This page tracks the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS), the weekly national average that most rate headlines are quoting whether or not they say so. Every figure here carries the week it was measured, because “today’s rate” is really “last Thursday’s rate” whether the headline admits it or not.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. Read on for what the number actually is, then a payment table so you can see what it means in dollars before you go anywhere near a lender.
Who actually needs a same-day number
Most people typing “mortgage rates today” fall into one of two groups, and this page is built for the second one specifically.
If you’re actively locking a rate this week (closing is imminent and your loan officer is about to hit a button), this page is not what you need. You need the live quote from your own lender, because that’s the only number that will actually apply to your loan. No weekly average, however current, substitutes for that.
If you’re shopping, planning, or trying to understand whether now is a reasonable time to move, a weekly national average is exactly the right tool, and closer to daily noise is actually the wrong one. Day-to-day wiggles in lender rate sheets mostly reflect that specific lender’s pipeline and funding needs, not the market moving. That’s who this page is for.
Current averages
| Loan type | This week | Prior week |
|---|---|---|
| 30-year fixed | 6.65% | 6.67% |
| 15-year fixed | 5.95% | 5.96% |
Both terms eased slightly for a second consecutive week. Two weeks of small moves in the same direction is still not a trend by itself; see “the longer range” below before reading much into it.
A year earlier, in August 2025, the 30-year averaged roughly 6.58%, meaning today’s 6.65% is only marginally above where the market sat twelve months ago, despite the visible up-and-down in between. Year-over-year comparisons like that one smooth out a lot of the noise a week-over-week reading can’t.
How this number is actually measured
“Today’s mortgage rate” isn’t a single transaction anyone can point to. It’s a survey. Freddie Mac polls lenders nationally (a mix of banks, credit unions and mortgage brokers) for the rates and terms they’re offering to a borrower with strong credit and a 20% deposit, over a Thursday-through-Wednesday window, and publishes the unweighted national average every Thursday at noon ET. It’s specifically a purchase-money, conforming, conventional loan average, not refinances, not jumbo loans, not FHA or VA loans, all of which price differently. Freddie Mac has also stopped publishing an accompanying average points/fees figure alongside the rate, since it’s no longer consistently required data, so the headline percentage on any given week is the rate alone, not rate-plus-points. A single lender’s quote is assembled from a different set of inputs entirely, and how a big bank builds one is worth reading before you hold yours up against the headline.
The FRED series “MORTGAGE30US” you’ll see cited across finance sites, including this one, is the identical Freddie Mac number, just hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for easier charting and download. It isn’t a faster, more granular, or independently verified figure. It updates on exactly the same weekly cadence as the Freddie Mac release itself, typically appearing the same day or the day after.
That’s why nobody can honestly give you a rate for “right now” without either quoting last Thursday’s survey or getting an actual live quote from a lender: those are the only two real numbers that exist. Anything presented as a live, constantly-ticking “today’s rate” is either the weekly survey redrawn to look current, or a specific lender’s own pricing, not a market average.
Why different sites show you different “current” numbers
Search around and you’ll find pages that look like they’re updating more often than once a week. That’s not a contradiction: they’re measuring something different, not disagreeing about the same thing.
- Freddie Mac PMMS (what this page tracks): a weekly survey average, published Thursdays. The most-cited “official” number, and the one FRED republishes.
- Daily lender rate-sheet trackers: some finance publishers poll live pricing from a panel of lenders every business day. These move more often, but they’re not government or GSE data, and methodology varies site to site. Treat them as directional, not authoritative.
- Mortgage application indices: separate entirely, tracking loan volume (how many people are applying), not the rate itself, though the two are related.
None of these is “wrong.” They’re answering different questions. This page answers “what did the benchmark weekly survey say,” on purpose, because that’s the number with a consistent, transparent methodology going back decades, which is also why it’s the one most other coverage ultimately traces back to.
Recent weeks
View the data
| Jun 25 | 6.49% |
|---|---|
| Jul 2 | 6.43% |
| Jul 9 | 6.49% |
| Jul 16 | 6.55% |
| Jul 23 | 6.58% |
| Jul 30 | 6.66% |
| Aug 6 | 6.69% |
| Aug 13 | 6.67% |
| Aug 20 | 6.65% |
Source: Freddie Mac PMMS via FRED (MORTGAGE30US) and freddiemac.com/pmms, accessed .
Rates climbed 26 basis points across six weeks, then stepped back for two weeks running. On a $400,000 loan that climb-and-partial-retreat is worth roughly $65 a month between the peak and today’s reading; see the payment table below for the full picture across loan sizes.
The longer range
| Year | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2.77% | 3.14% |
| 2022 | 3.22% | 7.08% |
| 2023 | 6.09% | 7.79% |
| 2024 | 6.08% | 7.22% |
| 2025 | 6.15% | 7.04% |
| 2026 (to 20 Aug) | 5.98% | 6.69% |
Four consecutive years inside roughly 6–7.8%, after 2022 more than doubled the rate inside twelve months. 2026 is the narrowest range of the four so far, and this week’s 6.65% sits closer to the low end of that range than the high.
Payment scenarios at today’s rate
The percentage alone doesn’t tell you much until it’s translated into a monthly number. Here’s the 20 August 2026 30-year average applied to several loan sizes, principal and interest only. No taxes, insurance or HOA dues, since those are specific to the property, not the rate.
| Loan amount | Monthly payment (P&I) |
|---|---|
| $200,000 | $1,284 |
| $300,000 | $1,926 |
| $400,000 | $2,568 |
| $500,000 | $3,210 |
| $600,000 | $3,852 |
Notice the relationship is close to linear at a fixed rate — double the loan, double the payment. That’s useful for a quick gut-check on affordability, but it’s also exactly why a fraction of a percentage point matters so much on a loan this size: the same table run at last month’s 6.69% peak instead of 6.65% would push every row up by roughly 0.3%, which compounds to real money over thirty years.
Here’s that sensitivity made explicit, on a $400,000 loan, so a headline like “rates tick up a quarter point” has an actual dollar figure attached to it:
| Rate | Monthly payment (P&I) | vs. this week |
|---|---|---|
| 5.65% (1.00 lower) | $2,309 | −$259 |
| 6.15% (0.50 lower) | $2,437 | −$131 |
| 6.40% (0.25 lower) | $2,502 | −$66 |
| 6.65% (this week) | $2,568 | — |
| 6.90% (0.25 higher) | $2,634 | +$66 |
| 7.15% (0.50 higher) | $2,702 | +$134 |
| 7.65% (1.00 higher) | $2,838 | +$270 |
A quarter point isn’t rounding error: it’s about $66 a month on this loan size, every month, for thirty years. The full mechanism behind why that fraction moves at all (bond yields, the Fed, discount points) is covered on the mechanism page rather than repeated here.
How to read your own quote against this
The survey covers prime, conventional, conforming loans at a standard deposit level. Your number moves away from it for reasons that are mostly knowable in advance:
- Credit score band. The largest controllable factor. Worth fixing before applying if you have a few months.
- Deposit size. More equity, less lender risk, better pricing, and possibly no mortgage insurance.
- Loan amount and type. Jumbo, FHA and VA loans price differently from conforming. “Conforming” specifically means at or below the FHFA’s loan limit: $832,750 for a one-unit property in most of the US for 2026, up from $806,500 in 2025, and $1,249,125 in designated high-cost areas. Borrow above that in a standard county and you’re in jumbo territory, where this survey’s average no longer applies directly.
- Points. Paying points buys a lower rate for an upfront fee. A quote with points isn’t comparable to one without. How that trade actually works is worked through with real numbers on the mechanism page.
- The lender. Real dispersion exists in the same week, which is why several quotes beat one.
- Your state. The PMMS is a single national figure; it doesn’t break out by state or region. Two borrowers with identical credit and deposit in different states can still see different quotes, mostly because of state-level costs bundled into the loan (title insurance rules, recording fees, escrow requirements) rather than the note rate itself moving regionally.
If your quote is far above the survey, the gap is information: it usually points at the score band or the deposit rather than at the lender.
FHFA’s own release states the 2026 conforming ceiling this directly:
“In most of the United States, the 2026 CLL value for one-unit properties will be $832,750, an increase of $26,250 from 2025.”
— FHFA, FHFA Announces Conforming Loan Limit Values for 2026, 25 November 2025
Before you actually call a lender, three things are worth having ready so the quote you get is comparable to this page and to other lenders: know your credit score band (not just “good,” the actual number), know roughly what deposit percentage you’re bringing, and decide in advance whether you’re willing to pay points for a lower rate. Walking in with those three answered turns “what’s your rate” into a quote you can actually compare apples-to-apples against the next lender.
Why the survey and the Fed disagree
A recurring confusion, briefly: the Federal Reserve held its target range at 3.50–3.75% on 29 July 2026, and mortgage rates rose and then eased over the same stretch anyway. Fixed mortgage rates track long-term bond yields, not the Fed’s overnight rate, so a Fed hold tells you very little about where this survey goes next, and neither does a Fed cut, necessarily. It’s a common enough mix-up that it’s worth stating plainly: no FOMC decision, on its own, tells you which way next Thursday’s PMMS number will move. The full explanation, with the 10-year Treasury data behind it, lives on the mechanism page; this page is about reading the number, that one is about why it moves.
The same logic drives savings rates in the other direction: why deposit rates move when they do.
Using this page
The chart is for a trend. The payment table is for a gut-check. Neither is a quote. When you’re ready to act, run actual numbers: the refinance estimator if you’re refinancing, 15 vs 30 year if you’re choosing a term.
One habit worth building if you’re going to keep checking this page: bookmark the actual Freddie Mac release, not just an article about it. Third-party coverage sometimes lags the Thursday release by a day, rounds a figure, or quietly stops updating a “current rates” page after the writer moves on. The primary source doesn’t have that failure mode — it’s either current or it’s obviously not been published yet.
Check the date at the top of this page against today’s before you use anything on it. A rate page without one is decoration.