How much does the US government pay in interest each year?

The government spent $1.22 trillion on interest in fiscal 2025, nearly three times the $414 billion of 2010, as both the debt and interest rates rose. This counts interest on all federal debt, including debt held by trust funds such as Social Security, so it is higher than the budget's "net interest". Not adjusted for inflation; this Treasury dataset starts in fiscal 2010.

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Key facts

Measure: Interest in US dollars. Written from the data below.

  • The latest figure, for 2026, is $1.36T.
  • That is 3.3 times the 2010 figure, $414B.
  • It is the highest in the data, which go back to 2010.
  • The lowest was $360B in 2012.

Source and date

Source
U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data, Interest Expense on the Public Debt Outstanding
License
Public domain (U.S. government work)
Data as of
Published

Citation

Chartly. “How much does the US government pay in interest each year?” Chart. Data: U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data, Interest Expense on the Public Debt Outstanding, https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/interest-expense-debt-outstanding/ (data as of September 30, 2026). https://chart.ly/charts/federal-interest-cost (accessed October 15, 2026).

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The data

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The file has the numbers in this table, with the source, license and date. Please credit the source and Chartly.

Fiscal year Interest in US dollars
2010 413,954,825,362
2011 454,393,280,417
2012 359,796,008,919
2013 415,688,781,248
2014 430,812,121,372
2015 402,435,356,075
2016 432,649,652,901
2017 458,542,287,312
2018 523,017,301,446
2019 574,587,783,464
2020 522,767,299,265
2021 562,388,232,682
2022 718,745,810,097
2023 882,598,268,533
2024 1,133,036,890,149
2025 1,220,025,282,630
2026 1,360,396,866,366

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