Tech debt statistics 2026: the numbers that matter
Fifteen statistics with named sources, methodology notes, and per-developer dollar conversions. The condensed version. For full deep dives by industry and team size, see technicaldebtcost.com/statistics.
Headline Strata
$1.52T
Annual US tech debt cost
CISQ 2022
of $2.41T total poor-quality cost
33%
Engineering time on debt
Stripe 2018
Harris Poll, 1,000 devs across 5 countries
25-42%
Capacity lost to debt
McKinsey 2023
from Tech Debt Report
21-40%
IT spending on debt
Deloitte 2026
Global Technology Leadership Study
65%
Incidents from debt
DORA 2024
State of DevOps, 36K respondents
15-25%
Annual compound rate
CAST CRASH 2024
interest accrual on untouched debt
Reference Card 02 / Per-developer
Annual cost per engineer at 30% drag
Median industry drag is 30%. These are the figures you cite when somebody asks “how much per head?”
Reference Card 03 / By team size
Annual debt cost by team size
$130K fully-loaded engineer at 30% drag (industry midpoint). Multiply by team size, watch the number grow.
Source Layer / The studies
Where these numbers come from
CISQ Cost of Poor Software Quality
2022Finding: $2.41T total US cost; $1.52T attributable to operational software failures (debt-driven).
Method: Aggregated US BLS data, public industry research, expert estimation. Macro-level.
Stripe Developer Coefficient
2018Finding: 33.1% of engineering time on maintenance and bad code; 17.3 hours/week per developer.
Method: Harris Poll survey, 1,000 developers across 5 countries. Headline midpoint, dated but widely cited.
McKinsey Tech Debt Report
2023Finding: 25-42% of capacity on debt; 15-60% of IT budget; 10-20% manageable, 20-40% painful.
Method: McKinsey Digital practitioner data + client benchmarks. The most rigorous range available.
DORA State of DevOps
2024Finding: 65% of incidents trace to debt; elite teams under 8% time on debt; struggling teams over 50%.
Method: Annual survey, 36,000+ respondents. Operational metric framework (DORA 4).
CAST CRASH Report
2024Finding: 15-25% annual compound rate on untouched debt; healthy ratio under 10% of dev cost.
Method: Static analysis of 1B+ LOC across enterprise codebases since 2010. Code-level forensic data.
Deloitte Global Technology Leadership
2026Finding: 21-40% of IT spending on tech debt; older organisations skew higher.
Method: Annual CIO survey, 800+ technology leaders globally. Budget-allocation lens.
Want the deep research? technicaldebtcost.com/statistics has the full deep dive. For by-industry and by-team-size breakdowns, see technicaldebtcost.com/by-industry and technicaldebtcost.com/by-team-size.