Countries with the largest external debt

Countries with the largest external debt is a live ranking of the top 50 entries in finance and crypto by External debt stocks, built from public data published by World Bank Open Data. It was last refreshed on 2026-10-29. This is the first published snapshot; from the next refresh onwards the page will also show movers, new entries and a rank history chart.

China currently holds #1 with 2,419.84 DOD, current US$ bn. India is second with 716.46 DOD, current US$ bn, which puts the leader 3.4 times ahead. Brazil completes the top three with 605.46 DOD, current US$ bn. Together the top three account for about 60% of the combined top-10 total, which gives a quick sense of how concentrated this ranking is.

How it is measured: Total external debt is debt owed to nonresidents repayable in currency, goods, or services. Total external debt is the sum of public, publicly guaranteed, and private nonguaranteed long-term debt, use of IMF credit, and short-term debt. Short-term debt includes all debt having an original maturity of one year or less and interest in arrears on long-term debt. Data are in current U.S. dollars. Most recent year available per country, World Bank indicator DT.DOD.DECT.CD. Caveat: Countries report in different years; each shows its latest available figure. Source: World Bank Open Data (CC BY 4.0). The full top 50 is on this page, with positions 11 to 50 one click away, and each entry links to its own profile showing every ranking it appears in.

Use this page to check who is number one right now, compare any two entries head to head, or test yourself with the quiz, which asks you to name all ten in three minutes. Year-end archives are available for 2026, freezing the ranking as it stood at the close of each year. Top10Earth never estimates or edits a value: each number is fetched from its source, hashed, stored and ranked by software, then checked by a quality gate before it is published. If a refresh fails the gate, the previous snapshot stays live and the problem is reviewed by a person.