vs Last Update
+0.30 pts
Stronger retail sales lifted the estimate.
Real-Time GDP Nowcast · Q2 2026
Atlanta Fed GDPNow
2.30
%
+0.30 pts
vs. last estimate (0.00%)
Past 12 months1.50 – 3.20
Q1 BEA Actual2.10%
vs Year Ago-0.20
Avg Error±0.5pt
GDPNow shows 2.30% growth for Q2 2026 — a slight pickup from Q1's 2.10% BEA actual. Earlier estimates this quarter were softer; recent strong retail sales pushed the model up.
Historical nowcast vs. actual
GDPNow estimates vs. BEA prints.
Source: Atlanta Fed GDPNow
The long view: since 2014
GDPNow launched mid-2014 and now provides ~12 years of nowcast history.
Peak +9.5% · Q3 2020
Trough −34.5% · Q2 2020
Today +2.30%
How today stacks up
vs Year Ago
−0.20 pts
Growth slightly softer than Q2 2025 reading.
vs Q1 Actual
+0.20 pts
Modest pickup from Q1\'s 2.10% BEA print.
Avg Error
±0.5pt
Historical accuracy vs. BEA advance estimate.
Use this number
Tools for macro investors.
About the Atlanta Fed GDPNow
GDPNow is the real-time GDP nowcast maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Unlike the BEA's official GDP estimate (which lags the quarter by 1–3 months), GDPNow updates continuously as new monthly economic data arrives — retail sales, industrial production, trade balance, housing data — and refines its estimate for the current quarter every few days. Today's 2.30% is the nowcast for Q2 2026, which won't be officially published by BEA until late July 2026.
Why it matters
GDPNow provides the earliest available forecast of the current quarter's growth. By the time the BEA publishes its advance estimate, GDPNow has been "previewing" the same quarter for three months. Hedge funds, bond traders, and Fed-watchers use GDPNow as a leading indicator — sharp moves in the nowcast often precede equivalent moves in the official BEA print. The model has historically been within 0.5 pt of the BEA advance estimate.
Reading today's number
Today's 2.30% nowcast for Q2 2026 represents a modest pickup from Q1's actual 2.10%. The model is currently pulling in stronger consumer spending and a smaller drag from the trade balance vs. last month's update. The nowcast typically gets noisier mid-quarter (only some of the underlying data is in) and settles closer to actual as quarter-end approaches.
Related trackers
Other live numbers that move with — or against — this one.
Frequently asked
What this number means, and what it doesn't.
Historical average error vs. BEA advance estimate: ±0.5 percentage points. The error is smaller late in the quarter (more data in) and larger early in the quarter. GDPNow doesn't "forecast" — it mechanically aggregates the same monthly data sources BEA uses, so it converges to BEA's number as quarter-end nears.
A single big data release (retail sales, durable goods, trade balance) can shift the nowcast 0.3–0.8 pt in a day. Big swings usually come from surprise data, not model changes. The Atlanta Fed publishes a "contribution breakdown" so you can see exactly which series moved the number.
Yes — the New York Fed publishes "Nowcasting" and various private firms (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley) maintain their own. GDPNow is the most-watched because it's public, transparent, and has the longest track record.
The Atlanta Fed publishes a new nowcast typically within a few hours of major data releases — retail sales (mid-month), industrial production (mid-month), housing starts (mid-month), durable goods (end of month), trade balance (early month), and the BEA's personal income/outlays (end of month). Schedule: atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow.
Methodology
Source
Pulled from Atlanta Fed 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.