The Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom for 2019, a broad indicator of economic freedom in 180 countries, ranked Lebanon in 154th place worldwide and in 12th place among 15 Arab countries that have a full dataset. Lebanon came in 41st place among 49 upper middle-income countries (UMICs) included in the survey. Lebanon ranked in 140th place globally and in 12th place among Arab countries in 2018, while it ranked in 137th place globally and in 11th place in the Arab world on the 2017 index. 

The index evaluates individual economies on the basis of 12 equally-weighted broad factors of economic freedom divided into four pillars that are the rule of law, government size, regulatory efficiency and market openness. A country's score ranges between zero and 100, with 100 reflecting the most free economy. 

Globally, Lebanon has a higher level of economic freedom than Iran, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a lower level than Brazil, Niger and Afghanistan among economies with a GDP of $10bn or more. It also has a higher level of economic freedom than Iran, Turkmenistan, Ecuador, Algeria, Equatorial Guinea, Cuba and Venezuela among UMICs. 

Lebanon's level of economic freedom reached 51.1% in the 2019 survey relative to 53.2% in 2018 and 53.3% in the 2017 survey. Lebanon's 2019 score was below the global level of economic freedom of 60.8%, the UMICs' level of 59.7% and the Arab level of economic freedom of 58.9%. The survey maintained Lebanon's economic freedom status in the "mostly unfree" category for the seventh consecutive year. Lebanon was downgraded in the 2013 survey from the "moderately free" category.

The survey indicated that the decrease in Lebanon's overall economic freedom score was due to a weaker performance on the judicial effectiveness, trade freedom and investment freedom indicators, despite the modest improvement in the labor freedom indicator.