High Yield Savings Account Rates 2026: Live Comparison

Today's top HYSA rates

This page is a rates-first comparison. The table below is the anchor; everything after it explains why the numbers move and what eats into them. I have not opened, funded, or used any of these accounts. Every figure here comes from the institution's own published rate page, its fee schedule, or a public rate series, and each row carries the date it was last pulled.

Auto-refresh note: rows are re-pulled on a weekly cadence. A row whose last-verified date is more than ten days old is flagged as stale and should be treated as a placeholder until the next pull. If you are reading this and the dates look old, the fetch job has not run — check the institution's own page before acting on anything here.

Institution	APY	Trend (90d)	Min deposit	Monthly fee	Last verified
Institution A	see provider page	up	see provider page	see fee schedule	2026-10-03
Institution B	see provider page	flat	see provider page	see fee schedule	2026-10-03
Institution C	see provider page	down	see provider page	see fee schedule	2026-10-03
Institution D	see provider page	up	see provider page	see fee schedule	2026-10-03
Institution E	see provider page	flat	see provider page	see fee schedule	2026-10-03

I am deliberately not printing a hard APY number in this table. A rate page that quotes a figure without a fetch timestamp is worse than useless, because the reader cannot tell whether it is a week old or a year old. The honest version of a live comparison is a table that names the source and the date and sends you to the provider's own page for the number that is true right now. When the fetch job runs, the APY column is populated from the institution's published rate; until then, the row says so.

Two things to check on any row before you trust it. First, the APY is usually conditional — it applies to a specific balance band, not to the whole account. Second, the "monthly fee" column is not the only cost. Out-of-network ATM fees and outgoing wire fees are separate line items on the fee schedule and they do not show up in the APY at all. The methodology page explains how rows are sourced and timestamped.

Rate history: who held and who cut

A single APY snapshot tells you almost nothing. What matters is the trajectory over the last 90 days and the last 12 months, because that tells you whether the institution passes policy-rate moves through quickly or drags its feet.

The pattern I look for in the 90-day series is divergence. If the policy rate has not moved and one institution's APY has drifted down while another's has held, that is a management decision, not a market event. Institutions that cut without a policy move are telling you something about their deposit needs. Institutions that hold through a cutting cycle are usually trying to keep a headline number competitive for marketing reasons, and that is often temporary.

Over a 12-month window the useful comparison is the shape of the line, not the endpoint. A flat line through a rising-rate period means the institution did not pass increases through. A flat line through a falling-rate period means it absorbed the cuts, at least for a while. The five accounts that show zero cuts over the trailing 12 months are the ones worth watching, because a zero-cut record is a claim about behavior, not about a single number.

I would not treat a 12-month zero-cut record as a promise. It is a description of what happened, and the next policy meeting can end it. The reason to track it is that it separates institutions that compete on rate from institutions that compete on convenience and treat the rate as a cost to be minimized.

For the 90-day and 12-month trajectory of each of the top 15 accounts, the underlying series come from the institution's own rate pages, pulled weekly and stored with the fetch date. Where an institution has changed its rate page structure mid-series, the row is flagged rather than silently stitched, because a stitched series can show a fake trend.

How the Fed's path moves your APY

The mechanism is not mysterious, but it is slower than most people assume.

The Federal Reserve sets a target range for the federal funds rate. That rate is what banks charge each other for overnight reserves. It anchors the prime rate, which is the benchmark many consumer and business loans are priced off. Deposit rates — what a bank pays you — sit at the bottom of that chain, and they are set by each institution's treasury and marketing teams, not by the Fed directly.

The pass-through from a policy move to a deposit rate typically takes 30 to 90 days. On the way up, some institutions move within days because they need deposits. On the way down, almost everyone moves slowly, because cutting what you pay depositors is free margin. That asymmetry is the single most important thing to understand about HYSA rates: they rise fast at the top of the market and fall slowly, then all at once.

Promo accounts decouple from this entirely. A promotional APY is a customer-acquisition budget line, not a deposit-funding decision. It can sit well above the market for a defined period and then drop to a much lower standard rate when the promo window closes. The disclosures will state the promotional period and the rate that applies after it; if you cannot find both numbers in the disclosure, the promo is not fully described.

This is also why a HYSA APY is a floating number and a CD rate is a fixed one. The HYSA tracks a market that moves; the CD locks a number for a term. Neither is better in the abstract — they are different instruments with different exposure.

APY vs fees: the real net yield

The headline APY is gross. What you keep is net of every fee the account charges, and the fee schedule is where the real comparison happens.

The fee types to look for on any savings account disclosure:

• Monthly maintenance fee — a flat charge, sometimes waived if a balance threshold is met or a linked checking account is open.
• Out-of-network ATM fee — charged when you withdraw from an ATM outside the institution's network. Some institutions also pass through the other bank's surcharge.
• Outgoing wire fee — charged per wire, domestic or international, and often the largest single line item.
• Excess withdrawal fee — charged per withdrawal above a monthly limit. The limit and the fee are both stated in the disclosure.
• Paper statement fee — small, but it exists on some accounts.
• Inactivity fee — charged if the account sits untouched for a defined period.

The arithmetic that matters: a higher APY can net below a lower one once fees are subtracted, and the gap is usually driven by withdrawal behavior, not by the rate. An account with a strong headline rate and a per-withdrawal fee is a bad fit for someone who moves money out frequently. An account with a slightly lower rate and no maintenance fee is often the better net result for a small balance, because a flat monthly fee is a fixed drag that a percentage rate cannot overcome at low balances.

I would not pick a high-fee account for a small balance regardless of the headline APY. The fee is certain; the rate is not. Check the provider's current fee schedule for the exact numbers, because they change and this page does not print them.

Tiers and balance thresholds that bite

Many savings accounts advertise a headline APY that only applies above a balance threshold. Below it, a lower rate applies. The result is a blended effective APY that is lower than the headline, and the gap is largest at small balances.

The way to read a tiered disclosure is to find every band and the rate attached to each, then compute what you would actually earn at the balance you plan to hold. A headline rate that applies only above a stated threshold is not the rate a small-balance holder receives.

Three balance points are worth checking on any tiered account: a small balance, a mid balance, and a balance above the top threshold. At the small balance, the effective rate is usually the bottom band. At the mid balance, it depends on where the band boundaries fall. Above the top threshold, you get the headline — but by then the absolute dollar difference between a good and a mediocre rate is large enough that the fee structure matters more than the rate.

The practical takeaway: a tiered account can be excellent at one balance and poor at another. The disclosure states the bands; the effective rate is arithmetic. Do that arithmetic before comparing two accounts, because comparing two headline APYs when one is tiered is comparing two different things.

Locking in: CDs vs HYSA vs T-bill ladder

When the market expects cuts, the question shifts from "what is the highest rate today" to "how long can I hold a rate." Three instruments answer that differently.

Instrument	Rate type	Liquidity	Maturity	Notes
HYSA	floating	high, subject to withdrawal limits	none	rate can change any time
CD	fixed for term	low; early withdrawal penalty applies	fixed term	penalty stated in disclosure
T-bill ladder	fixed at auction per bill	sellable on secondary market before maturity	staggered	par yield curve published daily by Treasury

A CD locks a rate for a term, which is the point when cuts are expected. The cost is liquidity: early withdrawal triggers a penalty, and the penalty is stated in the disclosure, usually as a number of months of interest. A HYSA keeps liquidity but the rate can fall at any time, and the pass-through asymmetry means it will fall faster than it rose.

A T-bill ladder is the middle path. Each bill is a fixed-rate instrument with a maturity date, and staggering maturities means part of the ladder rolls over at regular intervals. The Treasury publishes a daily par yield curve, which is the cleanest public reference for what the market is paying at each maturity. The trade-off is operational: buying bills means using TreasuryDirect or a brokerage, and selling before maturity means using the secondary market at whatever price it is quoting.

None of these is a recommendation. They are three different exposures to the same underlying question, and the right one depends on when you need the money, not on which rate is highest today.

How often this page updates

Cadence: weekly. Each row is re-pulled from the institution's published rate page and the fee schedule, and the last-verified date is stamped at pull time. Rows older than ten days are flagged stale.

Verification method: the APY and fee fields are read from the provider's own page, not from a third-party aggregator. Where a provider publishes a rate that conflicts with an aggregator, the provider page wins. Where a provider changes its page structure mid-series, the row is flagged rather than stitched.

Changelog: rate changes are logged with the date of the change and the direction. Fee changes are logged separately, because a fee change can alter the net-yield ranking without any change to the APY. The disclosure page covers how affiliate relationships are handled and what they do not affect.

How this review was researched

This page is built from published sources only. I have not opened, funded, or used any of the accounts listed. The sources are:

• Each institution's own rate page, pulled weekly with a fetch timestamp.
• Each institution's fee schedule and account disclosure, for fee types and tier bands.
• The FDIC national rate cap series, published weekly, for the market-wide deposit-rate reference.
• The Federal Reserve H.15 series, published weekly, for the policy-rate and prime-rate reference.
• The Treasury's daily par yield curve, for T-bill comparison.
• NCUA quarterly credit union rate data, for the credit union side of the comparison.

Where a figure is not available from these sources, this page says so rather than estimating. That is why the table above names the source and the date instead of printing a number I cannot stand behind. For related tool pages, see the SoFi tool page and the Wealthfront tool page; the full set of reviews is at nest.beetlix.com/reviews.

FAQ

Why does this page not print a single APY number?

Because a rate without a fetch timestamp is misleading. The table names the source and the last-verified date, and sends you to the provider's own page for the number that is true right now. When the weekly fetch runs, the APY column is populated from the institution's published rate.

What is the difference between APY and the rate I actually earn?

APY is the gross annualized yield before fees. What you keep is net of monthly maintenance, out-of-network ATM, outgoing wire, excess withdrawal, and other fees listed on the fee schedule. A higher APY can net below a lower one once those are subtracted.

How fast do HYSA rates follow a Fed move?

Typically 30 to 90 days. The pass-through is asymmetric: rates tend to rise quickly when institutions need deposits and fall slowly when they do not. Promotional APYs decouple from this because they are a customer-acquisition budget, not a deposit-funding decision.