Updated daily · published rates only
What it costs to borrow right now
The prime rate is 7.00%. That is the number nearly every business loan and line of credit is priced from, and your rate is prime plus a margin set by your file.
| Rate | Now | Year ago | Change | What it does to you |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prime rateas of 21 Sep 2026 | 7.00% | 7.00% | 0.00 | The base most business loans and lines of credit are priced from. Your rate is usually prime plus a margin set by your file. |
| Fed funds rateas of 1 Aug 2026 | 3.63% | 4.09% | -0.46 | What the Federal Reserve sets. Prime moves with it, so this is the number that eventually reaches your payment. |
| 10-year Treasuryas of 23 Sep 2026 | 5.11% | 4.00% | +1.11 | The benchmark for longer-term fixed borrowing, including a lot of commercial real estate. |
| 30-year mortgageas of 24 Sep 2026 | 7.03% | 6.23% | +0.80 | Not a business rate, but the one most owners feel personally and the best-known gauge of where credit sits. |
| 2-year Treasuryas of 23 Sep 2026 | 4.85% | 3.45% | +1.40 | Where the market thinks short-term rates are heading over the next couple of years. |
The thing worth noticing today
The Federal Reserve's own rate is 0.46 points lower than a year ago, and the 2-year Treasury is 1.40 points higher. Those are supposed to move together. When they do not, it means the market is pricing borrowing costs on its own, regardless of what the Fed has done.
The practical version: waiting for the Fed to cut is not a financing strategy right now. A cut has already happened and the cost of longer money went up anyway. If you are holding off on a purchase or a hire because you expect credit to get cheaper shortly, the market is not currently agreeing with you.
How this reaches your actual loan
- A line of credit usually floats. It is quoted as prime plus a margin, so when prime moves your payment moves with it, normally within a billing cycle or two.
- A term loan is usually fixed at signing. The rate above matters on the day you sign and then stops mattering, which is the argument for fixing when you expect rates to rise.
- An advance ignores all of this. A merchant cash advance is priced on a factor rate, not an interest rate, and it does not move with prime at all. That is why a falling prime rate does not make an advance cheaper. See how a factor rate converts to an APR.
- Your margin matters more than the index. The gap between a strong file and a weak one is far wider than the moves in this table. That is where the money is, and it is the part you can change.
Work out what a rate does to a specific number with the loan and advance calculators, or start with what kind of funding fits the situation.
All rates from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis (FRED), read 24 September 2026: prime rate, effective federal funds rate, 2- and 10-year Treasury constant maturity, and the Freddie Mac 30-year mortgage average. Published rates only; we do not estimate an SBA maximum or a "typical" business loan rate, because neither is a figure anyone publishes. Nothing here is financial advice.