The thin abdominal primal behind the plate, around 3 to 4 percent of carcass weight. Flank steak and the skirt-family cuts that anchor fajita, stir-fry, and bavette programs. Live USDA AMS prices for every flank sub-primal, updated every business day.
Source: USDA AMS National Daily Boxed Beef Cutout, Negotiated Sales (LM_XB403). Click any row for the full chart, multi-year history, and seasonal context.
About the beef flank
The flank is the smallest beef primal, sitting behind the plate on the abdominal section of the carcass and carrying around 3 to 4 percent of carcass weight. The primary sub-primal is the flank steak (IMPS 193). The hanger steak (IMPS 140), while technically a diaphragm muscle that comes off the loin during fabrication, also trades and reports alongside flank in many buyer references because of similar end-use applications.
Flank pricing is demand-led. Flank steak anchors fajita and stir-fry programs, both at retail and in foodservice, and competes with the skirt steaks off the plate primal for the same value-steak demand share. Like skirts, flank has benefited from the slow secular shift toward globally-influenced grilled cuisine, with bavette and bistro programs giving the cut a higher-end positioning than the historical fajita reference.
Flank prints daily in the USDA AMS National Daily Boxed Beef Cutout report (LM_XB403) as a single graded line. Because the primal is small and fabrication consistent, flank is one of the cleaner read lines on the report: a flank move on solid volume usually reflects a real demand shift rather than the noise that thinner-volume cuts can carry.
Frequently asked
What is the most valuable cut from the beef flank?
Flank, Flank Steak is the highest-priced flank sub-primal at $7.46/lb Choice as of 2026-08-28, from the USDA AMS National Daily Boxed Beef Cutout report (LM_XB403).
What's driving beef flank prices today?
Average $7.46/lb across 1 Choice sub-primals Composite is down 1.9% week over week and running 3.0% above its usual level for this time of year.
How do Choice and Select flank prices differ?
Choice flank cuts trade at a premium to Select that reflects the marbling preference of steak and premium retail programs. The Choice/Select spread varies by sub-primal: it runs widest on the demand-driven steak cuts and narrows on the value-end cuts that move on supply. Both grades print daily on the USDA AMS LM_XB403 report.
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