Benchmark and policy rates
The policy and reference rates that consumer and commercial lending is priced against.
3 series on this page · updated each business day · most recent observation October 27, 2026
Rate table
Changes shown in basis points; one basis point is one hundredth of a percentage point.
| Loan program | Rate | Prior | 1 month | 1 year | 52-week range | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bank Prime Loan RateThe base for most HELOCs, card APRs and small-business lending. | 7.00% | unch. | unch. | ▼ -25 bps | 6.757.25 | Oct 27, 2026 | Federal Reserve H.15 DPRIME |
| Federal Funds Rate (effective)Monthly average of the Fed's policy rate. | 3.88% | ▲ +13 bps | ▲ +13 bps | ▼ -21 bps | 3.634.09 | Oct 1, 2026 | Federal Reserve H.15 FEDFUNDS |
| SOFR (overnight)Secured Overnight Financing Rate; the reference rate for most adjustable-rate lending. | 3.94% | ▼ -3 bps | ▲ +5 bps | ▼ -6 bps | 3.504.12 | Nov 4, 2026 | New York Fed SOFR |
Series detail
Two years of history for each series on this page.
Bank Prime Loan Rate
Updated each business day. The base for most HELOCs, card APRs and small-business lending. History available from August 1955 (18,156 observations). 52-week range 6.75%–7.25%, set Dec 11, 2025 and Oct 27, 2025. Source: Federal Reserve H.15 via FRED series DPRIME.
Federal Funds Rate (effective)
Updated monthly. Monthly average of the Fed's policy rate. History available from July 1954 (868 observations). 52-week range 3.63%–4.09%, set May 1, 2026 and Oct 1, 2025. Source: Federal Reserve H.15 via FRED series FEDFUNDS.
SOFR (overnight)
Updated each business day. Secured Overnight Financing Rate; the reference rate for most adjustable-rate lending. History available from April 2018 (2,146 observations). 52-week range 3.50%–4.12%, set May 20, 2026 and Nov 28, 2025. Source: New York Fed via FRED series SOFR.
Background
Prime rate
The bank prime loan rate is the rate banks post for their most creditworthy commercial customers. In practice it is a published convention rather than a market price: it has sat at the Federal Reserve's upper target plus three percentage points for decades, and it moves in discrete steps on the day the Fed moves. Its importance is derivative — HELOCs, credit card APRs, and a great deal of small-business and variable-rate lending are contractually quoted as prime plus a margin, so a quarter-point change in prime passes straight through to millions of existing balances.
Federal funds rate
The rate at which depository institutions lend reserves to each other overnight. The Federal Open Market Committee sets a target range for it eight times a year; the effective rate is the volume-weighted median of actual transactions. This is the instrument of U.S. monetary policy, and the figure in the table above is a monthly average — so it will read slightly off the target range when a meeting falls mid-month.
SOFR
The Secured Overnight Financing Rate measures the cost of borrowing cash overnight collateralized by Treasury securities. It replaced U.S. dollar LIBOR as the reference rate for adjustable-rate mortgages, commercial loans and derivatives. Because it is secured and transaction-based, SOFR normally prints slightly below the effective fed funds rate, and it can spike sharply at quarter-end when balance-sheet constraints tighten the repo market.