Is UK debt high? How Britain compares

"Britain is drowning in debt" and "Britain's debt is perfectly normal" are both said with confidence. The official international figures show something in between: the UK's debt is middling for a rich country, but it has grown faster than its peers', and it is unusually expensive to service.

First, which number?

Comparing countries means using the same yardstick. The figure on our live counter, public sector net debt, is the UK's own headline measure: £3,005.0 billion, or 94.0% of GDP, at the end of September 2026. Other countries don't publish that exact measure.

For international comparisons, economists use general government gross debt, which the IMF and the EU calculate in the same way for every country. On that basis the ONS puts UK debt at £3,231.9 billion at the end of September 2026, about 101% of GDP (our calculation from ONS figures). The two UK numbers are both correct. They just count different things: the gross figure doesn't subtract the government's cash and liquid assets, and it leaves out the Bank of England and other public corporations.

The G7 league table

On this measure the UK sits sixth of seven: only Germany is lower. Japan is in a league of its own at 206.5%, which is lower than older figures because the IMF changed how it measures Japan's debt. Italy (137.1%), the United States (123.9%), France (116.0%) and Canada (113.5%) all carry more debt relative to the size of their economies. Only Germany (62.9%) is far below.

Beyond the G7, Greece is at 145.7% and Spain at 100.4%, close to the UK. Ireland (32.9%) and Australia (51.0%) are much lower.

Net debt tells a similar story, with one twist

The IMF also estimates net debt, which subtracts the financial assets governments hold. The UK's 2025 figure is 93.8%, below Italy (127.7%), France (108.8%), the US (96.7%) and Japan (136.5%), and well above Germany (47.2%). The twist is Canada: its net debt is just 10.2% because its governments hold large financial assets, including public pension funds. Countries differ in how much they save as well as how much they borrow.

Where the UK stands out

1. How fast it has grown

The Office for Budget Responsibility's October 2026 outlook makes the point bluntly. UK net debt rose by 19 percentage points of GDP between 2019 and 2025, against an average of 5 points for the other G7 economies.

2. The deficit

In 2025 the UK government spent 5.4% of GDP more than it raised, according to the IMF. Of the G7, only the US ran a bigger deficit (6.8%). France was at 5.1%, Italy 3.1%, Germany 2.7%, Canada 1.8% and Japan 1.1%. The IMF projected the UK deficit to narrow to 3.9% in 2026.

3. The interest bill

This is where the UK looks worst. The OBR says UK interest rates have been "among the highest in the G7 since 2022". It puts UK debt interest at £109 billion, or 3.5% of GDP, in 2025/26, rising to £160 billion (4.2%) by 2031/32. On a net basis derived from IMF data, the UK's interest burden in 2025 was about 2.6% of GDP. That is behind only the US and Italy (both 3.6%) in the G7, and above France (2.0%) and Germany (0.9%).

Part of the reason is that about a quarter of UK gilts (25.3% at the end of March 2026, according to the Debt Management Office) are linked to inflation, so the 2022 price surge fed straight into the bill. We explain it in full in the UK's interest bill.

4. One genuine strength: long-dated debt

UK government debt takes an average of 13.5 years to mature, the second-longest in the OECD after South Korea, against an OECD average of 8 years, according to the OECD's figures for 2025 (Global Debt Report 2026). That means a rise in interest rates takes years to work through the whole stock of debt, giving the UK more time to adjust than countries that must refinance quickly.

Debt the UK has carried before

By its own history, today's debt is not extreme. The OBR's records show UK debt at close to 180% of GDP after the Napoleonic Wars, 143% after the First World War, and an all-time high of about 250% after the Second World War. It fell to a low of 24% in 1991/92.

The difference is what drove it. Those peaks came from wars, and were brought down over decades of growth and inflation. Today's debt has built up in peacetime, through the 2008 financial crisis, the pandemic and the energy shock, and interest rates are no longer near zero.

So, is UK debt high?

Compared with other big economies: middling. Compared with its own peacetime history: high. Compared with how fast peers' debts have moved since 2019, and with what it costs to service: a real concern. The level is not unusual; the trend and the price are.

The comparison uses the IMF's April 2026 Fiscal Monitor so that every country is measured the same way. The IMF published an update in October 2026. Its figures may differ slightly; we will update this page when they can be checked.

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