How Accurate Is the Debt Clock?
A live counter is a model: it starts from an official figure and adds a steady amount every second. Only one counter on this site can be checked against an official number every business day, the United States, because the Treasury publishes its total public debt daily. This page does that check for every close since this site began keeping a record of what it served, July 10, 2026.
For each Treasury close, the counter is the figure this site was showing at the end of that day, using the data version that was live then. Nothing here has been recalculated with later data.
The counter minus the Treasury’s figure, as a share of the Treasury’s figure. Above zero, the counter was ahead. The green band is the ±0.5% re-anchor limit; dotted lines mark each time the counter was reset.
How the US counter works
Since November 2, 2026, the counter starts from the Treasury’s Debt to the Penny figure at the close of October 29, 2026 and grows at that record’s own pace over the previous 12 months, $79,753 a second. It is reset to the latest close whenever it drifts more than 0.5% from it.
The Treasury’s figure moves in steps, not a line. On a typical day it changes by tens of billions as securities are issued and redeemed, so a smooth counter is always a little ahead or behind. The limit is set wide enough that ordinary daily movement does not force a reset.
Before that, the counter grew at the Congressional Budget Office’s deficit projection, $60,200 a second, from a starting figure set by hand. Between July 10, 2026 and October 30, 2026 its gap ran from +1.02% on July 13, 2026 to −0.46% on October 29, 2026, an average of 0.25% over 79 days. The recorded debt grew faster than the projection, so the gap drifted down, including after the starting figure was reset to a Treasury close in October. On October 29, 2026 the counter was 0.46% below the Treasury, which is what prompted the change.
Every change to the US counter
| Live from | Starting figure | As of | Per second | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 10, 2026 | $39.2800T | Apr 1 | $60,200 | No source recorded |
| October 15, 2026 | $40.3292T | Oct 15 | $60,200 | US Treasury total public debt, Debt to the Penny at close of 14 October 2026 (base), and CBO FY2026 deficit projection (growth rate) — a documented departure from IMF WEO |
| November 2, 2026 | $40.5936T | Oct 30 | $79,753 | US Treasury total public debt, Debt to the Penny at close of 29 October 2026 (base), and the change on the same record over the 12 months to that date (growth rate) — a documented departure from IMF WEO |
The last 30 Treasury closes
| Close of | Treasury | Counter | Difference | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 5 | $40.5561T | $40.6419T | +$85.8B | +0.21% |
| Nov 4 | $40.5502T | $40.6350T | +$84.8B | +0.21% |
| Nov 3 | $40.5474T | $40.6281T | +$80.7B | +0.20% |
| Nov 2 | $40.5021T | $40.6212T | +$119.1B | +0.29% |
| Oct 30 | $40.5245T | $40.4125T | −$112.1B | −0.28% |
| Oct 29 | $40.5936T | $40.4072T | −$186.4B | −0.46% |
| Oct 28 | $40.5511T | $40.4020T | −$149.0B | −0.37% |
| Oct 27 | $40.5823T | $40.3968T | −$185.4B | −0.46% |
| Oct 26 | $40.5284T | $40.3916T | −$136.7B | −0.34% |
| Oct 23 | $40.4632T | $40.3760T | −$87.1B | −0.21% |
| Oct 22 | $40.4443T | $40.3708T | −$73.5B | −0.18% |
| Oct 21 | $40.4136T | $40.3656T | −$48.0B | −0.12% |
| Oct 20 | $40.4395T | $40.3604T | −$79.1B | −0.20% |
| Oct 19 | $40.3964T | $40.3552T | −$41.2B | −0.10% |
| Oct 16 | $40.3875T | $40.3396T | −$47.9B | −0.12% |
| Oct 15 | $40.3883T | $40.3344T | −$53.9B | −0.13% |
| Oct 14 | $40.3292T | $40.3047T | −$24.6B | −0.06% |
| Oct 13 | $40.3439T | $40.2995T | −$44.4B | −0.11% |
| Oct 9 | $40.3015T | $40.2786T | −$22.8B | −0.06% |
| Oct 8 | $40.3053T | $40.2734T | −$31.9B | −0.08% |
| Oct 7 | $40.2840T | $40.2682T | −$15.8B | −0.04% |
| Oct 6 | $40.2730T | $40.2630T | −$10.0B | −0.03% |
| Oct 5 | $40.2491T | $40.2578T | +$8.7B | +0.02% |
| Oct 2 | $40.2424T | $40.2422T | −$0.2B | −0.00% |
| Oct 1 | $40.2606T | $40.2370T | −$23.6B | −0.06% |
| Sep 30 | $40.1718T | $40.2318T | +$60.0B | +0.15% |
| Sep 29 | $40.0970T | $40.2266T | +$129.7B | +0.32% |
| Sep 28 | $40.1022T | $40.2214T | +$119.2B | +0.30% |
| Sep 25 | $40.0972T | $40.2058T | +$108.6B | +0.27% |
| Sep 24 | $40.0688T | $40.2006T | +$131.8B | +0.33% |
Why the other counters cannot be checked daily
Every other country on this site runs from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook, which publishes each government’s debt once a year and is revised twice a year, in April and October. There is no daily figure to test them against. What can be shown is how much each change of data moved them. These are the world totals for the end of 2025 that this site has used since its record began, including the first, which had no recorded source:
| Live from | World, end-2025 | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| July 10, 2026 | $100.000T | No source recorded; a round figure |
| August 20, 2026 | $112.211T | Sum of 137 tracked sovereigns plus 59 further WEO reporters (IMF WEO April 2026, end-2025 stocks) |
| August 25, 2026 | $111.497T | Sum of the 137 sovereigns tracked here plus 58 further IMF WEO reporters (April 2026 vintage, end-2025 stocks). The growth rate is the sum of all 195 component rates, so the aggregate cannot be overtaken by its own parts. |
| October 15, 2026 | $111.703T | Sum of the 137 sovereigns tracked here plus 59 further IMF WEO reporters (October 2026 vintage, end-2025 stocks). The growth rate is the sum of all 196 component rates, so the aggregate cannot be overtaken by its own parts. |
| October 16, 2026 | $111.651T | Sum of the 137 sovereigns tracked here plus 59 further IMF WEO reporters (October 2026 vintage, end-2025 stocks). The growth rate is the sum of all 196 component rates, so the aggregate cannot be overtaken by its own parts. |
| October 17, 2026 | $111.454T | Sum of the 135 sovereigns tracked here plus 59 further IMF WEO reporters (October 2026 vintage, end-2025 stocks). The growth rate is the sum of all 194 component rates, so the aggregate cannot be overtaken by its own parts. |
| October 17, 2026 | $111.453T | Sum of the 135 sovereigns tracked here plus 59 further IMF WEO reporters (October 2026 vintage, end-2025 stocks). The growth rate is the sum of all 194 component rates, so the aggregate cannot be overtaken by its own parts. |
| November 2, 2026 | $111.129T | Sum of the 135 sovereigns tracked here plus 59 further IMF WEO reporters (October 2026 vintage, end-2025 stocks). The growth rate is the sum of all 194 component rates, so the aggregate cannot be overtaken by its own parts. |
| November 6, 2026 | $111.129T | Sum of the 194 countries and territories tracked here (IMF WEO October 2026 vintage, end-2025 stocks, with the US on the Treasury's record). The growth rate is the sum of all 194 component rates, so the aggregate cannot be overtaken by its own parts. |
Each change is explained in the changelog, and the largest one in what changed in the IMF’s October 2026 data.
Check it yourself
The rows on this page are in /data/accuracy.json. The Treasury’s figures come from its Debt to the Penny dataset. What the counter showed at any moment can be fetched from /api/debt/snapshot?c=us&t=2026-11-01T00:00:00Z, which answers from the same record. The US debt limit, a different measure, is tracked on the US page.