The hanger steak is one muscle per carcass, it leaves the plant with the offal, and no USDA report has ever carried its price. Packers list it every day. Retailers put it in the ad most weeks. A buyer who wants a benchmark for it has nothing to open, which is why this page exists.
What the spec says it is
USDA's purchase specifications for fresh beef carry it as Item No. 140, Beef, Hanging Tender. The spec calls it a soft, grainy textured, elliptical shaped muscle attached to the diaphragm, at the junction of the lumbar and thoracic vertebrae. There is one of it on a carcass. The skirts, inside and outside, are also diaphragm muscles, but they come in pairs, one off each side.
The spec allows one option: a butterfly cut that exposes and removes the heavy connective tissue down the center. The spec notes that the result is sometimes called "pillars" or "hanger". That cord is why a whole hanging tender and a trimmed hanger are different things on an invoice. The spec's weight classes are 3 pounds and down, and 3 pounds and up.
The spec also says where it sits on the animal. The trimmed carcass item (100A) is the standard carcass with the kidney, the kidney knob, the internal fats and the hanging tender removed. The boneless hindquarter (155A) removes it too. On paper it travels with the kidney, not with the plate, and that matches the trade: it goes out of the plant with the offal.
Why there is no print
USDA's daily boxed beef report prints five items from the plate and flank this year: the inside skirt, the outside skirt, the peeled outside skirt, the short rib and the flank steak. There is no hanging tender line, and the daily prints back to 2001 have none. The weekly variety meat report, which prices the offal the hanger ships with, has no line for it either.
So it is quoted but not reported. Packers carry it on the daily price list as hanging tenders, and quote it on request, and that list is the only wholesale price there is. Nothing on this site, and nothing in USDA's data, can show you a hanger print, because none exists.
The one public price
The retail ad report is where a number does appear. USDA's weekly beef retail feature report added a line for hanger steak on May 16, 2025. Since then it has been in the ads 71 of 78 weeks.
| Item, conventional ads, May 16, 2025 to Oct 23, 2026 | Median ad price | Median stores a week |
|---|---|---|
| Hanger steak | $12.99/lb | 18 |
| Flank steak | $12.45/lb | 184 |
| Skirt steak | $10.93/lb | 282 |
Read the store count before the price. Skirt and flank run in hundreds of stores a week. Hanger runs in a few dozen, with 11 weeks over 100 stores and a high of 351 stores on October 23, 2026, at $13.88. It is a feature item for a handful of chains, not a national ad. The ad price ran from $9.99 the first week to $13.88 the latest, with the 2025 median at $12.99 and 2026 so far at $12.07.
How to price a quote
The nearest muscles USDA does print are the skirts. The outside skirt, Choice, printed $8.76 a pound on November 10, 2026, and the inside skirt $6.47, both off their 2026 medians. A hanger quote should move with those prints, since the three come off the same diaphragm, out of the same fed cattle, into the same steak programs.
What a hanger list price will not do is move with the cutout. It is not in it. It is a one-per-head item that clears through offal channels and bistro menus, and the retailer calling it onglet is paying for the same thing.