A gilt quote shows three prices — the clean price, the accrued interest and the dirty price — and reading a single row means telling apart what the gilt is worth, what interest has built up, and what a buyer actually pays.
One row, three prices
Every gilt on the list carries more than one price, and a first reading can make them look like three ways of saying the same thing. They are not. The clean price is what the gilt itself is worth. The accrued interest is the slice of the next coupon that has built up since the last one was paid. The dirty price is the two added together — the cash a buyer actually hands over. A single row tells you all three, and reading a quote correctly means knowing which of the three answers which question.
The reason a gilt has three prices rather than one is that coupons are paid twice a year, but gilts trade every business day. Between two coupon payments the interest owed on the gilt grows steadily. That growth has to be accounted for on the day of a trade, so the market quotes the gilt's own value separately and shows the built-up interest as its own figure.
The clean price is the gilt's own value
The clean price is the price of the gilt itself, before the interest that has built up since the last coupon. It is the figure newspapers and market screens quote, and the figure a reader usually thinks of as "the price of the gilt". A clean price of 98.50 means the gilt itself is worth £98.50 per £100 nominal, with the accrued interest set aside.
Because the clean price excludes the running interest, it is the cleaner comparison between gilts. Two gilts quoted on the same day have clean prices that can be compared directly without the distorting effect of how long it has been since each one last paid a coupon. That is why the market quotes on a clean basis rather than an all-in one.
Accrued interest is the interest already earned
Accrued interest is the interest built up since the last coupon, and the number of days it covers. As each day passes between coupon payments, a little more interest is owed on the gilt. When the gilt is sold, the buyer pays that accrued amount to the seller, because the seller earned it by holding the gilt through those days. On the next coupon date, the buyer receives the whole coupon, including the part they paid for.
Accrued interest is not a fee or an extra cost. It is interest the seller has already earned and the buyer reimburses, so it comes back as part of the next coupon.
The dirty price is what the buyer pays
The dirty price is the clean price plus the accrued interest — what a buyer actually pays for £100 nominal. It is called dirty because it has the running interest mixed in, so it is not a clean comparison between gilts. But it is the only one of the three that matches the cash on a contract note. If a reader wants to know what a gilt trade will cost, the dirty price is the figure that answers.
A contract note usually lists the three separately, so a trade can be checked against the row it came from: the clean price and the accrued interest should add up to the dirty price, and the dirty price times the nominal held should match the cash figure. When the three do not reconcile, the place to look is the accrual period and the number of days it covers, because that is the part that changes day to day.
A row worked through
The table below walks one hypothetical row through the three prices. The figures are illustrative and not a quote from any gilt; they exist to show how the columns combine.
| Column | Value per £100 nominal | What it means |
| Clean price | £98.50 | The gilt's own value |
| Accrued interest | £1.23 | Interest built up since the last coupon |
| Dirty price | £99.73 | The cash a buyer pays |
On £1,000 nominal — ten units — the buyer pays £997.30, of which £985.00 is the clean price and £12.30 is the accrued interest. On the next coupon date the buyer receives the full coupon for the whole period, and the accrued slice has, in effect, been returned. None of these are current figures; they show how one row is read from left to right.
Why the price history matters
A single row is a snapshot, and a quote is easier to read when it is set against how the gilt's price has moved. The gilt's own page, opened from the list, carries the price history, showing how its clean price and yield have changed over time, which puts the day's row in context. A clean price that looks high or low is only meaningful against the range it has traded in.
The conventional gilts list carries the clean price, accrued interest and dirty price for every gilt, so any row can be read on its own or alongside its history. Reading the three prices together, rather than looking for a single figure, is what makes a quote tell the whole story of what the gilt is worth and what it will cost to buy.
A single row also hides how the three prices behave over time. The clean price moves with the market; the accrued interest falls back to near zero just after each coupon and grows again toward the next; and the dirty price follows both. Watching the accrued interest reset on a coupon date is a useful reminder that the clean and dirty figures part company between payments and draw together on them.
Background, not advice
This guide explains how to read a gilt quote; it is general background, not investment, tax or legal advice for any reader's circumstances. Prices move, so a quote read on one day will differ from the next, and the dirty price paid will not be the amount returned at maturity. The gilt's own record and the day's market data are the primary sources for real prices and accrued amounts.