CV Length by Country: We Measured 7,911 CVs From 175 Countries

There is plenty of advice on how long a CV should be, and it often conflicts. One page, two pages, three for senior people, and different numbers again depending on the country it was written for. What is hard to find is what people actually send, country by country. So we counted.

Every PDF downloaded from FreeCV is logged with its page count, and since 2 September 2026 with the country of the connection as well. We took the latest CV from each person who downloaded one between that day and 29 October, removed our own test accounts, CVs that still included a job from one of our example CVs, and near empty ones, and counted pages, words, jobs, bullet points, sections and personal details. We did not read or quote anyone's wording. The method section at the end lists every step.

The short answer

• The average CV ran to 1.81 pages. 38.9% were one page, 46.5% two, 11.0% three and 3.6% four or more. The longest single CV was ten pages.
• Kenya had the longest CVs of the 16 countries with 100 or more CVs, at 2.22 pages on average, ahead of Nigeria (2.04) and Ethiopia (2.02). Morocco (1.62), Germany and France (1.66 each) had the shortest, close enough to count as a tie.
• In the smaller samples, Argentina (1.25), Brazil (1.35) and Algeria (1.42) were shortest, and many of those CVs were someone's first.
• Length rose with experience: 1.28 pages on CVs without a dated job, 1.97 at six to ten years since the first job, 2.45 after more than twenty. That spread is wider than the gap between any two countries in the study.
• Country still mattered at the same career stage. With three to ten years since their first job, people in Kenya averaged 2.28 pages and people in France 1.57.
• The median page held 162 words. The median one page CV had 138 words and the median two page CV 324.
• Local habits vary even more than length. 40.3% of German CVs gave a date of birth, against 5.9% in the United States. 44.3% of UK CVs said references were available on request. 39.2% of CVs from Poland ended with a data consent line.

How long CVs are in each country

These are the 16 countries where 100 or more people downloaded a CV in those eight weeks, sorted by average length. The thin vertical line marks the average across all 175 countries.

The table gives the full split. Three or more includes the CVs that ran to four pages or longer, and median words counts the words of content, without the name and contact block.

Kenya stands apart at the top. 29.0% of Kenyan CVs ran to three pages or more and 10.5% to four or more, a share only Ethiopia came near, at 8.8%. Nigeria and Ethiopia follow, and Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and India sit just under two pages. At the other end, Morocco, Germany and France sit close together, with fewer than one in ten CVs going past two pages.

The United Kingdom (1.75) and the United States (1.74) are almost identical, which may surprise anyone who thinks of the American resume as strictly one page: 40.7% of the US CVs were one page and 47.3% were two. Among the large samples, India had the second highest share of two page CVs (54.2%), after the United Arab Emirates (59.0%).

How much should you trust a gap between two countries? With 100 CVs, an average has a margin of error of about 0.17 pages either way, and with 1,000 CVs about 0.05. Kenya's lead over Germany is real. The United Kingdom against the United States, or Australia against the United Arab Emirates, is a tie.

Twenty more countries, with smaller samples

These countries had 50 to 99 CVs each. At 50 CVs, an average has a margin of error of about 0.24 pages either way and a share about 14 points, so small gaps may be down to chance.

The clearest result holds even at this size: CVs from Argentina, Brazil and Algeria were short, and many of them were first CVs. 38.8% of the Argentinian CVs and 28.1% of the Brazilian ones listed no job at all, against 11.1% across the whole study.

Malaysia (2.04) and Indonesia (1.99) had the highest averages in this group. Canada (1.78) and Ireland (1.77) were close to the UK and US figures. Argentina (3.0%) and Poland (4.1%) had the lowest shares of CVs past two pages among the 36 countries shown.

Length rises with experience

We worked out how long each person had been working from the first year of the earliest job on their CV, so a first job that started in 2016 counts as ten years. CVs where no job had a year, including the ones with no job at all, form their own group.

Length climbs with every band. Three in four people without a dated job had a one page CV. By six to ten years it was one in four, and from sixteen years on more than a third of CVs ran to three pages or more.

The climb flattens near the top. Past twenty years the median CV had fewer words (406) than at sixteen to twenty years (451), and the share at three pages or more was about the same, at 36.8% against 36.6%.

This changes how to read the country tables. A country where more people are writing a first CV will look shorter, which is part of why Argentina and Brazil sit at the bottom.

The same career stage in different countries

To separate local habit from experience, we compared only the people with three to ten years since their first job. That group holds 3,384 of the 7,911 CVs and averages 1.84 pages. The country groups are smaller here, from 44 CVs in Ethiopia to 436 in India, so gaps of less than about 0.2 pages may be down to chance.

The order barely moves. Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia and India still have the longest CVs at the same career stage, and France, Germany and the Philippines the shortest. Only 12.0% of Kenyan CVs at this stage fit on one page, against 48.4% of French ones, and the two averages are still 0.71 pages apart.

Two countries change places. Morocco moves up and the Philippines moves down once experience is held level, and their samples differ in age: the Moroccan one is younger (a median of four years since the first job) and the Filipino one older (nine years).

The pattern shows at the start of a career too. Among people with no dated job or up to two years since their first one, 53.1% of Kenyan CVs were one page, against 73.4% in the United States.

What fits on a page

Page count comes down to how much you write and how tightly the design sets it. This is what the CVs at each length held. Words means the words in the summary and every section, leaving out the name and contact block, links and dates.

The median page held 162 words. Most one page CVs were also short on words: 56.7% had fewer than 150. A page can take more than that, and the design decides how much. Across the eight designs used by 100 or more people in the study, the median page held between 139 and 182 words. Some of that gap comes from who picks which design, and some from the designs themselves.

The median three page CV listed five jobs, 26 bullet points and 13 skills, and two in three CVs at three pages or more (66.7%) had 600 words or more.

Bullet points and jobs

Among people listing two to four jobs, page count rose with the number of bullet points under each job. 70.4% of those writing fewer than two bullet points per job fit on one page. With six or more per job, 9.8% did.

Across everyone with at least one job, the median was 3.75 bullet points per job.

The number of jobs counts as well. CVs with no job listed averaged 1.20 pages, and 81.7% of them were one page. CVs listing eight or more jobs averaged 3.01 pages, and 59.6% ran to three pages or more.

Summaries and skills lists

91.7% of CVs opened with a summary, and the median summary ran to 50 words. CVs with longer summaries were longer overall: 1.58 pages on average with a summary of up to 40 words, 1.89 with 41 to 80, 2.24 with 81 to 120 and 2.74 past 120 words. CVs with no summary averaged 1.49 pages.

The median CV listed 8 skills, and 21.2% listed 15 or more. CVs with 16 or more skills averaged 2.41 pages, against 1.64 for six to ten. Of the large samples, India had the longest skills lists, with a median of 11 and 31.8% listing 15 or more. Germany and France had a median of 7.

What goes on a CV in each country

CVs from different countries also differ in what they include. The table shows how often CVs in each of the 16 large samples carried personal details, a languages section and references. Referees listed means names and contact details printed on the CV. On request means the line saying references are available on request.

A date of birth appeared on 24.4% of all CVs. In Germany it was 40.3%, in South Africa 35.4% and in Saudi Arabia 34.2%. In the United States it was 5.9%, in Australia 6.7% and in the United Kingdom 9.4%. Marital status split the same way, from 29.1% in Saudi Arabia to 1.0% in Australia. Among the smaller samples, Sri Lanka (49.2%), Italy (42.9%) and Bangladesh (41.0%) had the most CVs with a date of birth, and Canada the fewest in that group (6.3%).

References divide the English speaking countries. In the United Kingdom, 44.3% of CVs said references were available on request and 3.6% printed referees. In South Africa (34.5%) and Kenya (30.9%) about a third printed referees' names and contact details. Australia sat between the two, with 20.2% listing referees and 35.6% using the on request line. In Germany and Morocco, no CV in the sample listed referees.

A languages section was close to universal in Morocco (94.1%) and Germany (93.8%), and appeared on about half of UK (53.6%) and US (55.9%) CVs. In the smaller samples it ranged from 48.4% in New Zealand to 96.7% in Tunisia.

One habit is almost entirely regional. 39.2% of CVs from Poland and 28.6% from Italy ended with a line consenting to the processing of personal data for recruitment. Romania (13.8%) and the Netherlands (11.0%) came next, and across all 175 countries the figure was 3.5%. Our builder suggests that line when a CV is written in Polish or German, so part of the Polish figure comes from the prompt. Italian CVs get no such prompt.

Among the large samples, certificates were most common in Saudi Arabia (48.7%) and Ethiopia (45.6%), a projects section in India (23.1%), and a LinkedIn link in India (27.1%) and Egypt (25.6%), against 9.1% in the United Kingdom.

Our UK CV format and Indian resume format guides cover the local style of two of the largest samples in detail.

Official advice and what people send

• United Kingdom. The National Careers Service says “You should not include your age, your date of birth, whether you're married or your nationality”, and says you can instead say that references are available on request. Most UK CVs in our data follow it: 9.4% gave a date of birth, 6.3% a nationality and 2.8% a marital status, and 44.3% used the on request line.
• United States, federal jobs. The Office of Personnel Management says that starting 27 September 2025, USAJOBS restricts all resumes to two pages, and an applicant whose only resume is longer is “ineligible for further consideration”. 12.0% of the US CVs in our data ran to three pages or more, too long for a federal application as they stood.
• Europe. The Europass CV instructions published by Cedefop say “in most cases, two pages are enough” and warn that “A three page CV may be considered too long in some countries”. Across the nine European countries in our data, the share past two pages ran from 4.1% in Poland to 15.7% in Ireland.
• Germany. The Aschaffenburg office of the Federal Employment Agency recommends a Lebenslauf of “maximal zwei Seiten”, two pages at most, and lists nationality and a portrait photo among its contents. 92% of the German CVs in our data stayed within two pages, and 25.2% gave a nationality.

This study describes what people send. For advice on choosing between one page and two at each stage of a career, see our guide on how long a resume should be. Our one page resume template covers what to cut to fit a single page.

How we measured

• Source. Every PDF downloaded from FreeCV is logged with its page count, and the country of the connection has been recorded since 2 September 2026. Between 2 September and 29 October 2026 there were 20,328 such downloads. Leaving out our own test accounts, they came from 8,239 people.
• One CV per person. We kept the latest CV each person downloaded, matched by account, by email address or, failing both, by connection and name.
• What we removed. 72 CVs still carrying a job, title and employer both, from one of our example CVs, and 256 CVs with fewer than 20 words of content, which were tests of the builder. That left 7,911 CVs from 175 countries.
• Country. The country of the internet connection at the moment of download. That is usually where the person lives, though people working abroad, as many do in the Gulf, count where they were.
• Pages. The page count of the PDF the person downloaded, in the design and paper size they chose.
• Words. The words in the summary and every printed section. The name and contact block, links and dates are not counted, and neither are hidden sections or referees set not to print.
• Years since the first job. 2026 minus the earliest start year of any job on the CV.
• Privacy. Only counts were taken out of the database. We did not read or quote anyone's wording, no country with fewer than 50 CVs is shown, and the download holds the same aggregates.
• Margins. CV length varies with a standard deviation of 0.85 pages. At 95% confidence, an average from 100 CVs has a margin of error of about 0.17 pages either way, and one from 50 CVs about 0.24. For a share, the margin is about 10 points at 100 CVs and 14 points at 50.
• Limits. These are people who chose a free online CV builder, so they lean early career, and the sample is no census of a country's job seekers. Every CV was set in a FreeCV design, which affects words per page. We could not measure photos, because the archive does not keep them.

Our UK CV format and Indian resume format guides used the same archive up to 21 October, without the example and word filters, so their figures differ from these by up to three points.

Download the data

The full table for the 36 countries with 50 or more CVs, plus the row for all 175 countries, is free to download. It has 33 columns, including figures the tables above leave out, such as gender, LinkedIn links, certificates, projects and the data consent line. You are welcome to quote the figures with a link to this page.

Download cv-length-by-country.csv

To cite this study: FreeCV, “CV Length by Country: We Measured 7,911 CVs From 175 Countries”, 30 October 2026, https://freecv.org/blog/cv-length-by-country

Sources

• U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Agency Guidance on the Two Page Limit on Resume Length (2025): the USAJOBS two page limit from 27 September 2025.
• National Careers Service, CV sections: personal details to leave off a UK CV, and references on request.
• Cedefop, Europass curriculum vitae instructions: two pages are enough in most cases.
• Agentur für Arbeit Aschaffenburg, Bewerbungsstandards (2019): Lebenslauf of two pages at most.
• Everything else on this page comes from FreeCV's own download data, counted on 30 October 2026.

Frequently asked questions