World Clock / Australia / vs Switzerland

🇦🇺 Australia vs 🇨🇭 Switzerland

Live side-by-side comparison of government debt. Australia currently owes about 2.5× as much as Switzerland — a gap of $648.1 billion. Updated every second from each country's baseline figure; sources below.

🇦🇺
Australia
$1,080,735,160,419
Debt-to-GDP52%
Per citizen$38,491
Per second+$4,919
VS
🇨🇭
Switzerland
$432,635,467,565
Debt-to-GDP40%
Per citizen$47,417
Per second+$304
In nominal terms, Australia carries the larger government debt — roughly 2.5× that of Switzerland, a difference of $648.1 billion. Debt-to-GDP (Australia: 52%, Switzerland: 40%) says more about the burden than the raw total does.

Among the 135 governments tracked here, Australia ranks 77th by debt-to-GDP and Switzerland 98th. Measured per person, Australia is 21st and Switzerland 13th.

Analysis

By total government debt, Australia ranks 14th and Switzerland 25th among the 135 sovereigns tracked on this site.

On a per-citizen basis the picture can look different from the nominal totals: a resident's notional share of the government debt in Switzerland is roughly 1.2× that in Australia ($47,417 vs $38,491 per person).

Both sit below 60% of GDP, the EU's Maastricht reference value — Australia at 52% and Switzerland at 40%. A low ratio is not on its own a sign of strength: some governments borrow little because lenders will not lend to them.

The gap between them is widening: Australia's debt is growing faster in dollar terms ($5K/sec vs $304/sec for Switzerland), adding roughly $398,736,000 to the difference each day.

Scale is part of the story too: Australia's population (28M) is about 3.1× Switzerland's (9M), which is part of why the nominal and per-capita comparisons above can point in different directions — a government's debt load scales loosely with the size of both its economy and its population, not either alone.

This analysis is generated automatically from live data as an educational orientation, not financial advice — see the methodology page for definitions and caveats.

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Source: Global Debt Clock, based on the IMF World Economic Outlook (October 2026, general government gross debt).
Live data: /api/compare?a=au&b=ch · Australia page · Switzerland page
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