Type what your household owes. See it against every household in the country, including the ones who owe nothing at all.
My household owes € and earns € a year before tax in the Netherlands. Age of the reference person:
Income is pre-filled with the published median for the Netherlands: €48,900. Change it for your own answer, or leave it and read the country's typical picture.
Your debt vs gross income · households in the Netherlands
249%
Above the typical load.
Heavier than the 206.4% median, but short of the 629.1% carried by the most-leveraged tenth.
You owe €122,000 against €48,900 of gross income. The typical indebted household in the Netherlands owes 206.4% of its gross income. You are at 1.2× that.
Read-out one
Where that amount sits.
56.6% of households in the Netherlands carry debt at all, and the survey publishes the distribution only for them. Among those households the median debt is €122,000 and the average is €148,600. The gap between the two is the handful of very large mortgages pulling the average up.
Lightest tenth
€8K
P10 of indebted households
One in ten indebted households in the Netherlands owes less than this.
Median debt
€122K
P50 of indebted households
Half owe more, half owe less. The average is €149K.
Heaviest tenth
€336K
P90 of indebted households
One in ten indebted households in the Netherlands owes more than this.
€122,000 sits at roughly the 50th percentile of indebted households in the Netherlands, read among households with debt rather than among all of them.
Read-out two
Debt against income.
The ratio that lenders and central banks actually watch. In the Netherlands the median indebted household owes 206.4% of its gross annual income; the most-leveraged tenth are at 629.1%. Across the euro area the median is 66.0%.
0%679%
You: 249%
Median: 206.4%
Top decile: 629.1%
One number worth reading twice: 206.4% is the median of household-level ratios, not the median debt divided by the median income. A household holding the median debt (€122,000) on the median income (€48,900) lands at 249%, because the two medians belong to different households and their quotient is not the published median.
At 249% of gross income you are above the 206.4% median for indebted households in the Netherlands, but below the 629.1% that marks the top decile, which at your income would be €307,630 of debt.
Euro-area median
66.0%
Across the euro area, indebted households owe 66.0% of gross income. The figure for the Netherlands is 206.4%: the same survey, the same definition, a different borrowing culture.
The stretched tenth
629.1%
Nine in ten indebted households in the Netherlands owe less than this multiple of their income. The euro-area figure at the same percentile is 374.5%.
Debt against assets
36.1%
Income is only half the picture: the median indebted household in the Netherlands owes this share of what it owns, and carries a loan-to-value of 42.3% on its home.
Read-out three
What carrying it costs.
Debt service is what leaves the account every month. The typical indebted household in the Netherlands pays €497 a month, which is 9.7% of gross income among those actually making payments; averaged over every indebted household, including those with nothing due, the ratio is 9.1%. The euro-area median is 12.5%.
We pay € a month towards it.
Leave that blank and the cards below describe other households: the typical indebted household in the Netherlands pays €497 a month, against €507 across the euro area. Fill it in and the page scores your own payment instead.
Median payment burden
9.7%
€497/month, published
Half of the households in the Netherlands making payments spend less of their income than this on debt.
Mortgage holders
10.9%
€581/month, published
The median share of gross income going to mortgage payments in the Netherlands.
Most stretched tenth
36.8%
No published payment figure
One in ten households in the Netherlands with payments spends more than this on debt service.
Payment amounts are the survey's own published medians (Table E7), not a ratio applied to your income. Your figure depends on your rate and remaining term.
Debt over a lifetime
The same country, six different answers.
Debt is not a level, it is a stage. In the Netherlands the load peaks at 249.1% of gross income for households aged 35 to 44 and falls to 207.5% for the oldest. Pick a band to compare against it rather than against the all-ages median, which mixes both ends together.
67.4% carry debt · median €56K · 5.6% of income on payments · 16.3% owe more than they own
68.2% carry debt · median €180K · 12.8% of income on payments · 5.5% owe more than they own
68.1% carry debt · median €151K · 11.5% of income on payments · 3.3% owe more than they own
57.9% carry debt · median €118K · 8.2% of income on payments · 3.0% owe more than they own
39.9% carry debt · median €100K · 6.6% of income on payments · 1.9% owe more than they own
32.7% carry debt · median €76K · 6.4% of income on payments · 0.1% owe more than they own
Bars are the median debt-to-income ratio for each band; the amber line is where you sit. Click a band to compare against it.
The same debt, elsewhere
Would this be normal in another country?
Your 249% of gross income, scored against every country in this comparison. The definitions are identical everywhere, so the only thing changing across the rows is the borrowing culture.
Country
Median
You vs that median
Where you land
🇳🇱the Netherlandsthis page
206.4%
1.2× the medianunder the 629.1% top decile
🇦🇹Austria
29.5%
8.5× the medianpast the 228.3% top decile
🇩🇪Germany
35.3%
7.1× the medianunder the 282.6% top decile
🇮🇪Ireland
42.5%
5.9× the medianunder the 249.6% top decile
🇮🇹Italy
58.7%
4.3× the medianunder the 299.4% top decile
🇫🇮Finland
80.6%
3.1× the medianunder the 283.8% top decile
🇪🇸Spain
84.3%
3.0× the medianunder the 389.0% top decile
🇫🇷France
92.0%
2.7× the medianunder the 437.2% top decile
🇧🇪Belgium
100.8%
2.5× the medianunder the 347.9% top decile
🇵🇹Portugal
102.6%
2.4× the medianunder the 424.1% top decile
🇱🇺Luxembourg
125.8%
2.0× the medianunder the 655.9% top decile
Medians are Table F1 and top deciles Table F2, both among indebted households and across all ages, so these rows do not move when you pick an age band above.
What the debt is made of
Mortgages, or everything else.
Property debt is 96.2% of all household debt in the Netherlands; the remaining 3.8% is credit lines, cards and other loans. The share of households holding each kind is a separate question from how much of the money it represents: a lot of households owe a little on cards, and a few owe a lot on a house.
Mortgage on the main home92.6%
Mortgage on other property3.6%
Credit lines and overdrafts0.2%
Credit-card debt<0.1%
Other non-mortgage loans3.6%
Own-home mortgage
46.3% of households
Median outstanding among those who hold it: €147,300.
Other-property mortgage
1.7% of households
Median outstanding among those who hold it: €124,000.
Non-mortgage debt
15.8% of households
Median outstanding among those who hold it: €9,300.
Three numbers worth the asterisk
What the Netherlands looks like from the outside.
Median debt-to-income, indebted households
206.4%, the highest of the 11 countries here
This is the number that defines household finance in the Netherlands: the typical indebted household owes 206.4% of its gross annual income. It is a mortgage market, not a consumer-credit one, and it means an interest-rate move lands harder here than almost anywhere else in the comparison.
Underwater households
5.1%
Share of households in the Netherlands whose debts exceed everything they own. The euro-area figure is 3.6%.
Households with any debt
56.6%
Against 41.5% across the euro area. The other 43.4% of households in the Netherlands owe nothing at all.
Typical debt, when there is debt
€122,000
Median outstanding among households in the Netherlands that hold any debt. Across the euro area the same figure is €31,800.
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The median indebted household in the Netherlands owes 206.4% of its gross annual income, the highest of the 11 countries covered here and well above the euro-area median of 66.0%. It is a mortgage story rather than a consumer-credit one: 96.2% of all household debt is secured on property, and 46.3% of households carry a mortgage on their own home. Long terms keep the monthly cost manageable (the median payment burden is only 9.7% of gross income), but the outstanding balance stays large for decades.
Among households that hold debt, the median outstanding balance in the Netherlands is €122,000 and the average is €148,600. The gap between the two is the point: a small number of very large mortgages pull the average well above the middle. The lightest tenth of indebted households owe under €8,100; the heaviest tenth owe more than €335,500. Note that these figures cover only the 56.6% of households that actually hold debt; the survey publishes no distribution for the rest.
43.4% of households in the Netherlands carry no debt at all, since 56.6% hold at least one liability. Across the euro area 41.5% of households hold debt, so being debt-free is less common here than the euro-area average. Being debt-free is a real position in this data, not a missing value: the survey counts those households, it simply publishes no debt distribution for them.
The survey does not prescribe a limit, but it does show what households actually do. Among households in the Netherlands making payments, the median is 9.7% of gross income; mortgage holders specifically are at 10.9%; and the most stretched tenth spend 36.8%. Averaged over all indebted households, including those with nothing due, the figure is 9.1%. The euro-area median is 12.5%.
There is no official threshold in the survey, but three published markers together make the case. Debt above 629.1% of gross income puts a household in the most-leveraged tenth in the Netherlands; debt service above 36.8% of gross income does the same on the payment side; and 5.1% of households already owe more than everything they own. The liquid buffer matters as much as the ratios: median net liquid assets in the Netherlands are 42.4% of gross income.
46.3% of households in the Netherlands hold a mortgage on the home they live in, with a median outstanding balance of €147,300. A further 1.7% hold a mortgage on other property. The median loan-to-value on the main residence is 42.3%, and the median indebted household's total debt is 36.1% of everything it owns.
By amount owed, 96.2% of household debt in the Netherlands is secured on property and 3.8% is not; credit-card balances are <0.1% of the total and credit lines and overdrafts 0.2%. By number of households the picture flips: 15.8% hold non-mortgage debt with a median of just €9,300, while the 46.3% with a mortgage owe a median of €147,300. Many households owe a little; a few owe a lot.
5.1% of households in the Netherlands owe more than everything they own is worth, against 3.6% across the euro area. Negative net wealth is not the same as being unable to pay (a recent mortgage on a home that has not yet appreciated produces it too), but it is the point at which a forced sale would not clear the debt.
56.6% of households in the Netherlands carry debt against 41.5% across the euro area, and the median indebted household owes €122,000 against a euro-area median of €31,800. On the ratios that matter, the Netherlands is at 206.4% of gross income against 66.0% for the euro area, and spends 9.7% of income on debt service against 12.5%. All of it comes from the same survey, run to the same definitions in every country.
Every figure on this page comes from the European Central Bank's Household Finance and Consumption Survey, wave 2023, published in 2026. Participation shares are Table E1, median debt by type Table E2, the composition of debt Table E3, and the distribution among indebted households Table E4; the ratios are Tables F1 and F2, negative net wealth Table F3, and median gross household income Table I3. Where the survey published no figure (too few observations, or an item not collected), this page says so rather than showing a zero.