Bank Reserves at the Federal Reserve

The Fed publishes reserves two ways: the Wednesday level, which this page uses because it lines up with the Fed's assets and the Treasury's Wednesday balance, and the week average, which FRED lists as WRESBAL and most charts quote.

For the week ending Oct 14, 2026, the average was $3.02T, −$7.5B from the previous average. The Wednesday level was $3.03T. A change in the average compares two seven-day windows, while a change in Wednesday levels compares two individual days. The directions can differ without either series being wrong. FRED WRESBAL identifies its frequency as weekly, ending Wednesday. The open data keeps both measurements and their separate changes, with the Wednesday level as the primary observation. No average is substituted into the net-liquidity formula.

Reserve balances are deposits eligible banks hold at Federal Reserve Banks. Banks use those balances to settle payments. The Wednesday total here is an aggregate across the banking system, rather than an amount that every bank holds or a direct measure of the cash households keep in deposit accounts.

The Board reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective March 26, 2020, as its reserve requirements page records. A zero requirement does not make actual reserve balances zero. Banks still use reserve accounts, and the Fed still reports their balances in H.4.1. The chart shows those measured balances through different policy regimes. It does not estimate the minimum comfortable balance for each institution. For comparisons with the Fed's assets, use Wednesday levels; for the average amount held over a week, use the separately labelled WRESBAL figure.

The latest aggregate balance is $3.03T. This tracker reports its level, changes and history; it does not label a particular dollar threshold as ample. An aggregate amount cannot show how reserves are distributed across banks or how willing those banks are to lend in overnight markets.

Assessing reserve adequacy requires more than comparing the balance with a previous year. Money-market rates, payment needs and the distribution of balances can matter even when the system total is large. The H.4.1 release is the primary accounting record used here, rather than an estimate of a scarcity threshold. TFTC's coverage of reserve management purchases discusses the policy debate. Read that interpretation alongside the dated observations and avoid treating a weekly total alone as proof that every bank has the reserves it wants.

The Board's rate feed reports IORB at 3.90%, effective Sep 17, 2026. The feed was updated Oct 21, 2026. This rate is fetched with each validated tracker snapshot, so changes do not depend on manually editing the page.

The Federal Reserve Banks pay interest on reserve balances under the Board's rules. The Interest on Reserve Balances page describes IORB as a monetary-policy tool and publishes the current setting. The rate applies to eligible reserve balances; it is separate from the rate paid at the overnight reverse repo facility. A change in IORB can occur without a new Wednesday balance-sheet observation. Its effective and update dates are therefore recorded separately from the reserve observation date in the open JSON. The headline reserve amount remains a dated weekly level.