Price of Scrap Metal - Adelphia Metals

How (and Why) to Keep Up with the Price of Scrap Metal

Like the stock market, groceries, and other commodities with prices that change often, the price of scrap metal fluctuates too. It’s not always possible to predict the timing or degree of change because prices are based on many factors that interact with each other. Often the best choice is to keep track of daily prices and note how they’re trending in your area and nationally.

One way to stay on top of changing prices is to track with an online price update tool or app. Here we’ll look at what these tools are, the things that influence scrap metal prices, and how that impacts the goods and materials you buy for your business.

What is a Scrap Metal Price Updator?

A live scrap updater is a website or app with a real-time feed of pricing data. It lists current scrap metal market prices and updates them automatically, often every few seconds or minutes, based on commodity market data. It may be focused on average prices in the US as a whole, or by region.

Some updaters include prices by type of metal broadly (e.g., steel), others break the data down into subcategories (e.g., carbon steel and heavy melting steel (HMS), shredded steel, turning scrap, sheet scrap). Another common feature is icons or graphs that illustrate if the price is trending higher or lower over time.

How it works:

While features and details vary from site to site, most scrap metal price updaters share these characteristics:

Data Source: Pulls pricing from steel and scrap metal exchanges (e.g., AMM/Fastmarkets, LME, regional scrap yards).
Automatic Refresh: Feed updates in real- or near-real-time, and is often embedded in a website dashboard or internal ERP system.
Integration with Inventory & Orders: Some automatically update sales quotes, inventory valuations, or supplier cost sheets.

What influences scrap metal prices?

It’s important to remember scrap metal prices can vary from region to region, and even within the same locality or from scrap yard to scrap yard. With that understood, the following interconnected factors combine to exert the largest influence on prices:

Industry demand. When the industries that use specific types of metal demand more of it, prices for that metal go up.
Proximity and transportation. This includes how close suppliers are to steel processing facilities, transportation hubs/infrastructure, and the price of fuel. In other words, how much it costs to get the scrap where it needs to go.
Condition and quality. Newer scrap that’s in larger pieces, non-corroded, uncoated, and otherwise easier to process scrap may command a higher price.
Current supply levels and intake quantities. How much of a particular metal buyers and manufacturers have on hand, and how much sellers bring them, compared to current demand.
The economy in general. In addition to the stock and commodities markets, everything from the job statistics to tariff policies to global geopolitical events can have an effect on the larger economy.

Spotlight on scrap steel and rebar

If you’re in an industry, such as construction or infrastructure, that relies on products made out of scrap metal, knowing current prices can give you a clue about the price you might pay for your next order. Steel is especially important in this context.

Domestic rebar is made from up to 97% recycled steel. Scraps are melted, refined, cast into billets, rolled, deformed, and finally, cut to length. And generally, prices for carbon steel, heavy melting steel (HMS), and low-alloy steel scrap are directly related to rebar prices. Domestic rebar up to 97% recycled (from domestic scrap).

For rebar and other steel products, a price updating tool is used to:

Track fluctuating scrap prices. Since scrap metal is a major raw material in steel production, changes directly impact rebar costs.
Help suppliers adjust quotes. Steel mills, fabricators, and distributors may adjust their selling price based on scrap movements.
Give buyers transparency. Contractors or purchasing managers can time their purchases for when raw material costs are more favorable.

For example, if the live scrap updater shows that shredded ferrous scrap prices jumped $25/ton today, a rebar supplier may anticipate higher mill pricing in the coming weeks and adjust bids accordingly.

If you’re in construction, infrastructure, metal fabrication, a buyer for retail building or home centers, or in other industries where steel rebar is used, keeping an eye on scrap steel prices can help you plan and budget for materials and anticipate changing rebar prices. It can also inform decisions you make about pricing the products and services you supply to your own customers.

Trust Adelphia Metals for Your Concrete Reinforcement Needs

At Adelphia Metals, we think informed customers make better decisions, so we do our best to share useful resources like our market update reports, scrap metal price updater, and blog.

Adelphia Metals is a national leader in the concrete reinforcement industry, and we provide high-quality rebar products to customers from over 50 distribution points across the US. Our product line includes black rebar, steel remesh, fiberglass rebar, epoxy-coated rebar, ChromX (MMFX), coiled/spooled rebar, and GalvaBar. We also supply fabricated rebar, which we can cut and bend to your specifications.