How LPB Collects Lebanon's Dollar, Gold and Fuel Prices
Updated
LPB doesn't type prices in by hand, and it doesn't trust any single website. A price feed run by PointerForce collects readings from several independent sources, compares them, and publishes a value only when the sources back each other up. This page explains how that works for each price on the site, and where its limits are.
When prices update
The feed runs every 30 minutes from 07:00 to 22:00 Beirut time, plus one early run at 06:00. Each run fetches every source in parallel. If a source fails (a timeout, an error page, a format change), the run carries on with the others and the failure is logged for us to fix.
When a price hasn't changed but the sources still confirm it, the "last updated" time is refreshed about once an hour. A recent timestamp therefore means "checked recently", not only "changed recently". If the sources stop confirming a price, its timestamp stops moving, and you can see that it has gone stale.
The market dollar rate
The USD/LBP market rate (often called the black-market or parallel rate) has no official publisher, so we cross-check it:
- Independent Lebanese rate trackers that publish buy and sell quotes during the day.
- Peer-to-peer USDT/LBP order books on Binance, OKX and Bybit P2P, where people trade dollar stablecoins for lira. These books usually sit about 0.2% above the cash rate, so they are used to confirm a price, not to set it.
Readings that are out of range, or older than a set limit, are dropped first. Two sources agree when they are within 1,000 LBP of each other. The largest group of two or more agreeing sources wins, and sources outside that group are ignored for that run. That way one broken or lagging source can't move the price.
If no two sources agree, the feed is cautious. A jump of more than 1,000 LBP from the last published value is held and published only if the same value is still there about 55 minutes later. A single order book never moves the price on its own. It can only confirm that the current price still holds.
Very small moves are skipped, so the page doesn't flicker between near-identical numbers.
The BDL official rate
The official rate of Banque du Liban (BDL) is shown separately, from international reference-rate data. It has stood at 89,500 LBP per dollar since late 2023. To learn how it differs from the market rate, read official rate vs market rate.
Fuel prices
Fuel prices in Lebanon are set by the Ministry of Energy and Water, which publishes an official price table, usually on Tuesday and Friday. We take the table as published by the National News Agency (NNA) and corroborate it with other Lebanese news sites that reprint the same table. The ministry's own website is used as a fallback, because its online table can lag the announcement by days.
One rule protects you from confusion: a fuel table never goes backwards. If a lagging site still shows last week's table, it can't replace a newer one. The date shown on the fuel page is the date of the official table.
Generator tariff
The private generator tariff (LBP per kWh plus a fixed monthly fee by subscription amps) comes from the Ministry of Energy and Water's official monthly decision. There is usually one per month. Now and then a month passes without one. In that case the latest valid tariff stays on the generator page with its date.
Gold
Gold starts from the international spot price of the ounce, compared across several international sources. Everything else is arithmetic:
| Item | Formula |
|---|---|
| 24k per gram | ounce ÷ 31.1035 |
| 21k per gram | 24k gram × 0.875 |
| 18k per gram | 24k gram × 0.75 |
| Gold lira | 8 g of 21k |
| Kilogram | 24k gram × 1,000 |
These are raw metal prices. A jeweller adds workmanship (المصنعية) and a margin, and buys back below the selling price. Our gold guide explains the gap.
Other currencies
Euro, pound sterling, Gulf currencies and the rest come from international reference exchange rates against the US dollar. They are converted to lira through the market dollar rate, so they show roughly what the currency is worth in Lebanon's cash market, not a bank rate.
Syrian pound
The Syrian pound market rate comes from SYPNow, which publishes Damascus market quotes. We thank SYPNow and credit it wherever its data appears. Values are in new Syrian pounds, the currency introduced on 1 January 2026. The Syria page also shows the old-pound equivalent (×100).
Limits
- All prices are indicative. An exchanger, jeweller or station may quote you something different, especially for large amounts, outside business hours or in a fast-moving market.
- Sources can be wrong at the same time. Requiring agreement makes that unlikely, but not impossible.
- We don't source bank transfer, money-transfer or "Sayrafa" rates.
If you see a price that looks wrong, please tell us what you saw, where and when. Reports like that are how we find broken sources.