calc.one study · 2026-05-03

Credit card debt by state, 2026: where Americans owe the most

The average cardholder in Alaska carries $8,077 in credit card debt, roughly $2,748 more than the average cardholder in Iowa ($5,329), the largest spread in the country. Nationally, US households are carrying about $1.28 trillion in revolving credit card debt.

Highest avg balance

Alaska

$8,077 per cardholder

Lowest avg balance

Iowa

$5,329 per cardholder

Median state

$6,359

Louisiana, midpoint of the 51 ranked

National total

$1.28T

revolving balances, NY Fed Q4 2025

The 10 states with the highest average balance

The top of the list mixes high-cost-of-living coastal states (New Jersey, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland) with energy-economy states where wages and prices both run high (Alaska, Texas). Alaska tops the country at $8,077, almost $2,748 above the lowest state.

Top 10 states by average credit card balance per cardholder, 2026 Alaska $8,077 District of Columbia $7,861 New Jersey $7,605 Connecticut $7,568 Hawaii $7,560 Maryland $7,492 Texas $7,467 Florida $7,392 Nevada $7,308 Colorado $7,267

The 10 states with the lowest average balance

The lowest-balance states cluster in the upper Midwest (Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota) and Appalachia (Kentucky, West Virginia). Lower nominal balances do not always mean lower financial stress; Iowa and several other low-balance states still post utilization rates above the national average, which is what most directly drags down a credit score.

10 states with the lowest average credit card balance per cardholder, 2026 Iowa $5,329 Wisconsin $5,370 Kentucky $5,399 West Virginia $5,427 Mississippi $5,553 Indiana $5,621 South Dakota $5,717 Maine $5,826 Arkansas $5,826 Ohio $5,871

Median balance by region

Aggregated to four Census regions, the spread compresses but the pattern is unmistakable. The South and West carry the heaviest median balances; the Midwest sits well below. The Northeast splits: Connecticut and New Jersey are in the top tier, but Maine, Vermont, and Pennsylvania pull the regional median down.

Median credit card balance per cardholder by US Census region Northeast $6,692 Midwest $5,945 South $6,434 West $6,800

What the numbers mean

Three things drive a state's average balance: prices (what a cardholder spends per month, much of which is non-discretionary), wages (how much of that spend is paid down vs revolved), and credit access (utilization is bounded by available limit). The states at the top of this list run hot on at least two of the three. Alaska pairs high prices with high wages and high utilization. New Jersey and Connecticut pair high prices with high limits, which mechanically enables larger balances.

The states at the bottom mostly run quiet on all three. Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota post some of the lowest utilization rates in the country (24-26%) and some of the highest average FICO scores (730+). They carry less debt because they revolve less of their available credit, not because their limits are smaller.

Utilization tells the more interesting story. The five states with the highest average revolving utilization are Mississippi (36%), Louisiana (35%), Alaska (34%), Georgia (34%) and Texas (33%). Utilization above 30% is the threshold most credit-scoring models flag as harmful, and four of those five also rank in the bottom five for average FICO score. The state with the lowest average FICO (Mississippi, 680) also has the highest utilization in the country (36%); these are not coincidences.

A practical frame: at the national average credit card APR of about 22%, the average cardholder in Alaska accrues roughly $148/month in interest alone, before any principal moves. The average cardholder in Iowa accrues about $98/month. That is the cost of carrying the balance, not paying it down. The credit card payoff calculator models how long it takes to clear any specific balance at a given APR and monthly payment.

A few less-obvious patterns worth flagging:

None of these numbers is a recommendation about a specific household. Averages compress every income tier and every age bracket into one figure; a 25-year-old in Vermont and a 55-year-old in Vermont will look nothing like each other. What this study isolates is the geography of the average, not the typical individual experience. To model your own debt, plug your balance, APR, and monthly payment into the credit card payoff calculator; to see how lenders translate income and debt service into a maximum mortgage payment, the mortgage affordability calculator applies the same DTI logic.

Full state-by-state table

Sorted by average credit card balance per cardholder, descending. Download the complete dataset (with utilization, FICO, and region) as data.csv.

Rank State Region Avg balance Utilization Avg FICO Interest at 22% APR/mo
1 Alaska West $8,077 34% 722 $148
2 District of Columbia South $7,861 28% 715 $144
3 New Jersey Northeast $7,605 27% 724 $139
4 Connecticut Northeast $7,568 28% 726 $139
5 Hawaii West $7,560 28% 732 $139
6 Maryland South $7,492 31% 715 $137
7 Texas South $7,467 33% 695 $137
8 Florida South $7,392 31% 707 $136
9 Nevada West $7,308 33% 701 $134
10 Colorado West $7,267 27% 731 $133
11 Georgia South $7,238 34% 695 $133
12 Virginia South $7,200 28% 723 $132
13 California West $7,080 27% 722 $130
14 New York Northeast $7,010 28% 721 $129
15 Washington West $6,975 26% 735 $128
16 Massachusetts Northeast $6,853 25% 732 $126
17 Delaware South $6,841 30% 714 $125
18 Arizona West $6,800 30% 712 $125
19 Illinois Midwest $6,726 28% 720 $123
20 New Hampshire Northeast $6,692 25% 736 $123
21 Rhode Island Northeast $6,686 28% 721 $123
22 Utah West $6,532 29% 730 $120
23 South Carolina South $6,498 31% 700 $119
24 North Carolina South $6,434 31% 709 $118
25 Wyoming West $6,406 29% 725 $117
26 Louisiana South $6,359 35% 690 $117
27 Oklahoma South $6,291 33% 696 $115
28 Pennsylvania Northeast $6,245 27% 722 $114
29 Tennessee South $6,243 30% 706 $114
30 Oregon West $6,199 27% 732 $114
31 Idaho West $6,131 27% 730 $112
32 Montana West $6,122 27% 732 $112
33 Kansas Midwest $6,082 28% 722 $112
34 Alabama South $6,074 33% 692 $111
35 Minnesota Midwest $6,068 24% 742 $111
36 Missouri Midwest $6,042 29% 714 $111
37 New Mexico West $6,023 31% 702 $110
38 North Dakota Midwest $5,991 27% 733 $110
39 Nebraska Midwest $5,945 26% 731 $109
40 Michigan Midwest $5,932 28% 719 $109
41 Vermont Northeast $5,928 26% 737 $109
42 Ohio Midwest $5,871 28% 716 $108
43 Arkansas South $5,826 33% 695 $107
44 Maine Northeast $5,826 26% 731 $107
45 South Dakota Midwest $5,717 27% 734 $105
46 Indiana Midwest $5,621 29% 712 $103
47 Mississippi South $5,553 36% 680 $102
48 West Virginia South $5,427 31% 702 $99
49 Kentucky South $5,399 30% 705 $99
50 Wisconsin Midwest $5,370 24% 738 $98
51 Iowa Midwest $5,329 26% 730 $98

What this means for your payoff

The state averages are a comparison tool, not a target. Whatever your state's number is, the math for clearing your balance is the same: at a fixed APR, the higher the monthly payment, the shorter the timeline and the smaller the total interest cost. A balance at the national average ($6,494) at 22% APR with a $200 monthly payment takes roughly four years to clear and costs about $4,000 in interest along the way; the same balance at $400 a month clears in under two years and costs under $1,500. The credit card payoff calculator runs the exact numbers for any combination of balance, APR, and monthly payment.

Methodology

Primary data source. Experian State of Credit Cards report (Q3 2024 release), retrieved 2026-05-03. Per-state figures represent the average credit card balance among consumers with at least one open credit card account, the average revolving utilization rate, and the average FICO 8 score. The Experian release reports Q3 2024 data; no more-recent state-level breakdown was published as of the retrieval date.

National context. NY Fed Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit (Q4 2025 release), released February 2026. The aggregate revolving credit card balance figure ($1.28 trillion) and delinquency-trend commentary come from this report; the NY Fed does not publish state-level breakdowns at the same frequency.

Interest cost column. Computed as balance × 0.22 ÷ 12, where 0.22 is the typical US credit card APR per LendingTree industry data. This is the monthly interest accrual on the average state balance at the average rate; individual cardholder APRs range from roughly 15% (rewards-light cards, prime credit) to 30% (subprime cards, deferred-interest promotions that lapsed). Use the credit card payoff calculator to plug in a real APR.

What this study does not include. Median balances (Experian publishes mean only at the state level; medians are typically 30-50% lower because the right tail of the distribution is long), individual-income context, household-level debt totals (a household with two cardholders carries roughly twice the per-cardholder average), or store-card balances (those are included in Experian's "credit card" category but excluded from some other publishers' definitions). The figures here are cross-sectional averages, not cohort or longitudinal data.

Reproducing the math. The state table is the Experian data verbatim. The interest column is direct arithmetic: multiply any row's balance by 0.22, divide by 12. The credit card payoff calculator solves the standard fixed-payment amortization formula for months-to-payoff at any APR.

Computed and published by calc.one on 2026-05-03. The state-by-state CSV is released under CC BY 4.0; feel free to reuse with attribution to calc.one. Questions or corrections: contact us.

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