Enter total liabilities and total shareholders' equity to calculate the debt-to-equity ratio and debt's share of total capital.
How to Use the Debt-to-Equity Ratio Calculator
Enter total liabilities and total shareholders' equity — the ratio and the debt share of total capital update as you type.
Debt-to-equity compares what a company owes against what its owners have put in, expressed as a single multiple rather than two separate dollar figures.
D/E Ratio = Total Liabilities ÷ Total Shareholders' Equity
Debt % of Total Capital = Total Liabilities ÷ (Total Liabilities + Total Equity) × 100A ratio of 0.67 means the company carries 67 cents of debt for every dollar of equity — not 67% of its capital structure, which is a common mix-up. The second figure, debt as a percentage of total capital, is the one that actually answers "what share of financing is debt."
There's no universal cutoff for what counts as a "safe" D/E ratio here on purpose. A utility company routinely runs a D/E north of 2 without raising eyebrows, while the same number would be a red flag for a software company with few hard assets to borrow against. Comparing the ratio against a company's own history or its direct industry peers tells you far more than comparing it to a fixed number pulled from a textbook.
Liabilities include everything owed — short-term and long-term debt, accounts payable, deferred obligations. Equity is the book value shareholders would theoretically be left with if every liability were paid off today.