What is a good credit card APR?

Below 15 percent is excellent, 15 to 18 percent is good, 18 to 22 percent is average, 22 to 26 percent is above average, and above 26 percent is high. A 0 percent promotional APR is best, temporarily, for the length of the promotional window.

Why is my credit card APR so high?

Most card APRs are the prime rate, 7.00 percent in late October 2026, plus a margin set by the issuer. The average margin is roughly 15.36 percentage points, which the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found at an all-time high.

How do I lower my credit card APR?

Ask the issuer for a reduction, move the balance to a 0 percent transfer offer, check a credit union card capped at 18 percent, or, if the balance is unmanageable, talk to a nonprofit credit counselor. A quarter-point Fed cut saves only about $12.50 a year on a $5,000 balance.

Home › Credit Card Payoff Calculator › What Is the Average Credit Card APR in 2026, and What Counts as Good?

The minimum-payment ledger · Table No. 41

What Is the Average Credit Card APR in 2026, and What Counts as Good?

The Federal Reserve's benchmark for accounts that pay interest was 22.36 percent in August 2026, and it has held above 22 percent for four years. This article explains what the benchmark measures, how prime plus margin builds every card rate, what counts as good in the current market, and the four moves that lower the rate actually paid.

Filed October 29, 2026 · figures checked against 2026 sources

The benchmark: 22.36 percent, and what it measures

The average credit card APR in the United States, for the accounts that actually pay interest, was 22.36 percent in August 2026, according to the Federal Reserve's G.19 Consumer Credit release published on October 7, 2026. The same release put the average across all credit card accounts at 21.19 percent. The gap between the two figures is the first thing to understand, because it explains why published averages seem to disagree with each other. The all-accounts average includes millions of cardholders who pay in full every month and are never charged interest. Their lower rates, and the unused rates on dormant accounts, pull the average down. The assessed-interest average strips those accounts out and looks only at the accounts that were charged interest in the period, which is the population a person carrying a balance actually belongs to. If a balance is being carried, the 22.36 percent figure is the benchmark. If no balance is carried, the APR costs nothing at all, and the benchmark is irrelevant, which is the only situation in which a high APR is harmless.

The G.19 figures come from commercial banks reporting the stated APRs on their card plans, and they are the most authoritative national benchmark available, because they cover the banking system rather than a survey of advertised offers. The history in the table below, from the same release series, shows how the benchmark moved. In 2021, the assessed-interest average was 16.45 percent. In 2022, it was 17.91 percent. In 2023, it jumped to 22.15 percent, as the Federal Reserve's rate increases passed through to variable card rates. In 2024, it was 22.89 percent. In 2025, it eased to 22.32 percent. In the second quarter of 2026, it was 22.15 percent, and in August 2026, 22.36 percent. The all-accounts average followed the same path, from 14.60 percent in 2021 to 21.19 percent in August 2026. The jump of roughly six percentage points between 2021 and 2023 has not reversed. Card rates rose with the policy rate and stayed elevated after it, because issuers widened their margins, a trend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau documented in its market reports, finding that the margin over the prime rate reached an all-time high. The rate environment a cardholder faces in late 2026 is not a spike. It is the plateau the spike left behind.

Period	All accounts	Accounts assessed interest
2021	14.60%	16.45%
2022	16.26%	17.91%
2023	20.90%	22.15%
2024	21.58%	22.89%
2025	21.22%	22.32%
Q2 2026	20.94%	22.15%
August 2026	21.19%	22.36%

Other surveys report lower averages, and the difference is method, not error. Bankrate's weekly survey of advertised offer ranges, which counts the midpoint of each card's advertised range across about 111 popular cards, read 19.67 percent in late October 2026, after creeping up from 19.56 percent in mid-June. That figure describes what new applicants are offered, averaged across the range, not what existing cardholders pay. The Fed's figure describes what banks report as the stated APR on accounts, weighted toward the accounts that carry balances. Both are honest. Neither is the rate on any particular card. The rate that matters is the one printed on the statement, in the Schumer box and the cardholder agreement, and the benchmark's job is to say whether that rate is high, low, or ordinary for the market as it stands. At 22.36 percent, the market as it stands is expensive, and a rate near the average is not a good rate. It is an ordinary rate in an expensive market.

How an APR is built: prime plus margin

Most credit card APRs are variable, which means they are built from two parts: an index, usually the prime rate, plus a margin set by the issuer for the cardholder's credit risk. The prime rate is the rate banks charge their most creditworthy corporate borrowers, and it moves with the Federal Reserve's target range, typically sitting three percentage points above the top of the range. In late October 2026, after the Federal Reserve held its target range at 3.75 to 4.00 percent on October 28, the prime rate stood at 7.00 percent. The margin is everything above that: the issuer's cost of funds, operating costs, expected losses, rewards program costs, and profit, expressed as a spread over prime. At the 22.36 percent average, the average margin is roughly 15.36 percentage points over prime, which is the figure the Bureau found had reached an all-time high. The margin is set when the account is opened, based on the credit profile at the time, and it generally does not move unless the issuer reprices the account, which requires 45 days' notice under the Credit CARD Act. The prime part moves when the Fed moves, usually within one or two billing cycles, in either direction.

The prime plus margin build explains why card rates rose so fast in 2022 and 2023 and why they have not fallen back. When the Fed raised its target range by more than five percentage points, prime rose by the same amount, and every variable card rate rose with it, automatically, without any issuer action. When the Fed later held and then eased, prime eased with it, but issuers widened margins, so the cardholder saw little relief. The build also explains why two cardholders with the same card can pay different rates: the prime is the same for both, and the margin differs by credit profile. And it explains why a Fed rate cut does not automatically make a card cheap. A quarter-point cut in the target range lowers prime by a quarter point, which lowers a 22.36 percent card to about 22.11 percent, saving about $12.50 a year on a $5,000 balance. The margin is where the money is, and the margin is negotiated at application, repriced by the issuer, or escaped by moving the balance, not by waiting for the Fed.

What counts as good, in the current market

There is no official scale for card APRs, but the market draws its own lines, and they are useful as rules of thumb. A 0 percent promotional APR is the best rate available, temporarily, for applicants with good to excellent credit, and it is worth exactly as much as the promotional window is long, minus the transfer fee. Below 15 percent is excellent in the current market, and it is most often found on credit union cards and low-rate bank cards issued to strong-credit borrowers. From 15 to 18 percent is good. From 18 to 22 percent is average, which is where most mainstream cards land. From 22 to 26 percent is above average, and it is where rewards cards and fair-credit cards cluster, because the rewards and the risk are both priced into the margin. Above 26 percent is high, and it is where store cards and cards for limited or damaged credit live. The 18 percent line has a legal anchor: federal credit unions are capped by the National Credit Union Administration at 18 percent on loans, including credit cards, and the NCUA Board extended that ceiling through September 10, 2027, rather than letting it fall to the statutory 15 percent. A bank card charging well above 18 percent is, in effect, charging more than a credit union is allowed to charge, which makes a credit union card worth checking for any cardholder paying above that line.

The scale needs a qualifier, which is that the APR only matters when a balance is carried. A cardholder who pays in full every month, inside the grace period, pays no interest at any APR, and the rewards, fees, and credit limit matter more than the rate. A cardholder who carries a balance even occasionally should treat the APR as the card's price, because it is, and should compare it with the 22.36 percent benchmark before comparing anything else. A rate of 19 percent, which reads as below average against the benchmark, still costs $950 a year in interest on a $5,000 balance that never moves, and $5,381.95 over a minimum-only payoff at 15 percent, the cheapest rate in the calculator's ladder. There is no APR in the current market at which carrying a balance on minimum payments is cheap. There are only APRs at which it is less ruinous, and the difference between 15 percent and 29.99 percent on a $5,000 minimum-only payoff is $5,882.41 in interest and 30 months. Rate shopping is worth doing. It is worth doing after the payment is fixed, not instead of it.

The new insight

The average APR has not fallen back because the margin, not the prime rate, is doing the work. Prime stood at 7.00 percent in late October 2026, which leaves roughly 15.36 percentage points of margin in the 22.36 percent average, a spread the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found at an all-time high. That means waiting for the Federal Reserve to make a card cheap is waiting on the wrong lever: a quarter-point Fed cut saves about $12.50 a year on a $5,000 balance, while moving from the average rate to an 18 percent credit union card saves about $218 a year on the same balance, every year, and fixing the payment saves $6,448.25 once. The margin is set by the issuer. The payment is set by the cardholder. Both are more powerful than the Fed, for the person holding the card.

Penalty rates, store cards, and the rates that are not the APR

The APR on the statement is not the only rate that can apply to a card. The penalty APR, triggered by a late payment, is typically several points higher than the standard APR, often near 30 percent, and it applies to new transactions immediately and to the existing balance after 45 days' notice. It can be removed after six consecutive on-time payments, which is a concrete incentive to protect the payment record. Store cards carry some of the highest APRs in the market, routinely above 26 percent and sometimes above 30 percent, because they are issued to shoppers at the point of sale with limited underwriting and generous promotional financing that, if not paid within the deferred-interest window, charges interest retroactively from the purchase date. Deferred interest is the provision to read twice: a 0 percent store promotion that is not paid in full by the end of the window can bill interest on the full original purchase amount, for the whole period, at the store card's APR. Cash advance APRs are higher than purchase APRs, accrue from the transaction date with no grace period, and carry a fee, which makes a cash advance the most expensive transaction a card can make. None of these rates appear in the advertised range. All of them appear in the agreement, and all of them are avoidable by the same three habits: pay on time, pay the balance before a promotional window closes, and never take a cash advance on a card that is being paid down.

How to lower the rate you actually pay

Four moves, in order of reliability. First, call the issuer and ask for a lower APR, citing the payment record and competing offers. Issuers grant reductions more often than cardholders expect, because retaining a paying account is cheaper than acquiring a new one, and the worst outcome of the call is a no. Second, move the balance to a 0 percent balance transfer offer, if the credit profile qualifies, and pay the fixed amount that clears it inside the promotional window, counting the 3 to 5 percent transfer fee in the cost. Third, check a credit union card, where the rate is capped at 18 percent through September 2027 and the margin is typically thinner, because the institution is member-owned. Fourth, if the balance is unmanageable at any rate, talk to a nonprofit credit counselor, whose debt management plans negotiate reduced rates with issuers directly and consolidate the payments into one fixed amount. What does not lower the rate is waiting. The G.19 history shows rates holding above 22 percent on assessed-interest accounts for four consecutive years, and margins at record highs. The rate a cardholder pays in 2027 will be the rate negotiated, transferred, or escaped into, not the rate that arrives on its own. The calculator on this site prices the payoff at any APR entered, so the saving from each of these moves can be stated in dollars before any of them is made.

Sources

Federal Reserve, G.19 Consumer Credit release, October 7, 2026 (average APR 22.36 percent on accounts assessed interest, 21.19 percent across all accounts, August 2026, preliminary; annual history 2021 to 2025 and second quarter 2026). Federal Reserve, FOMC statement, October 28, 2026 (target range held at 3.75 to 4.00 percent). Bankrate weekly APR survey, late October 2026 (19.67 percent average of advertised offer midpoints). Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, credit card market reports (APR margins at an all-time high). National Credit Union Administration, 18 percent federal credit union rate ceiling extended through September 10, 2027. Prime rate 7.00 percent as reported in late October 2026. All payoff figures were computed by this site's calculator under the stated model.