vs Yesterday
+0.0028
Cable typically moves 0.5–0.8% per day.
Cable · Daily
GBP / USD Exchange Rate
0.0000
+0.0028 vs. yesterday (+0.22%)
Past 12 months
1.2105 – 1.2960
vs Last Year+0.0185
5-Yr Avg1.2670
1 USD =£0.7846
Cable trades at $1.2745 per pound — comfortably off the 2022 mini-budget low at 1.05, but still roughly 15% below the post-Brexit highs. U.S. travelers to London pay 1.5% more in dollar terms than a year ago.
Historical trend
Daily ECB reference rate (4:00 PM CET).
Source: Frankfurter API (ECB reference data)
The long view: half a century of cable
From £1 = $2.65 in the 70s to today. The story of structural sterling decline.
Peak 2.6500 · March 1972
Trough 1.0520 · Sept 2022
Today 1.2745
How today stacks up
vs Last Year
+0.0185
Up +1.5% from May 2025. Pound modestly stronger.
5-Year Average
1.2670
Today is 75 pips above the 5-yr mean.
All-Time Range
1.05–2.65
Today sits in the lower half of the 50-year range.
Use this rate
Tools for travelers, expats, and freelancers.
About the GBP/USD Exchange Rate
GBP/USD — nicknamed "cable" by traders, a holdover from the days when London-New York rates traveled by transatlantic telegraph cable — is one of the four "major" currency pairs in foreign exchange trading and accounts for about 11% of global FX volume. It's quoted as the dollar value of one pound sterling: today's 1.2745 means £1 = $1.2745, or equivalently $1 = £0.7846.
What moves the pound
Cable is highly sensitive to Bank of England versus Federal Reserve policy gaps, U.K. inflation prints (which often diverge from the U.S. cycle), and risk sentiment — sterling weakens sharply during global stress and rallies during "risk-on" periods. The historic September 2022 flash low at 1.0520 was triggered by the U.K. "mini-budget" crisis under PM Liz Truss, when unfunded tax cuts caused gilt yields to spike and forced emergency BoE intervention. The pound has been gradually rebuilding since.
Reading this chart
The long view tells a 50-year story of structural sterling decline: cable was above 2.50 in the early 1970s, hit 1.05 in 1985, peaked again above 2.10 in 2007, and has spent the post-Brexit decade trading in a 1.05–1.45 range. Today's 1.2745 sits roughly mid-range for the last decade. For U.S. travelers heading to London, a stronger pound (higher GBP/USD) means everything in the U.K. gets more expensive in dollars — a £4 pint costs $5.10 today versus $4.21 at the 2022 lows.
Related trackers
Other live numbers that move with — or against — this one.
Frequently asked
What this number means, and what it doesn't.
The first transatlantic telegraph cable, completed in 1866, was used to transmit live currency quotes between London and New York. London-based dealers quoting the sterling-dollar rate adopted the nickname "the cable rate," and it stuck even after telegraph cables became obsolete.
Yes — on September 26, 2022, cable hit an intraday low of 1.0520 following the U.K.'s "mini-budget" announcement of unfunded tax cuts. The pound recovered when the Bank of England intervened in the gilt market and the budget was reversed. It has not retested those lows since, though it remains historically weak compared to the 1.40+ readings common in the 2010s.
Generally yes. Cable's daily ranges run 0.5–0.8% on average versus 0.3–0.6% for EUR/USD, and its 1-week volatility is roughly 30% higher. The U.K. is a smaller economy more exposed to single events (Brexit, mini-budget, energy shocks), so news that wouldn't move EUR/USD significantly can move cable 1–2% in hours.
Forex is a 24/5 market. Cable peak liquidity runs from the London open (3:00 AM ET) through the London-New York overlap (8:00 AM – noon ET). After Asia opens Sunday 5:00 PM ET, sterling trades thinly until London wakes up Monday morning.
When the BoE raises rates relative to the Fed, sterling typically strengthens (capital flows to the higher-yielding pound). When the BoE cuts or signals dovishness, sterling weakens. The current gap between BoE and Fed rates is roughly flat, which has kept cable rangebound around 1.25–1.30 for most of 2025–26.
Methodology
Source
Pulled from Frankfurter (ECB) 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.