Personal Loan Rates Split;
Signature Jumps to 11.186%

Personal loan APRs split over the two weeks since our July 6 report, ending a stretch in which all three categories moved together. Signature loans, the rate leader, jumped 0.184 points to 11.186%, extending well past the 11% line they crossed in early July, though the move owes something to a materially larger reporting pool as well as lender pricing. Debt consolidation fell to 10.779% on its small pool, and the flagship personal loan category barely moved, easing to 10.693% on the deepest pool of the three. That flat flagship read is the tell: the broad market held still while the categories around it swung.

📊 Full personal loan data: 2,035 institutions tracked across all 50 states.

NATIONAL: Personal loan APRs split over the two weeks ending July 20, 2026, after rising together through early July. Signature loans, the rate leader, jumped 0.184 points to 11.186%, the dominant move of the report. Debt consolidation loans went the other way, falling 0.148 points to 10.779% on their small reporting pool, and the flagship personal loan category eased 0.015 points to 10.693%, essentially flat. The overall average rose to 10.867%.

Signature loans did the moving, with a caveat attached. The 0.184-point jump to 11.186% is the largest change this category has posted all summer, stretching its run above the 11% line it first crossed in early July. But the signature reporting pool also grew from just over a thousand institutions to more than 1,150 during the same stretch, and when a pool expands that much, the average shifts with the composition of who is being counted, not just what lenders charge. Some of this move is real firming in unsecured pricing; some of it is a bigger, slightly different sample. The honest read is both, and the next few reports will show where the category settles.

The other two categories leaned lower. Debt consolidation fell 0.148 points to 10.779%, a sharp-looking move that deserves its standing asterisk: at 95 reporting institutions, the smallest pool on the board, swings this size reflect sample noise more than market repricing, in either direction. The category to trust is the flagship, and it barely moved: personal loans eased 0.015 points to 10.693% across nearly 1,300 institutions and more than 3,100 verified quotes, a clean, deep-pool reading that says broad unsecured pricing sat still. One structural note did change: the spread between signature and debt consolidation blew out to 0.407 points from 0.075, an outlier reading that history suggests will narrow as both categories mean-revert.

For borrowers, none of this changes the playbook. The three category averages now span about half a point, but the rates behind them run from roughly 2% for the strongest credit profiles to a ceiling near 30% for the weakest, so a single borrower’s APR depends far more on credit score, loan term, and lender than on which label the loan carries. Anyone weighing whether to fold high-rate balances into one fixed payment can map out a consolidation payoff before applying, and comparing offers across several lenders, including local options on Florida personal loan rates, is where the real savings sit.

Pull the three categories apart and the market looks calmer than the headline. The flagship, drawn from the deepest pool, has now printed 10.682, 10.708, and 10.693 across our last three reports, a range of less than three hundredths of a point over a month. That is a market holding still. Around it, the small debt-consolidation pool bounced, and the signature category jumped while absorbing a wave of new reporting institutions. The overall benchmark’s rise to 10.867% mostly reflects that mix. The right conclusion is not that unsecured borrowing got sharply more expensive in two weeks; it is that unsecured borrowing remains parked in the high-10% range, with the top category now stretched further above the pack than at any point this summer.

Personal loans sit further from the Federal Reserve than almost any other product on this site. The Fed held the federal funds rate at 3.50% to 3.75% on June 17 for a fourth straight meeting, the first under new Chair Kevin Warsh, and leaned hawkish in its projections; its next meeting comes at the end of this month. Unsecured personal loan APRs are priced on the borrower’s credit tier, the loan term, and each lender’s appetite for risk far more than on the policy rate, and an elevated, parked rate environment keeps these costs firm. For a borrower, the lever that moves the rate is not the Fed; it is credit score and how many lenders you ask. Category-by-category movement is tracked on the national personal loan trends page.