Compare current 10-year mortgage rates

Lenders nationwide provide weekday mortgage rates to our comprehensive national survey to bring you the most current rates available. Here you can see the latest marketplace average rates for a wide variety of purchase loans. The interest rate table below is updated daily to give you the most current purchase rates when choosing a home loan. APRs and rates are based on no existing relationship or automatic payments. For these averages, the customer profile includes a 740 FICO score and a single-family residence. To learn more, see understanding Bankrate rate averages.

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“A 10-year fixed mortgage is just a 10-year amortization,” says Silverton Mortgage President Josh Moffitt, whose company is based in Atlanta. “Your rate payment is done over 10 years, as opposed to many traditional mortgages which are paid over 30 years. By shortening the term it's a massive amount of savings because you're putting 20 years of interest away.”

For the buyer who wants to pay off their mortgage quickly while reducing how much total interest they pay, the 10-year mortgage offers a way to do just that. To find out if a 10-year mortgage is right for you, do the math using the Bankrate Mortgage Calculator.

Get the latest interest rates for 10-year fixed-rate mortgages. Be sure to check back regularly, as rates change all the time. The great news for borrowers is that mortgage rates have never been lower and rates on 10-year loans tend to be even lower than those for the more common 30-year mortgage.

The biggest advantage to a 10-year mortgage: You'll avoid paying the interest that comes with a longer loan like a 15- or 30-year mortgage. Over the course of three decades, you pay much more interest than you would over a single 10-year period. Your interest rate on a 10-year mortgage will generally be lower than the rates on comparable longer-term mortgages as well.

Generally, the shorter the loan term, the lower the interest rate. The downside of loans with shorter terms is that the monthly payments are bigger. There are arguments for and against 10-year loans. The pros are that you will end up paying less in interest and your mortgage will be paid off sooner than with longer loans. The con: Your monthly mortgage payment will be significantly larger than if you had a longer-term loan.

Compare current mortgage interest rates today to find out how much you can save by going with a shorter loan. Once you crunch the numbers, you might find that it’s worth it to pay more each month to save on the total loan’s interest costs.

Here are three loan scenarios that show monthly payments vs. total cost on $300,000 mortgages with interest rates that reflect loan type (remember, shorter loans have lower rates):

Both the 10-year fixed mortgage and the adjustable-rate mortgage, or ARM, typically have lower interest rates than their longer-term, fixed-interest counterparts. The main difference between them is that the 10-year fixed-rate mortgage has a locked interest rate while the ARM has a floating rate. It’s important to note that ARMs have a “fixed period” when the rate does not adjust. For example, in 5/1 ARMs, the interest rate stays the same for the first five years.

If you plan on selling within five years, you can compare the 5/1 ARM with a 10-year mortgage to see which one has the lower rate. But keep in mind that the typical ARM amortizes over 30 years, which means the payments will be much lower than a 10-year loan, even if it has a lower interest rate.

And at the end of five years, and assuming identical interest rates on the two loans, you’ll have paid down about 12 percent of the balance of the 5/1 30-year ARM, while with the 10-year fixed, you’ll have paid off nearly half the balance.

There are also 7/1 ARMs, which lock the rate for the first seven years. If you intend on staying longer then you might want to consider a 10-year fixed-rate loan.