Average CD Rate Right Now, by Term Length (2026)

"Average CD rate" isn't one number -- it depends entirely on the term, and most sites that cite a single figure are either citing one specific term or blending several together. Using the FDIC's own published national-average series, live, term by term, tells a genuinely counter-intuitive story: the average doesn't rise steadily with how long you lock your money up. It peaks at 1 year, then falls. This page reviewed by the SwitchWize Editorial Team; the figures are sourced below with dates.

The real numbers, live by term

Every figure in the "national average" column below is pulled directly from the FDIC's own published National Rate series for that exact term, live via FRED -- not a single blended citation:

Two things stand out immediately. First, the national average genuinely peaks at 1 year and declines afterward -- this isn't a rounding artifact, it holds across the full term ladder. Second, the top tracked rate does the opposite: it climbs through 1 year and then essentially plateaus near 4.4% for the rest of the ladder. The two series aren't just different levels, they have different shapes entirely.

Why the national average doesn't rise with term length

The FDIC's national average reflects every insured institution's advertised rate, weighted by deposit share -- and 1-year CDs get the most shopping attention and the most rate competition, which pulls that specific term's average up relative to less-competed terms. Longer terms (3-to-5-year) see less aggressive national-average pricing, likely because fewer savers lock up money that long and fewer institutions compete hard for that specific deposit. The result is a national-average curve that peaks in the middle of the ladder rather than rising steadily with term length, the pattern a simple "longer term, higher rate" assumption would predict.

This matters because a lot of financial advice assumes CD rates rise monotonically with term -- "lock in longer for a better rate." At the national average level, that's not true past 1 year. At the top of the market specifically, it mostly still holds, which is exactly why the two columns above tell different stories.

Why 4-year CDs are a gap, not missing data

The FDIC still publishes a national-average figure for 4-year CDs (1.27%), but SwitchWize's tracked institution set currently has zero active offers at exactly that term. This isn't a data error -- 4-year CDs are simply less standard. Most banks build ladders around 3-month, 6-month, 1-year, 2-year, 3-year, and 5-year terms, and a 4-year term falls in a real gap in what's actively offered and marketed. If you're specifically looking for a 4-year lock-up, expect fewer options and a slower shopping process than for the more standard terms around it.

What this means for choosing a term

The national-average shape doesn't mean longer CDs are a bad deal -- it means the average institution doesn't compete as hard for longer-term deposits, while the best institutions still do. If you're deciding how long to lock money up, the top-tracked column is the more useful reference: it shows what's actually achievable at each term, not what the typical account pays. Decide based on when you'll need the money, not on an assumption about how CD pricing "should" work by term.

The honest counterargument

A few real limits are worth stating. The national-average figures are FDIC-published, population-level statistics that update monthly and can move slightly between the writing of this piece and your reading of it -- the live dataset always reflects the current figure, this article's table is a snapshot. The "top tracked rate" reflects SwitchWize's own tracked institution set specifically, not every CD offer that exists nationally, and a thin sample (like the 37 institutions tracked at 3 months, versus 67 at 1 year) means that term's top average is a real number but a smaller one to draw broad conclusions from. And CD rates generally move with Fed policy expectations, so the specific shape of this curve is a snapshot of current market conditions, not a permanent feature of how CDs are priced.

None of that changes the core finding: the national average and the top-of-market rate are shaped differently across the term ladder, and assuming they move together would be a mistake.

Methodology

National-average figures come directly from the FDIC's own National Rate series, one per term (3/6/12/24/36/48/60 months), published on FRED and fetched live -- not derived from SwitchWize's own scraped data. Top-tracked figures are a top-3 average across SwitchWize's tracked institutions' own CD term ladders, matched to the exact term month (no nearest-term substitution), from live rate_observations. This complements, but is distinct from, the 12-month CD Spread Index, which isolates a single term for its gap-index framing rather than showing the full curve.

How we source this. National-average figures are the FDIC's own published data, pulled live. Top-tracked figures come from SwitchWize's own rate database. See our methodology and editorial team. We take no payment for organic rankings.