports.