U.S. National Debt Tracker
The Treasury's own published total, not an animated estimate.
Total public debt outstanding
$39.93 trillion
$39,934,816,207,844 as of August 13, 2026.
- Per person
- $116,527
- Across 342,709,745 residents.
- Change over 12 months
- +$2.89 trillion
- Up 7.8% since August 13, 2025.
- Average per day
- +$7.9 billion
- Averaged across the past year, not a live rate.
Who the debt is owed to
| Category | Amount | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Held by the public | $32.20 trillion | 80.6% |
| Intragovernmental holdings | $7.73 trillion | 19.4% |
Debt held by the public is owed to outside investors and must be financed in credit markets. Intragovernmental holdings are owed to federal trust funds — chiefly Social Security and Medicare — which are required by law to invest their reserves in Treasury securities.
Debt figures: U.S. Treasury, Debt to the Penny, updated each business day. Per-person figures use the U.S. Census Bureau population clock reading of 342,709,745 taken on July 29, 2026.
This is the Treasury's own number, not an estimate. The Bureau of the Fiscal Service publishes total public debt outstanding every business day in a dataset called Debt to the Penny, and that is the figure shown here, along with the date it was recorded.
Most debt counters on the internet extrapolate — they take an old figure and animate a ticker forward at an assumed rate. This one does not. What you see is the last published close, which is less dramatic and considerably more accurate.
Debt versus deficit
These get used interchangeably and mean different things. The deficit is a single year's shortfall: what the government spent minus what it collected over twelve months. The debt is the running total of every past deficit, minus any surpluses, plus accumulated interest. A falling deficit still adds to the debt — it just adds less than the year before. The debt only shrinks when the government runs an actual surplus, which last happened at the end of the 1990s.
Who the money is owed to
Total public debt splits into two parts. Debt held by the public is money owed to outside investors — individuals, pension funds, banks, mutual funds, state governments, the Federal Reserve, and foreign holders. Intragovernmental holdings are money the government owes itself, chiefly the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, which by law invest their surpluses in Treasury securities. Economists generally watch debt held by the public most closely, because that is the portion that must be financed in credit markets.
What the per-person figure does and does not mean
Dividing the total by the U.S. population gives a share-per-resident figure that makes an incomprehensible number legible. It is a useful illustration, not a bill: no individual owes this, it is not assessed against anyone, and it counts newborns and retirees alike. Economists more often compare debt to gross domestic product, because that measures the debt against the income available to service it — the same way a lender looks at a mortgage against a salary rather than as a raw sum.
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National Debt Tracker — Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the current U.S. national debt?
- The figure at the top of this page is the most recent total public debt outstanding published by the U.S. Treasury, shown with the date it was recorded. Treasury updates it every business day, so it reflects the last completed trading day rather than a live ticker.
- What is the difference between the national debt and the deficit?
- The deficit is the gap between spending and revenue in one fiscal year. The debt is the accumulated total of all past deficits plus interest. Reducing the deficit slows how fast the debt grows but does not reduce the debt itself — that requires a surplus.
- Who owns the U.S. national debt?
- Roughly four-fifths is held by the public: domestic investors, pension and mutual funds, banks, state and local governments, the Federal Reserve, and foreign governments and investors. The remainder is intragovernmental — mostly the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, which are required by law to hold their reserves in Treasury securities.
- How much national debt is there per person?
- The per-person figure on this page is the Treasury total divided by the current U.S. resident population estimate from the Census Bureau. It is a way of scaling the number to something imaginable, not a debt any individual owes or will be billed for.
- Where does this data come from?
- The Treasury Department's Debt to the Penny dataset, published through the Bureau of the Fiscal Service and available free without an API key. It is the authoritative federal record of total public debt outstanding.