Where can you find public timber and lumber price data?

At several levels of the chain, in different forms and on different schedules. For logs and timber, the free public series is a monthly government producer price index, which tracks change, not a price in dollars. Stumpage and delivered log prices, in dollars per unit and by region, come mostly from price-reporting services, quarterly and largely by subscription. Public land agencies' timber sale results and the federal cut and sold reports are the public alternatives. Wholesale lumber prices come weekly from commercial indices and futures, often republished by trade bodies. Production and trade come annually from national statistics and international bodies. The first job is to match the level and form to the decision.

What the usual answer says

The top results are lumber futures charts and a run of producer price index series. All are real. They rarely say what each one measures, which decides whether it can be compared with a business's own numbers.

Logs and timber: an index, monthly

The producer price index for "Lumber and Wood Products: Logs, Bolts, Timber, Pulpwood and Wood Chips", republished on a central bank's data portal, is monthly, national and free. It is an index, with December 2011 set at 100. It is not seasonally adjusted, and stood at 110.615 in August 2026. It shows direction and size of change across a broad basket. It can't tell a landowner what a given tract's pine sawtimber should fetch.

Stumpage and delivered logs: regional, quarterly, mostly paid

Stumpage and delivered log prices in dollars are regional and product-specific. TimberMart-South, which describes itself as "a trusted source of current and long-term trend data for stumpage and delivered wood prices", publishes quarterly for one major timber region. Its homepage shows summary averages; detailed reports are sold to subscribers. When checked, its prices were "last updated: 7 July 2026", with the next update due 15 October 2026. Free public stumpage data at this level of detail is thin, and a quarterly price describes sales made weeks or months before publication. It suits appraisals, budgets and trends, not this month's sale.

Wholesale lumber: weekly

NAHB, the homebuilders' association, republishes a weekly framing lumber price from Madison's Lumber Price Index, a commercial index. On 18 September 2026 that index stood at "$515.93 per 1,000 board feet", "down 1.6% week over week" and "up 8.4% year over year". The same page reported lumber futures down 6.0% on the year, moving differently from the cash index. Wholesale lumber prices suit sawmill sales, dealer purchasing and quoting, and say little about stumpage directly, because the margin between log and lumber moves too.

Production and trade: annual

The Food and Agriculture Organization's forest product statistics hold annual data "since 1961 on production and trade of forest products", and FAO "currently collects data on 59 forest products". These suit market sizing and trade analysis, not pricing.

Comparing like with like

Matching the level to the decision is the first step: stumpage for a sale bid, delivered logs for mill costs, lumber for a yard's buying. The harder step is comparability within a level. Public series are regional or national averages, in index points or per-ton or per-thousand-board-feet units, for product definitions that won't match any one business's sorts. So convert to the same unit, align the period, note how each source defines its products, and expect a business's own price to sit off the average for reasons that have nothing to do with the market.

Keeping public series usable

Record each series with its source, level, product, unit, publication date and whether it is an index or a price, and keep the history, since sources can revise earlier figures or change their method. AI can help read price reports into records with their units and dates, and flag when the business's own prices diverge from the matching series. It breaks where reports are paywalled PDFs or charts behind cookie walls, and the judgement about why prices diverge remains a person's.

When it doesn't apply

Businesses that price entirely from their own contracts need public prices only for context. Some products, such as specialty hardwoods or local pulpwood markets, have little public price data at all.

Quarri for finance and strategy teams is built for the people who close the month, explain the margin and answer the board.

Quarri is an AI-native data platform for the timber supply chain. It connects buying, production, sales and inventory for forest management, sawmill, wood products and pulp, paper and packaging operators.