Financeradar Research
Two-Thirds of High-Yield Savings Rates Still Come With a Catch (September 2026)
Of the 21 published high-yield savings accounts Financeradar verifies, 14 attach a promo, balance floor, deposit habit, fee, or subscription to the APY they advertise. The clean floor is 3.00% to 3.40%.
Founder, Financeradar & Dupple
Key findings
What the data shows.
- 01
14 of 21 published high-yield savings accounts we verify (67%) attach a catch to the advertised APY: a promo window, a balance floor, a monthly deposit habit, a subscription, a monthly fee, or a rate we could not cleanly confirm.
- 02
Five accounts pay 4.00% APY or more. All five sit in the catch group. The catalog average across 21 published HYSAs is 3.59%.
- 03
The clean floor — $0 monthly fee, no promo, no deposit habit — is Marcus Online Savings at 3.40% and Ally / American Express / Capital One at 3.00%.
- 04
On $10,000, 3.59% versus a sub-1% branch account is about $260–$320 a year. The gap between a 4.15% promo and a clean 3.00% is about $115 a year — and the promo can disappear.
About the research
How we built this report.
Financeradar's own tracking set of financial products. Figures verified against each issuer's own page.
2026. Snapshot taken August 8, 2026. Refresh due Oct 1, 2026.
Rates re-checked on a rotating schedule. See how we rate for the full criteria.
Creative Commons BY 4.0. Quote, link, and reuse with attribution.
Updated 7 September 2026: Forbright Growth Savings now posts 3.85% with no minimums (the 4.15% promo is gone). CIT Bank Platinum Savings posts 3.75% on $5,000+ and 0.25% under that after CITBOOST ended 31 August. Pibank Savings confirms 4.10% on its own page. The table below is the 3 September count. Live numbers are on the product pages and /statistics/high-yield-savings.
What we counted
This is a re-count of the August 2026 catch report against the 21 published high-yield savings accounts on Financeradar as of 3 September 2026. Drafts are excluded. Every APY is the figure on the product page, date-stamped against the bank's own disclosure.
A product counts as having a catch if at least one of these is true:
- The headline APY is a promo or new-account rate (Forbright, CIT, EverBank's own disclosure, Bask boosts, Betterment boost, Wealthfront boost, UFB bundle).
- A balance floor is required to earn that APY (CIT $5,000, Forbright $1,000, Poppy $1,000, BrioDirect $25 / $5,000 min deposit).
- A behavior gate (LendingClub $250 monthly deposit).
- A fee or subscription (Robinhood Gold $5/month, Vio Bank $5).
- The live rate could not be confirmed against the issuer page (Pibank's public title vs our 4.10% consensus).
Accounts that post one APY for every balance, with $0 fee and no habit: Marcus, Ally, American Express, Capital One 360, and Synchrony (rate-cut note only). Zynlo posts a clean 3.90% in our table.
The live HYSA statistics page recomputes the average as the catalog moves. The best high-yield savings guide is the buyer-facing cut of the same table.
The 4% club is the catch club
| Account | Advertised APY | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Forbright Growth Savings | 4.15% | Promo; $1,000 minimum for that APY; standard 3.85% |
| CIT Bank Platinum Savings | 4.10% | 0.35% boost through 8/31/26, then 3.75%; under $5,000 earns 0.60% |
| Pibank Savings | 4.10% | Site title has shown 4.40%; we publish 4.10% as the figure we can stand behind |
| LendingClub LevelUp Savings | 4.00% | 4.00% only in months you deposit $250+; otherwise 3.00% |
| Poppy Bank Premier Online Savings | 4.00% | $1,000 minimum; live rate not independently confirmed |
If you open CIT with $2,000 because the minimum deposit is $100, you did not buy a 4.10% account. You bought a 0.60% account with a 4.10% advertisement.
Methodology
We read each provider's published rate or disclosure, store it on the product page with a dataAsOf stamp, and snapshot the same fields into RateSnapshot (1,202 rows as of this update). We do not scrape third-party aggregators for the headline number. This report will be re-counted when the October Rate Index ships.
Nothing here is financial advice. Rates change. Read the bank's page before you move money.
Cite this report
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Released under Creative Commons BY 4.0. You may quote, link, and reuse the data with attribution.