The US pays 14.9 % of NATO’s common budget, roughly €770 million in 2026. Its own defense budget, close to $1 trillion, is a separate and far larger sum.
NATO’s own budget
NATO as an organization has a small budget, called common funding. It pays for the headquarters, the integrated command structure, shared military infrastructure, the AWACS fleet and similar joint costs. NATO puts common funding at up to €5.3 billion for 2026. The three budgets it lists come to about €5.15 billion: a civil budget of €528 million, a military budget of €2.42 billion and up to €2.2 billion for the NATO Security Investment Programme, which builds shared infrastructure.
Allies pay according to a formula based on national income. For 2026 and 2027 the United States and Germany each pay 14.9039 %, followed by Britain at 10.3 % and France at 10.1 %. Applied to the three budgets, the American share works out at roughly €770 million, by our arithmetic.
That share has fallen. In 2018–2019 the US paid 22.1 % of the common budgets. In 2019 the allies agreed to bring it down to the same level as Germany from 2021, 16.3 % each; it was 15.9 % from 2024 and is 14.9 % now.
America’s defense budget
The large number is national. NATO estimates US defense spending at $975.8 billion in 2025 and $1,032.8 billion in 2026, at current prices, or 3.17 % of GDP. The Pentagon’s request for fiscal 2026 came to $1.01 trillion for national defense, including about $113 billion expected from a reconciliation bill. SIPRI, which uses a slightly different definition, put US military spending at $954 billion in 2025, 7.5 % less than a year earlier and 33 % of the world total.
This money pays for American forces everywhere: in the Pacific, the Middle East, at home and in Europe. NATO counts it in its statistics because the United States is an ally, but it is not paid to NATO, and the Pentagon’s budget documents do not break it all down by region.
How the burden is shared
Measured by the allies’ national spending, the United States carries most of the weight. In 2025 it accounted for about 60 % of all defense spending by NATO members, by NATO’s own figures. US defense spending comes to about $2,438 per person, against $882 per person in the European allies and Canada, at 2021 prices.
The balance is shifting. In 2014 the US share was 69 %. For 2026 NATO projects 57 %, because European spending has grown much faster: the European allies and Canada raised their spending from 1.96 % of GDP in 2024 to 2.31 % in 2025. At The Hague in 2025 the allies agreed to reach 3.5 % for core defense by 2035; Spain secured flexibility on its own path. Country by country, the figures are in How much do European countries spend on defense? and the European totals in European defence in numbers.
What the US spends in Europe
The closest official line is the European Deterrence Initiative, which began in 2014 as the European Reassurance Initiative. For fiscal 2025 the Pentagon requested $2.9 billion, down from $3.6 billion requested a year earlier and $4.3 billion enacted in fiscal 2023. About 80,000 US service members are stationed in Europe; how that presence is changing is in How many troops does NATO have?
Two sums, one bill
The US pays less than 15 % of NATO’s own budget, the same as Germany, and about 60 % of what all allies spend on defense, because it funds the world’s largest military budget for global purposes. Europe’s share of the total is rising quickly. Whether the money buys a defense Europe could run without America depends on whether Europeans spend it together.