vs Last Quarter
+0.18 pts
Still climbing as issuers price in higher delinquency rates.
Today's Credit Card APR
U.S. Average · Accounts Assessed Interest
22.43
%
+0.18 pts
vs. last quarter (22.25%)
Past 12 months
Range 21.45 – 22.55
vs Last Year+0.69
5-Yr Avg19.20%
All-Time High22.80%
Credit card APRs hit 22.43% — back near the all-time high of 22.80% set in early 2024. Every $1,000 of carried balance costs $224/year at this rate. Paying it down beats nearly any investment available.
Historical trend
Quarterly Fed G.19 release.
Source: FRED · TERMCBCCALLNS · Accounts assessed interest.
The long view: since 1994
Thirty years of revolving-credit interest rates.
Peak 22.80% · Feb 2024
Trough 11.82% · Sept 2003
Today 22.43%
How today stacks up
Today's 22.43% in plain context.
vs Last Year
+0.69 pts
Up from 21.74% in May 2025. ~$7/yr more per $1K balance.
5-Year Average
19.20%
Today is 323 bps above the 5-yr mean.
All-Time High
22.80%
Feb 2024. Today is just 37 bps below the record.
Use this rate
Tools to escape credit card debt fast.
Credit Card Payoff
Calculate how fast you can be debt-free at any payment level — and what interest you'll save.
OpenDebt Avalanche / Snowball
Multi-debt payoff plan. Compare highest-rate-first vs smallest-balance-first.
OpenBudget Calculator
Build a 50/30/20 budget that frees up the cash to attack credit card debt.
OpenAbout the Average Credit Card APR
This is the average interest rate U.S. consumers actually pay on credit card balances, as reported by the Federal Reserve based on commercial bank submissions. Critically, this is the rate on "accounts assessed interest" — only cards carrying a balance, not the (lower) average across all credit cards including those paid in full each month. If you carry a balance, this is the number that matters to you.
Why credit card APRs went vertical in 2022
Credit card rates are tied to the Prime Rate, which is set at fed funds + 3.00%. When the Fed hiked from near-zero to 5.33% in 2022–23, Prime moved in lockstep — and the typical "Prime + 12%" or "Prime + 16%" card APR climbed with it. The structural margin (the spread above Prime) also widened from 11.5 pts pre-2022 to over 14 pts today, as issuers responded to higher delinquency rates by pricing risk more conservatively.
What this means if you carry a balance
At 22.43%, every $1,000 of credit card debt costs you about $224/yr in interest alone, before any progress on principal. The average U.S. household with credit card debt carries roughly $7,200 — about $1,615 a year in interest at today's rate. This is why credit card payoff often beats nearly any investment strategy: paying down a 22% APR is a guaranteed, tax-free 22% return on every dollar applied. The only "investment" that can reliably beat it is an employer 401(k) match.
Related trackers
Other live numbers that move with — or against — this one.
Frequently asked
What this number means, and what it doesn't.
Promo rates are intro offers (often 0% APR for 12–18 months on purchases or balance transfers). After the intro period, the regular APR kicks in. This Fed number is the rate on accounts actually carrying a balance — which is the rate that determines what you pay if you don\'t pay in full.
Probably not. Cards range from sub-prime offers near 30% APR down to credit-union cards under 12%. Your specific APR depends on your credit score, the card type (rewards cards have higher APRs), and whether you opened the card recently (post-2022 cards are priced higher).
Prime is the rate banks charge their best customers, set at fed funds upper bound + 3.00%. Today's Prime is 7.50%. Most credit card APRs are written as "Prime + X%" where X is determined by your creditworthiness — typically 10–18 percentage points.
Three main paths: (1) call your issuer and ask for a lower rate — they grant ~60% of requests for customers in good standing; (2) transfer the balance to a 0%-APR card (with a typical 3–5% transfer fee); (3) consolidate with a personal loan at a lower fixed rate (10–14% from credit unions for good credit).
Today's 22.43% is the highest in the 30-year history of the Fed's series. It dramatically increases the cost of revolving debt and is a major reason credit card delinquencies have climbed back to pre-pandemic levels even with strong employment.
Methodology
Source
Pulled from FRED · TERMCBCCALLNS and cached on the EvvyTools server.
Update schedule
Refreshed automatically by our cron whenever the upstream source publishes a new value. Historical values are not revised after publication.
How we compute
Display value is the raw published number, unrounded. Comparison stats use the closest available reference date. We never edit the underlying data.