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The current yield on short-dated US government debt — the safest, most liquid place to lock in a known return on cash you won’t need for the next few weeks or months.
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3.69%
Treasury bills — short-dated US government debt, one year or less
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The figure at the top of the page is the current yield on Treasury bills — the annualized return you’d earn by lending money to the US government for a short stretch, drawn from the Treasury’s own published par yields and refreshed each business day. Because a Treasury bill is about as safe and as short-term as an investment gets, this yield is one of the cleanest signals in all of finance: it’s effectively the going rate for parking cash somewhere with no meaningful risk of losing it. When people talk about the “risk-free rate,” a short-dated T-bill yield is usually what they mean, and it quietly sits underneath the pricing of nearly everything else — from savings accounts to money-market funds to the discount rates used to value stocks.
Treat today’s T-bill yield as a live benchmark. It tells you what genuinely safe, liquid money is paying right now — which is exactly the number to hold up against your savings account rate, a certificate of deposit, or a money-market fund. If a bill is paying more than your bank, that gap is real money, and it’s worth acting on. The “today” change beside the number shows the latest daily move, and watching it over a few weeks tells you whether short-term rates are drifting up, easing off, or holding steady — which usually mirrors what the Federal Reserve is doing or is expected to do.
A Treasury bill, or T-bill, is short-term debt issued by the US government that matures in one year or less. The Treasury sells bills in a handful of standard terms — 4, 8, 13, 17, 26 and 52 weeks — so you can match the maturity to when you’ll actually need the cash. Lend the government money for a month, three months, six months or a year, and at the end of that term you’re repaid in full. Bills are the shortest rung on the Treasury ladder; anything longer becomes a note or a bond, which we’ll come to below.
What makes bills distinctive is how they pay you. Unlike a savings account or a bond, a T-bill pays no coupon and no periodic interest. Instead, it’s sold at a discount to its face value. You might buy a bill with a $1,000 face value for, say, $980, and at maturity the Treasury pays you the full $1,000. That $20 difference is your interest, and here’s the key point: it’s locked in the moment you buy. Once you’ve purchased the bill at its discounted price, your return is fixed and certain, no matter what happens to interest rates afterward. There’s nothing to monitor, no rate that can be cut on you, and no compounding decision to make — you know your exact dollar return on day one. The shorter the term and the higher the yield, the deeper the discount, but the mechanism is always the same: buy below face, collect face at maturity, and pocket the gap.
Treasury bills are one member of a family. The US government borrows across a whole range of maturities, and the name changes with the length of the loan. Bills mature in a year or less and pay you through a discount, with no coupon. Treasury notes run from two to ten years and pay interest every six months; Treasury bonds stretch from twenty to thirty years and likewise pay a semi-annual coupon. Plotting the yield on all of these maturities from shortest to longest gives you the Treasury yield curve — one of the most closely watched pictures in economics, because its shape tells you what the market expects to happen to interest rates and growth. You can follow the longer maturities on our Treasury note rates and Treasury bond rates pages.
The practical difference for you comes down to time and price stability. Because a bill matures so soon, its price barely moves when interest rates change — lend for three months and rates simply don’t have long to swing against you. A 30-year bond, by contrast, can lose or gain a large chunk of its market value on the same rate move, because that rate is locked in for decades. So bills are where you go for safety of principal and access to your cash; notes and bonds are where you go to lock in a yield for years and accept price swings along the way. All three carry the same rock-solid credit behind them — it’s the maturity, not the risk of default, that sets them apart.
More than anything else, T-bill yields track the Federal Reserve. The Fed sets the federal funds rate, the overnight rate banks charge one another, and because a Treasury bill lives at the same ultra-short end of the market, its yield shadows that policy rate almost exactly. When the Fed raises rates, investors won’t buy new bills unless they pay more, so T-bill yields climb; when the Fed cuts, fresh bills are issued at lower yields and the whole short end drifts down. This is why the number above moves in sympathy with Fed decisions in a way that a 30-year mortgage or a long bond does not — those are pulled by long-term expectations, while bills answer almost directly to the current policy rate.
There’s a subtlety worth knowing: bills often move before the Fed does. A 13-week bill you buy today will still be outstanding at the next Fed meeting, so its yield already bakes in where traders expect the policy rate to be over the bill’s short life. If the market is convinced a cut is coming, bill yields tend to ease ahead of the announcement; if a hike looks likely, they firm up in advance. That’s the short end of the yield curve doing its job — pricing the near-term path of Fed policy. Beyond the Fed, the sheer supply of bills the Treasury needs to sell and the appetite of investors for ultra-safe cash-like assets nudge yields at the margin, but the policy rate is the dominant force by a wide margin.
Here’s the feature that turns a good yield into a genuinely great one for many savers: the interest on Treasury bills is exempt from state and local income tax. It’s still taxable at the federal level — you can’t escape that — but your state and city can’t touch it. For someone in a low- or no-income-tax state, that’s a modest perk. For a high earner in a high-tax state like California, New York or New Jersey, it’s a real edge, because it lifts the after-tax return above what a fully taxable savings account or CD paying the same headline rate would leave you with.
The right way to compare is on a taxable-equivalent basis. Take the T-bill yield, then work out what a fully taxable account would have to pay to match it once state tax is stripped out — in a high-tax state, the T-bill’s effective yield can be several tenths of a percent higher than its sticker number suggests. That’s why T-bills quietly dominate the cash strategies of people with big tax bills: the same headline rate simply keeps more money in their pockets. If you’re weighing a bill against a bank product, don’t compare the raw yields — compare what you keep after tax, and the bill usually looks better than it first appears.
For cash you want to keep safe, T-bills sit alongside two familiar options: a high-yield savings account and a certificate of deposit. A high-yield savings account wins on flexibility — you can add or withdraw any amount, any day — but its rate is variable, so the bank can cut it whenever the Fed moves, and every dollar of interest is fully taxable by your state. A CD locks in a rate like a T-bill does, but its interest is state taxable, breaking it early usually triggers a penalty, and it’s only as safe as the FDIC insurance backing it (up to the limit). A T-bill locks in its yield too, dodges state tax entirely, is backed by the full faith and credit of the US government with no dollar cap, and can be sold on the secondary market if you need out early — though the sale price can move a little.
A common approach is to use all three by purpose: a savings account for the emergency fund you might touch tomorrow, T-bills for cash you’re confident you won’t need for a few months, and CDs or longer bills for money with a known future date, like a down payment. Our where to park cash guide walks through matching each pot of money to the right home, and the CD calculator lets you see exactly what a CD would pay so you can line it up against today’s T-bill yield after tax.
Buying a T-bill is more approachable than it sounds. The direct route is TreasuryDirect.gov, the Treasury’s own site, where a free account lets you buy bills at auction in $100 increments with no fees and no middleman. The easier route for most people is through a brokerage — Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard and the rest all sell Treasuries, either brand-new at auction or already-issued bills on the secondary market, and holding them inside your existing investment account keeps everything in one place. Either way you pick the term that fits — a 4-week bill for cash you’ll want back soon, a 52-week bill to lock a yield for a year — and decide whether to hold to maturity for the full face value or sell early if plans change.
A popular way to use bills rather than just buy one is a ladder: split your cash across several maturities — some in 4-week bills, some in 13-week, some in 26-week — so a portion matures regularly. As each bill comes due you either take the cash or roll it into a new bill, which keeps you liquid while staying fully invested at current rates. Many brokerages will even auto-roll maturing bills for you. It’s a simple, low-effort way to earn a near-risk-free, state-tax-free yield on cash while keeping steady access to it.
One more practical note on safety: T-bills are backed by the full faith and credit of the US government, which is why they’re treated as free of default risk. There’s no bank behind them that could fail and no FDIC limit to worry about — the same guarantee applies to a $1,000 bill and a $1,000,000 one. That’s a meaningful distinction if you’re holding a large cash balance that would sit above the $250,000 FDIC insurance cap at a single bank. For a business, a home seller between houses, or anyone temporarily holding a big sum, bills let you keep all of it fully protected in one place while still earning a market yield, rather than splitting it across multiple accounts to stay insured.
This page is the live number and the context; the tools turn it into your plan. Line today’s yield up against the rest of the Treasury family on the Treasury note rates and Treasury bond rates pages, and see the whole picture in the Treasury yield curve study. To understand what’s driving the short end, watch the fed funds rate. And to decide where your own cash belongs, read the where to park cash guide and run the numbers on a CD calculator, then browse the rest of the today’s rates board. This page is general information, not financial advice.
It depends on what you value. When short-term rates are elevated, the T-bill yield above is often competitive with — and sometimes higher than — a high-yield savings account, and it comes with two edges a bank account can’t match: the interest is exempt from state and local income tax, and the yield is locked in the day you buy, so it can’t be cut the way a savings rate can. The trade-off is flexibility. A savings account lets you withdraw any amount, any day, with no fuss; a T-bill ties your money up until maturity unless you sell it early on the secondary market, where the price can be a little above or below what you paid. For an emergency fund you might touch at any moment, savings usually wins on convenience. For cash you know you won’t need for the next several months, a T-bill often wins on after-tax yield and rate certainty.
The interest you earn on a Treasury bill — the difference between the discounted price you pay and the face value you receive at maturity — is taxable as ordinary income at the federal level, but it is completely exempt from state and local income tax. That exemption is the quiet advantage of T-bills. If you live in a high-tax state such as California or New York, a T-bill yielding, say, 5% can beat a fully taxable savings account or CD paying the same headline rate, because you keep more of the T-bill’s interest after taxes. To compare fairly, look at the after-tax or "taxable-equivalent" yield rather than the raw number. You report the interest in the year the bill matures, and TreasuryDirect or your brokerage will send you the tax form.
You have two straightforward routes. The first is TreasuryDirect.gov, the US Treasury’s own website, where you can open a free account and buy bills directly at auction in $100 increments with no fees and no middleman. The second is through any ordinary brokerage account — Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard and the rest all let you buy Treasuries, either new at auction or already-issued bills on the secondary market, and many people find the brokerage route easier because the bills sit alongside their other investments. Either way you can choose the term you want — 4, 8, 13, 17, 26 or 52 weeks — and decide whether to hold to maturity, when you’re paid the full face value, or sell early if you need the cash sooner.
Treasury bills and the Federal Reserve’s policy rate are both creatures of the very short end of the market, so they move almost in lockstep. When the Fed sets the federal funds rate — the overnight rate banks charge each other — it effectively anchors the return on all short-term, ultra-safe places to park money, and a T-bill maturing in a few weeks or months is about as short-term and safe as it gets. If the Fed raises rates, investors demand a higher yield to buy new bills, so T-bill rates climb; if the Fed cuts, new bills are issued at lower yields. In practice the T-bill market often moves ahead of the Fed, because bill yields price in where traders expect the policy rate to be over the bill’s short life. You can watch the policy rate itself on our fed funds rate page.
You’re not locked in until maturity — Treasury bills are among the most liquid securities in the world, and you can sell yours on the secondary market through your brokerage any business day. The catch is price. When you hold a bill to maturity, your return is fixed and certain: you get the full face value. If you sell early, you get whatever the market will pay that day, which depends on how interest rates have moved since you bought. If rates have risen, newer bills pay more, so yours is worth slightly less; if rates have fallen, yours is worth slightly more. Because T-bills are so short-dated, these swings are small compared with longer Treasury notes or bonds, but they mean an early sale can return a touch above or below what you expected.
The yield shown above is built from official US Treasury par yield data — the same daily rates the Treasury publishes across every maturity on its yield curve — accessed through the APIVerve Treasury-yields API and cached on our side, then refreshed each US business day. Because it’s the government’s own published series rather than a bank’s advertised rate, it reflects the true market yield on Treasury bills rather than any single institution’s offer, which makes it a clean benchmark for comparing against savings accounts, CDs and money-market funds.
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