At NationMaster, we've always prided ourselves on being a largely free service – journalists come here for information about stories, net-users link to us to prove arguments in chat rooms, and stat buffs from all over the world come just to sift through the endlessly interesting statistics – all for free. But special functions – such as pie charts, scatterplots, and correlations graphs – have traditionally been reserved as rewards for those who chose to give a little bit extra to support the site.

Until today.

Now the entire site is free. For the first time, anyone in the world can generate pie charts, scatterplots, and correlations graphs for just about any statistic. And the results are amazing – even if we do say so ourselves! Want a pie chart showing which countries make up the greatest percentage of total world arms exports? Need to know what the correlation is between mobile phone use and women’s rights? Just try it out – we're sure you’ll be astonished at what you find.

Luke Metcalfe, founder of the site, explains the reasoning behind the shift:

"Because of all the support we've received over the past few years, we've reached a point where the site is financially self-sustaining. Rather than give ourselves a pay rise, we've decided it's a good time to give something back. Not enough people have been getting access to some of NationMaster's most amazing features. Now everyone can use all the site, all the time."

To use any of the newly free features, just adjust the "View" entry in the green NationMaster "Make Your Own Graph" toolbar. By default, it reads "Map & Graph / Table". Simply click on the arrow beside it, and select "Scatterplot", "Pie Chart", or "Correlations" from the drop-down box. Then select the statistics you want to compare. It's that easy!

Lastly, a word to our loyal supporters – from all of us here at NationMaster, thank you. Without your generous support, we would never have arrived where we are today – ready to give the whole world free access to the entire site.

Once again, everyone here at NationMaster extends a big thanks to all our supporters! Enjoy the newly free features!