This article contains a list of contract killers, both living and deceased, sorted by the country in which they engaged in said crimes.
[1] As implied by the name, the contract killer typically does such solely for the purpose of profit and often lacks any personal connection to their intended target.
A hitman, on the other hand, is a term that is often synonymous with contract killer although it can also be used to denote a criminal who frequently carries out a targeted killing (referred to as a "hit") on behalf of an organized crime syndicate to which they are affiliated with.
[4][5] Persons who have only carried out an assassination-style murder at the behest of their own motivation, without having either a criminal background, or links to the criminal underworld or other such groups, do not qualify as hitmen.
They are not to be included in this list, nor are assassins who perform killings under the discretion of an official government unless they are purposely done in extrajudicial manner.