To buy U.S. government bonds, you either open a free account at TreasuryDirect.gov and buy straight from the Treasury, or you place the order through a brokerage account that trades Treasuries on the secondary market. Both routes are legitimate. The right one depends on which security you want, whether you might sell before maturity, and whether you already have a brokerage you like using. Savings bonds are only sold through TreasuryDirect. Marketable Treasuries (bills, notes, bonds, TIPS, and floating rate notes) can be bought either way.
What You Can Actually Buy
The Treasury issues several kinds of debt, and the one you pick shapes where and how you buy it.
Treasury bills mature in four to 52 weeks and are sold at a discount to face value. You pay less than face, receive the full face value at maturity, and the difference is your return. Most terms are auctioned weekly.
Treasury notes pay a fixed rate every six months and come in 2, 3, 5, 7, and 10-year terms. Treasury bonds work the same way but run 20 or 30 years.
Floating Rate Notes mature in two years, reset weekly based on the 13-week T-bill auction rate, and pay interest quarterly.
TIPS (Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities) adjust their principal with the Consumer Price Index and come in 5, 10, and 30-year terms.
Savings bonds come in two flavors. Series EE bonds earn a fixed rate and are guaranteed to double if held 20 years. Series I bonds combine a fixed rate with an inflation adjustment that resets every six months. The composite rate for I bonds issued November 2025 through April 2026 is 4.03%, which includes a 0.90% fixed rate. Savings bonds cannot be traded; you buy and redeem them only through the Treasury.
Buying Directly Through TreasuryDirect
TreasuryDirect is the government’s own portal, and it’s the only place to buy savings bonds. Registration is free and online, but the identity check catches people off guard, so don’t assume you’ll be buying the same day you sign up.
To open an individual account, you’ll need:
- Your Social Security Number or Taxpayer Identification Number
- A U.S. physical address (a P.O. Box alone won’t work)
- An email address
- The routing and account number for a U.S. checking or savings account to fund purchases and receive payments
Entity accounts (trusts, estates, businesses) usually require FS Form 5444, signed in ink before a certifying officer or notary before the account activates. Individual accounts occasionally get flagged for manual verification too. Submitting false information on federal financial forms can carry up to five years in prison and fines up to $250,000.
Once the account is active, you go to the BuyDirect tab, choose the security type, and either pick the next auction date (for marketable securities) or the current date (for savings bonds). Savings bonds can be purchased in any amount from $25 to $10,000, down to the penny. Marketable securities have a $100 minimum and sell in $100 increments up to $10 million per auction.
All purchases through TreasuryDirect are non-competitive bids. You accept whatever rate the auction sets and you’re guaranteed to receive the securities you ordered. Everything is held electronically. No paper certificates, no storage, no lost bonds.
Buying Through a Broker
If you already have a brokerage account, you can buy marketable Treasuries there. Brokers give you access to the secondary market, where previously issued bills, notes, and bonds trade between investors. Many brokers also let you place non-competitive bids at Treasury auctions without opening a TreasuryDirect account.
Securities bought through a broker are usually held in street name: the brokerage appears as the holder on Treasury records, and you’re the beneficial owner. The practical benefit is that selling before maturity is straightforward, because the security is already sitting in a trading account.
The cost to watch for is the bid-ask spread on secondary market trades, which is the gap between what buyers are offering and sellers asking. On actively traded Treasuries it tends to be small, but it’s a real cost that doesn’t exist when you buy at auction. Many brokers charge no commission on Treasury trades; some still do. Check the fee schedule.
What you cannot buy through a broker: Series I and Series EE savings bonds. They’re only sold through TreasuryDirect. As of January 2025, even the old option to buy paper I bonds with a tax refund using IRS Form 8888 has been discontinued.
Which Route Fits Your Situation
Use TreasuryDirect if you want savings bonds, if you plan to hold marketable securities to maturity, or if you want to avoid any brokerage account complications. Buying at auction means no spread, and holding to maturity means the price fluctuations in between don’t matter to you.
Use a broker if you might sell before maturity, if you want to keep all your investments visible in one place, or if you’d rather not go through the TreasuryDirect verification process. The secondary market handles resale cleanly. Selling a security held in TreasuryDirect requires transferring it to a broker first, which means filing FS Form 5511 through the Manage Direct tab and providing the receiving institution’s wire name, routing number, and account details.
Purchase Limits Before You Order
Savings bonds have annual caps. Each Social Security Number can buy up to $10,000 in electronic EE bonds and $10,000 in electronic I bonds per calendar year. That’s $20,000 per person, per year, in savings bonds.
A few details that trip people up: gift bonds count toward the recipient’s limit, not the buyer’s. Each child has the same $10,000 per-type limit as an adult. And if you hold both an individual account and an entity account under the same SSN, the limit applies separately to each.
Marketable securities have no annual cap beyond the $10 million per-auction ceiling on non-competitive bids.
Getting Paid and Getting Out
How interest reaches you depends on the security. Notes and bonds deposit interest into your linked bank account every six months (or reinvest, if you set that up). FRNs pay quarterly. T-bills pay nothing along the way; your return is the discount you got at purchase, delivered as the full face value at maturity.
When a marketable security matures, the principal drops into your linked bank account automatically. TreasuryDirect can also roll maturing securities into the next auction of the same type if you turn on automatic reinvestment.
Savings bonds have their own rules. The minimum holding period is one year: you can’t cash a savings bond before 12 months from the issue date. Redeem between one and five years and you forfeit the last three months of interest. After five years, there’s no penalty. Both EE and I bonds keep earning for up to 30 years, and interest stops there, so letting them sit longer gains you nothing.
One exception to the one-year lock: if you live in an area covered by an official disaster declaration, the Treasury waives the holding requirement. Call 844-284-2676 or submit FS Form 5512 with “DISASTER” written at the top.
Tax Treatment
Interest on every kind of Treasury security is subject to federal income tax but exempt from state and local income taxes under 31 U.S.C. ยง 3124. The exemption applies across bills, notes, bonds, TIPS, FRNs, and savings bonds. In a high-tax state, that difference can make Treasuries meaningfully more attractive than corporate bonds or CDs on an after-tax basis.
For securities held in TreasuryDirect, a Form 1099-INT appears in your account by January 31 of the following year. Brokerages issue their own 1099s for interest earned in their accounts.
Savings bond interest comes with a reporting choice. Most people defer reporting until they cash the bond or it matures, which is the default. You can instead elect to report interest annually as it accrues, but once you make that choice you have to stick with it for all your savings bonds unless the IRS approves a switch back.
If you use savings bond proceeds for qualified higher education expenses (tuition and fees at eligible institutions, or contributions to a 529 plan or Coverdell ESA), you may be able to exclude the interest from federal tax entirely. Room and board don’t qualify. The exclusion phases out at higher incomes, the bond must have been issued after 1989, and the owner must have been at least 24 at issuance. You claim it on IRS Form 8815.