Why we don't rank individual banks
Bank-by-bank rate rankings are useful — but doing them honestly requires sources we won't use.
If you came to this site expecting "best savings account at Bank X, 4.50%; second best at Bank Y, 4.45%" — that's not what we publish. Here's why.
The data the government publishes
The FDIC publishes national averages for savings, money market accounts, and CDs. Updated monthly. It does not publish what any specific bank is offering on any specific day.
Federal Reserve G.19 publishes national averages for credit cards, auto loans, and personal loans. Quarterly. Not bank-by-bank.
Freddie Mac PMMS publishes the national average for 30-year and 15-year fixed mortgages. Weekly. Not lender-by-lender.
For bank-by-bank rates, you need one of three things:
- A direct deal with each bank to receive a data feed — what aggregator sites like Bankrate and NerdWallet do.
- A scraper that visits each bank's website daily and pulls the rate off the page.
- A self-reporting database where banks voluntarily submit — what DepositAccounts.com does.
Why we don't do option 1
A commercial agreement means we'd take money or favors from the bank. That biases the rankings, even if no one intends it to. The whole point of this site is to be neutral.
Why we don't do option 2
Scrapers break every time a bank redesigns their site, which is often. They also walk a legal gray area — most banks' terms of service forbid automated access. And the data quality is awful: the rate on the marketing page is often a teaser, not what a real applicant would receive.
Why we don't do option 3
User-submitted rates would work if we had the audience to police them. We don't. Right now we have a few dozen subscribers and no community moderation. So the data would be noisy.
What we do instead
Show the national average, plain and labeled. Tell you when the FDIC last updated it. Encourage you to call three lenders, get specific quotes for your credit profile and loan size, and compare those quotes against the national average we publish.
The average is a yardstick, not a recommendation. If a banker quotes you 0.50 percentage points above average, that's a real conversation. If they quote you 2 points above, walk away.
If you find an aggregator with bank-by-bank rates you trust, use it alongside this site — we are not trying to replace it. We are trying to be the neutral baseline.