Aluminum scrap price today
Aluminum (sheet)
$1.09/ lb
-7.27%
Updated 21:47:50 UTC
The number above is the LME spot price translated to USD per pound. Yard payouts are lower than that — and the gap between what your scrap actually fetches depends much more on grade than on the daily LME move. Aluminum scrap arrives at yards as dozens of different alloys mixed together, and the smelter has to test, sort, and dilute. That cost flows back to you as the grade discount.
Common aluminum grades and typical spreads
| Grade | Description | Typical % of clean sheet |
|---|---|---|
| Sheet (clean) | Mill-grade sheet, no paint or coating | 100% (reference) |
| Extrusion (clean) | Window frames, structural extrusion, no paint | 90–100% |
| Cast | Wheels, engine blocks, transmission cases, cookware | 55–75% |
| UBC (baled, to spec) | Used beverage cans, 1,000-lb-plus bale | 70–85% |
| UBC (loose) | Loose or bagged cans, small volume | 50–70% |
| Painted / coated | Painted siding, anodized trim | 55–75% |
| Mixed / unsorted | Anything not separated | 40–60% |
Clean sheet itself usually pays 65–75% of LME spot in cash at a US yard. So if LME reads $1.20/lb, clean sheet is roughly $0.78–$0.90/lb, and the percentages above stack on top of that to get you to a per-grade number.
What moves aluminum scrap prices
- Energy prices — primary aluminum production is electricity-intensive; secondary (recycled) production becomes relatively more competitive when energy is expensive, lifting demand for scrap.
- Auto demand — aluminum content per vehicle has roughly doubled in the last fifteen years and continues to climb as EV battery housings and structural castings displace steel.
- Beverage can demand — UBC pricing tracks consumer beverage volumes and the recycled-content commitments of the major can sheet mills.
- Bauxite supply — disruptions in Guinea, Australia, or Brazil ripple through to LME pricing within weeks, and secondary scrap follows.
Selling tips
- Pre-sort by grade before you drive. Sheet, extrusion, cast, UBC, and painted in separate bins. Mixing one cast wheel into a load of clean sheet drops the entire load to cast pricing.
- Magnet-check extrusion. Window frames often hide steel screws or reinforcements; thirty seconds with a magnet protects the clean-extrusion rate.
- Don't strip paint unless the math works. Stripping paint off siding to get the clean-sheet rate rarely pays out at household volumes — the time cost outweighs the 15-percentage-point bump.
- Cans pay best in volume. A 50-lb-plus crushed bag clears the higher UBC tier; a grocery bag of cans gets weighed against loose-UBC pricing. In deposit-bottle states, redemption pays much more than scrap.