Total public debt outstandingestimate
$40,124,266,775,774
+$83,374 a second, about $7.2 billion a day
Official figure: $40,097,178,119,750.91 on 25 September 2026 (U.S. Treasury, Debt to the Penny). The clock carries on from there at the average pace of the last 12 months.
- Debt per personper US resident
- $114,820
- Debt per taxpayerper individual tax return (162.8 million)
- $246,464
- Added todaysince midnight, your time
- $4,577,653,957
- Interest per secondfiscal 2026 average
- $33,938
- Debt to GDPagainst 2025 GDP
- 130.4%
Everything on this card except the official figure is an estimate.
Debt limit
Congress caps how much the Treasury may borrow. Almost all of the debt counts against that cap.
- Statutory debt limitofficial, 31 August 2026
- $41.1 trillion
- Debt subject to the limitestimate
- $39,938,567,813,579
- Room leftestimate
- $1,165,427,846,652
- Limit reached at this paceestimate
- around 10 March 2027
Treasury can then use extraordinary measures for some months. This is not the date the government runs out of cash.
Source: U.S. Treasury, Monthly Statement of the Public Debt, table 2, 31 August 2026. The estimates move the debt subject to the limit along with the clock.
Who holds the debt
- Held by the publicinvestors, banks, the Federal Reserve, foreign governments
- $32.39 trillion 80.8%
- Intragovernmental holdingsowed to federal trust funds such as Social Security
- $7.71 trillion 19.2%
More official figures
- Added since 31 December 2025
- $1.58 trillion
- Deficit, fiscal 2026 to August 2026
- $1.97 trillion
- Interest on Treasury securities, fiscal 2026 to August 2026
- $981.8 billion
- Interest credited to federal trust funds, fiscal 2026 (not in the line above)
- $286 billion
U.S. Treasury figures. The split is for 25 September 2026.
How the clock works
The Treasury publishes the exact total public debt for every business day, one business day later. The clock starts from the latest of those figures and adds the average change per second of the last 12 months: $83,374. When a new figure comes out, an open page moves over to it within ten minutes instead of jumping.
Day to day the real debt does not move in a straight line. It jumps around tax dates and at the start of each quarter, and it can fall for a few days. Over a year the average is a fair guide, so the clock uses it and says so.
Why debt clocks disagree
Clocks differ in what they count, which figure they start from and how fast they run. This one counts total public debt outstanding, the number the Treasury calls the national debt: debt held by the public plus what the government owes its own trust funds. Some clocks show only the debt held by the public, about 81% of the total.
Debt per person divides by our estimate of the US population, based on the UN's World Population Prospects. Debt per taxpayer divides by the 162.8 million individual income tax returns the IRS processed in fiscal 2025; there is no official count of taxpayers.
Sources
- U.S. Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service: Debt to the Penny (daily, latest 25 September 2026), Monthly Statement of the Public Debt (31 August 2026), Interest Expense on the Public Debt Outstanding (August 2026), Monthly Treasury Statement and Historical Debt Outstanding.
- World Bank: GDP in current US dollars, 2025.
- IRS: Data Book, individual income tax returns, fiscal 2025.
- Population: UN DESA, World Population Prospects 2024, turned into a live estimate by Livecounts.nl.
- Livecounts.nl is not affiliated with the U.S. Treasury or any government. Every live number is our estimate from their published figures.