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 Portugal. Age of the reference person:
Income is pre-filled with the published median for Portugal: €26,000. Change it for your own answer, or leave it and read the country's typical picture. The survey reconstructs gross income from net answers here, so the denominator of every ratio is an estimate the survey publishes, not a tax figure.
Your debt vs gross income · households in Portugal
136%
Above the typical load.
Heavier than the 102.6% median, but short of the 424.1% carried by the most-leveraged tenth.
You owe €35,300 against €26,000 of gross income. The typical indebted household in Portugal owes 102.6% of its gross income. You are at 1.3× that.
Read-out one
Where that amount sits.
41.6% of households in Portugal carry debt at all, and the survey publishes the distribution only for them. Among those households the median debt is €35,300 and the average is €59,500. The gap between the two is the handful of very large mortgages pulling the average up.
Lightest tenth
€2K
P10 of indebted households
One in ten indebted households in Portugal owes less than this.
Median debt
€35K
P50 of indebted households
Half owe more, half owe less. The average is €60K.
Heaviest tenth
€150K
P90 of indebted households
One in ten indebted households in Portugal owes more than this.
€35,300 sits at roughly the 50th percentile of indebted households in Portugal, 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 Portugal the median indebted household owes 102.6% of its gross annual income; the most-leveraged tenth are at 424.1%. Across the euro area the median is 66.0%.
0%458%
You: 136%
Median: 102.6%
Top decile: 424.1%
One number worth reading twice: 102.6% is the median of household-level ratios, not the median debt divided by the median income. A household holding the median debt (€35,300) on the median income (€26,000) lands at 136%, because the two medians belong to different households and their quotient is not the published median.
At 136% of gross income you are above the 102.6% median for indebted households in Portugal, but below the 424.1% that marks the top decile, which at your income would be €110,266 of debt.
Euro-area median
66.0%
Across the euro area, indebted households owe 66.0% of gross income. The figure for Portugal is 102.6%: the same survey, the same definition, a different borrowing culture.
The stretched tenth
424.1%
Nine in ten indebted households in Portugal owe less than this multiple of their income. The euro-area figure at the same percentile is 374.5%.
Debt against assets
20.2%
Income is only half the picture: the median indebted household in Portugal owes this share of what it owns, and carries a loan-to-value of 30.0% on its home.
Read-out three
What carrying it costs.
Debt service is what leaves the account every month. The typical indebted household in Portugal pays €400 a month, which is 14.4% of gross income among those actually making payments; averaged over every indebted household, including those with nothing due, the ratio is 13.0%. 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 Portugal pays €400 a month, against €507 across the euro area. Fill it in and the page scores your own payment instead.
Median payment burden
14.4%
€400/month, published
Half of the households in Portugal making payments spend less of their income than this on debt.
Mortgage holders
14.4%
€422/month, published
The median share of gross income going to mortgage payments in Portugal.
Most stretched tenth
38.4%
No published payment figure
One in ten households in Portugal 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 Portugal the load peaks at 179.2% of gross income for households aged 35 to 44 and falls to 15.6% for the oldest. Pick a band to compare against it rather than against the all-ages median, which mixes both ends together.
52.9% carry debt · median €30K · 15.0% of income on payments · 7.2% owe more than they own
63.9% carry debt · median €65K · 16.0% of income on payments · 5.4% owe more than they own
63.0% carry debt · median €54K · 15.3% of income on payments · 3.2% owe more than they own
44.6% carry debt · median €21K · 12.1% of income on payments · 2.5% owe more than they own
21.2% carry debt · median €10K · 13.1% of income on payments · 1.7% owe more than they own
8.4% carry debt · median €3K · 10.3% of income on payments · 1.0% 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 136% 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
🇵🇹Portugalthis page
102.6%
1.3× the medianunder the 424.1% top decile
🇦🇹Austria
29.5%
4.6× the medianunder the 228.3% top decile
🇩🇪Germany
35.3%
3.8× the medianunder the 282.6% top decile
🇮🇪Ireland
42.5%
3.2× the medianunder the 249.6% top decile
🇮🇹Italy
58.7%
2.3× the medianunder the 299.4% top decile
🇫🇮Finland
80.6%
1.7× the medianunder the 283.8% top decile
🇪🇸Spain
84.3%
1.6× the medianunder the 389.0% top decile
🇫🇷France
92.0%
1.5× the medianunder the 437.2% top decile
🇧🇪Belgium
100.8%
1.3× the medianunder the 347.9% top decile
🇱🇺Luxembourg
125.8%
1.1× the medianunder the 655.9% top decile
🇳🇱the Netherlands
206.4%
0.7× the medianunder the 629.1% 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 89.7% of all household debt in Portugal; the remaining 10.3% 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 home78.0%
Mortgage on other property11.7%
Credit lines and overdrafts0.5%
Credit-card debt0.6%
Other non-mortgage loans9.2%
Own-home mortgage
24.8% of households
Median outstanding among those who hold it: €64,000.
Other-property mortgage
4.3% of households
Median outstanding among those who hold it: €44,400.
Non-mortgage debt
24.4% of households
Median outstanding among those who hold it: €4,200.
Three numbers worth the asterisk
What Portugal looks like from the outside.
Median debt-to-income, indebted households
102.6%, among the highest of the 11 countries here
This is the number that defines household finance in Portugal: the typical indebted household owes 102.6% 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
3.1%
Share of households in Portugal whose debts exceed everything they own. The euro-area figure is 3.6%.
Households with any debt
41.6%
Against 41.5% across the euro area. The other 58.4% of households in Portugal owe nothing at all.
Typical debt, when there is debt
€35,300
Median outstanding among households in Portugal that hold any debt. Across the euro area the same figure is €31,800.
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The median indebted household in Portugal owes 102.6% of its gross annual income, among 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: 89.7% of all household debt is secured on property, and 24.8% of households carry a mortgage on their own home. Long terms keep the monthly cost manageable (the median payment burden is only 14.4% of gross income), but the outstanding balance stays large for decades.
Among households that hold debt, the median outstanding balance in Portugal is €35,300 and the average is €59,500. 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 €1,700; the heaviest tenth owe more than €149,700. Note that these figures cover only the 41.6% of households that actually hold debt; the survey publishes no distribution for the rest.
58.4% of households in Portugal carry no debt at all, since 41.6% 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 Portugal making payments, the median is 14.4% of gross income; mortgage holders specifically are at 14.4%; and the most stretched tenth spend 38.4%. Averaged over all indebted households, including those with nothing due, the figure is 13.0%. 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 424.1% of gross income puts a household in the most-leveraged tenth in Portugal; debt service above 38.4% of gross income does the same on the payment side; and 3.1% of households already owe more than everything they own. The liquid buffer matters as much as the ratios: median net liquid assets in Portugal are 17.7% of gross income.
24.8% of households in Portugal hold a mortgage on the home they live in, with a median outstanding balance of €64,000. A further 4.3% hold a mortgage on other property. The median loan-to-value on the main residence is 30.0%, and the median indebted household's total debt is 20.2% of everything it owns.
By amount owed, 89.7% of household debt in Portugal is secured on property and 10.3% is not; credit-card balances are 0.6% of the total and credit lines and overdrafts 0.5%. By number of households the picture flips: 24.4% hold non-mortgage debt with a median of just €4,200, while the 24.8% with a mortgage owe a median of €64,000. Many households owe a little; a few owe a lot.
3.1% of households in Portugal 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.
41.6% of households in Portugal carry debt against 41.5% across the euro area, and the median indebted household owes €35,300 against a euro-area median of €31,800. On the ratios that matter, Portugal is at 102.6% of gross income against 66.0% for the euro area, and spends 14.4% 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. Gross income in Portugal is reconstructed by the survey from net answers, so the denominator of every ratio here is the survey's own estimate rather than a tax figure.