Sources
Deposit rates — savings, money market and certificates of deposit — are taken from each institution's published rate disclosure, which is the same document that governs the account you would actually open. Where an institution publishes a machine-readable feed we read that; otherwise the published rate sheet is the source.
Treasury yields come from the U.S. Department of the Treasury's daily par yield curve and bill auction results. Mortgage rates are national averages compiled from lender rate sheets and public survey data. Institution details — charter type, FDIC certificate number, deposit insurance status, total assets — come from FDIC and NCUA records.
Lottery results and prize tiers come from official state lottery data feeds.
Update schedule
- Deposit rates: checked daily on business days.
- Treasury yields: daily, after the Treasury publishes.
- Mortgage rates: daily on business days.
- Credit cards and bonuses: reviewed on a rolling weekly cycle.
- Lottery results: after each scheduled draw.
Every rate on the site carries the date it was collected. When a source has not updated, we show the last confirmed figure with its date rather than substituting an estimate. A stale number that says it is stale is honest; an interpolated one is not.
How rankings work
Rate tables are ranked by the number in the column you sorted by, with no exceptions. A savings table sorted by APY lists the highest APY first. Ties break by minimum deposit, then by institution name, so ordering is deterministic and does not shuffle between page loads.
Commercial relationships have no effect on this ordering. Products from institutions that pay us nothing sit above paid products whenever their rate is higher, and they frequently do. Where a listing is a paid placement it is labelled as such. See the advertiser disclosure.
APY, not interest rate
Deposit accounts are compared on annual percentage yield, which includes the effect of compounding, rather than the nominal interest rate. Two accounts quoting the same rate can pay different amounts if one compounds daily and the other monthly, and APY is the number that makes them comparable. It is also the figure banks are required to disclose under the Truth in Savings Act, so it is the one on your account agreement.
For mortgages the equivalent comparison figure is APR, which folds in points and lender fees. We show both the rate and the APR because they answer different questions: the rate sets your payment, the APR tells you what the loan really costs.
What we exclude
- Introductory rates that expire in under three months, unless the ongoing rate is also shown. A 6% rate for 60 days is a marketing number, not a savings rate.
- Accounts with balance caps low enough to make the headline rate misleading— where a cap exists we show it in the listing.
- Institutions without federal deposit insurance, from deposit comparisons.
- Offers we cannot verify against a primary source. If we cannot find it on the institution's own disclosure, it does not go in.
Programmatically generated pages
Some pages on this site are generated from templates against live data — for example, a state-specific rate guide. These pages are only published when the underlying data is genuinely different from its siblings. If the best accounts in one state are identical to the national list, the page is not published, because fifty copies of one table with the place name swapped is not information. That check is automated and runs on every regeneration. The state directory lists the ones that passed.
Corrections
When we find or are told about an error, we correct it and record when. Material corrections to editorial content are noted on the page. Rate data corrections flow through on the next update cycle. Report an error to hello@rateintelusa.com.
Limitations you should know about
Rates change without notice and an institution can withdraw an offer at any time. Advertised rates often depend on balance tiers, direct deposit, or relationship requirements that we summarise but cannot fully capture in a table. Availability varies by state. Always confirm the current terms with the institution before opening an account — the disclosure they give you at account opening is what governs, not what any comparison site says.
Last reviewed August 2026.