Savings rates, honestly

Rate tables go stale fast. A savings APY can be repriced the week after it is published, and a stale figure on a financial site is worse than no figure — it sends someone to a bank on a promise that no longer exists. Every other number on BankSonar comes from the FDIC’s public call reports and can be traced back to a filing date. Deposit rates have no equivalent free public source, so until we have partners whose rates we can verify and refresh, this page carries none.

What you get instead is the part that does not expire: how to read a rate offer, and how to check the bank behind it.

The nominal interest rate tells you what the bank pays before compounding. The annual percentage yield folds in how often that interest is credited and starts earning interest itself. Two accounts quoting the same nominal rate can produce different real returns if one compounds daily and the other monthly, so the APY is the number that makes them comparable.

When you compare offers, line up APY against APY, confirm whether the quoted APY applies to your whole balance or only to a tier, and check the date the bank last updated it. For the long-form version, see high-yield savings explained.

The gap is structural, not promotional. A branch network is a large fixed cost — buildings, staff, cash handling — and it is also a retention moat: customers who bank where they can walk in tend to stay put even when the rate is poor. That combination lets a large branch-based bank fund itself with deposits that pay very little.

A branchless bank has neither the cost nor the moat. Its only lever to attract deposits is price, so it passes more of what it earns back to depositors. You can see the scale side of this yourself on our largest banks ranking, where the biggest institutions hold deposits measured in the hundreds of billions. None of that makes the online bank riskier — see the insurance question below — but it does mean the offer you see is a competitive bid, and competitive bids move.

The FDIC insures the institution, not the channel. If the bank holding your money is FDIC-insured, an account you opened on a phone is covered on exactly the same terms as one opened at a teller window.

The thing worth checking is who actually holds the deposit. Some apps and fintech brands are not banks; they place your money with one or more partner banks. Coverage in that arrangement depends on the partner bank and on the records being kept correctly, so find the name of the insured bank in the fine print and look that name up — not the app’s brand name. You can search any FDIC-insured institution here by name, and estimate your own coverage with the FDIC insurance calculator.

• Insurance. Confirm the exact legal name of the insured bank and that your total there stays inside the coverage limits for your ownership categories.
• Transfer time. An external transfer can take several business days to settle, and money in flight earns nothing at either end. Plan around bills and paydays.
• Minimums and fees. Look for an opening deposit requirement, a minimum balance to earn the headline rate, and any monthly maintenance fee that can quietly outweigh the extra yield.
• Withdrawal limits. Check the daily and monthly outbound transfer caps before you need them, not after.
• The bank itself. Look at capital, profitability, and size — all public. Our Sonar Score rankings and each bank’s profile page put that on one screen.

The patterns to watch for are consistent:

• Introductory windows.The advertised yield applies for an opening period, then reverts to the bank’s standard rate.
• Balance tiers. The headline applies only up to (or only above) a threshold, so your effective yield is a blend.
• Activity requirements. The rate is contingent on direct deposits, a card-swipe count, or a linked checking account, and drops if you miss the requirement in any month.
• New-money-only offers. Existing customers are excluded, and money moved from another account at the same bank does not qualify.
• Undated figures.A rate published without an “as of” date tells you nothing about whether it is current. Always confirm the live number on the bank’s own site before you apply.