Two benchmarks for two jobs
Both Euribor and €STR are euro interest-rate benchmarks, and both appear in financial news on the same day. Beyond that they have little in common.
Euribor is a term rate. It answers the question "at what rate would a bank lend to another bank, unsecured, for one week, one month, three months, six months or twelve months?" It is administered by EMMI, a private non-profit institute in Brussels, and it is built from the contributions of a panel of banks under the hybrid methodology in place since 2019.
€STR, the euro short-term rate, is an overnight rate. It answers the question "at what rate did banks actually borrow euros overnight yesterday?" It is calculated and published by the European Central Bank itself, from transaction data that banks report to it, and it reflects one night of borrowing at a time.
The overnight rate that replaced EONIA
Until the start of 2022 the euro area's overnight benchmark was EONIA. EONIA was discontinued in January 2022 and €STR took its place. Contracts and instruments that referenced EONIA were moved onto €STR. This was a change in the overnight market only; Euribor continued unchanged through the transition and is still published every TARGET2 business day.
What each is used for
€STR is the rate used by the ECB and the financial industry as the foundation of the euro money market. It is the reference for overnight borrowing and for the instruments the financial industry uses to hedge and value short-term euro interest rates. Because it is an overnight rate, a product based on €STR compounds it day by day and only knows its total cost at the end of the period.
Euribor is the rate used in lending to households and companies. A term rate can be fixed at the start of an interest period, which is what a mortgage, a business loan or a floating-rate bond needs: the bank tells you the rate for the coming three, six or twelve months and the instalment follows from it. That is why Euribor, not €STR, is the reference in the loan contracts of millions of euro-area households.
How the two relate
The shortest Euribor maturities, one week and one month, sit close to the overnight rate because there is little time for anything to change. The longer maturities add two things: the market's expectation of where overnight rates will be over the coming months, and a term premium for lending unsecured for longer. When the ECB changes its deposit facility rate, the overnight rate and the 1-week and 1-month Euribor fixings follow it closely; the 12-month fixing has typically moved before the decision, as expectations shifted.
On 4 September 2026 the 1-week Euribor was 2.154 % and the 12-month Euribor 3.108 %. The difference between them is the term structure at work, and the forecast page on this site turns that difference into implied forward rates.
Why a mortgage holder sees Euribor
If you hold a variable-rate mortgage anywhere in the euro area, the reference in your contract is almost certainly a Euribor maturity plus a spread. You will not find €STR in a household loan contract, and you do not need to follow it to understand your instalment. What matters to you is the Euribor maturity your contract names, the convention for taking its value, whether the daily fixing on a set date or the monthly average, and the date of your next revision.
€STR is worth knowing about for one reason only: it is the rate the ECB and the market watch most closely for the immediate effect of policy decisions, and the short Euribor maturities follow it closely. If you want to see a policy change arrive, look at €STR and 1-week Euribor first; if you want to know what it does to your mortgage, look at the maturity in your contract.