# How does Technical Debt being calculated **URL:** \ **Category:** SonarQube Server / Community Build\ **Created:** [February 10, 2021, 4:50pm UTC](https://community.sonarsource.com/t/how-does-technical-debt-being-calculated/38455 "2021-02-10T16:50:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 5
**Author:** ![Colin](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/sonarsource/user_avatar/community.sonarsource.com/colin/32/55255_2.png) [@Colin](https://community.sonarsource.com/u/Colin)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2021, 12:52pm UTC](https://community.sonarsource.com/t/how-does-technical-debt-being-calculated/38455/5 "2021-04-08T12:52:36Z")
Hey @tcsabina Most issues in SonarQube have a remediation cost attached (estimated time to fix an issue). This could be 1m, 5m, 30m, etc… The sum of all these remediation costs for Code Smells (maintainability issues) for a project is the technical debt. ![Screenshot 2021-04-08 at 14.50.09](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/sonarsource/uploads/sonarcommunity/original/3X/0/c/0ccc0ce07d719e6291bb32b11d307ad030f081a4.png) Does such a quantitative value make sense in a Quality Gate? I don’t think so. A rocket-launcher is probably going to have more technical debt than a calculator. We would rather suggest a Quality Gate condition for the Maintainability Rating. > **Maintainability Rating** ( `sqale_rating` ) > (Formerly the SQALE rating.) Rating given to your project related to the value of your Technical Debt Ratio. The default Maintainability Rating grid is: > > A=0-0.05, B=0.06-0.1, C=0.11-0.20, D=0.21-0.5, E=0.51-1 > > The Maintainability Rating scale can be alternately stated by saying that if the outstanding remediation cost is: > > - \<=5% of the time that has already gone into the application, the rating is A > - between 6 to 10% the rating is a B > - between 11 to 20% the rating is a C > - between 21 to 50% the rating is a D > - anything over 50% is an E You can always find [Metric Definitions in our docs](https://docs.sonarqube.org/latest/user-guide/metric-definitions/) --- _[View the full topic](https://community.sonarsource.com/t/how-does-technical-debt-being-calculated/38455)._