ISO 3166
LK
Primary locale
si-LK
Currency
LKR · Sri Lankan Rupee
Region
APAC · SA

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has 22M people, and 12M of them are online. Sinhala is the most widely spoken language at 68%, one of 3 languages CLDR lists here. Sinhala and Tamil are official nationally. A product shipping here defaults to si-LK.

SinhalaTamilAPACSA

At a glance

Each figure is drawn against the rest of the world, so a number means something before you have any other market to compare it with.

People online

12M

0%world median 81%100%

55% of 22M people use the internet, per the World Bank's 2024 figure. CLDR population multiplied by that share, so read it as an estimate rather than a headcount.

Income per person

$5,002

Higher than 34% of 213 territories

GDP per capita in current US dollars, World Bank Open Data, most recent reported year. A rough guide to what people can spend, not what your product will earn.

Can pay online

82%

0%world median 71%100%

Adults aged 15 and over holding a bank or mobile-money account, World Bank Global Findex 2024. Below half means a card-only checkout excludes most of the market.

Languages

3

Sinhala 68% · Tamil 15% · English 10%

Languages CLDR records here with a share of 0.1% or more. 2 of them are official nationally.

English proficiency

486

Very lowVery high

Low proficiency on the EF EPI 2025 scale. The sample is self-selected online test takers, so treat it as colour for a discussion. It never enters any score on this site.

Adult literacy

91%

0%world median 95%100%

Share of adults who can read, as recorded in CLDR territory data. Low literacy shifts a product toward icons, audio, and video before it shifts toward another language.

What people speak

Shares count first and second languages, so they sum past 100% and one bilingual person is counted twice.

Most spoken in Sri Lanka

share of 22M people

Filled bars are nationally official languages. Every bar is drawn against the largest language rather than against 100%, so a 1% language stays visible.

One country understates a language. CLDR records diaspora too, so a language usually reaches further than any single page shows. The language profiles show each one's full footprint.

What you would ship

Configuration for day one, computed live with Intl.* against si-LK, the dominant locale for this market.

Plural categories

2

Standard. Use Intl.PluralRules for the few cases that matter.

Script family

Other-Brahmic

Bundle a Noto-class webfont that covers this script. OS defaults vary.

Reading direction

Left-to-right

Standard. Use dir='auto' on user-generated content fields.

Date

2026 බක් 21

Short: 2026-04-21

Time

18.30

Week starts Mon

Currency

රු. 1,234.56

1,234.56 in LKR · Sri Lankan Rupee

The engineering behind the flags: Font fallback: why the OS picks the wrong glyphs for this script