Bank CD Rates Compared: Is Your Bank's CD Actually Competitive?

Almost everyone researches CDs the same way. They open their own bank's website, look at whatever rate the page shows first, and decide from that one number whether a CD is worth it. That is the wrong number, and not because the bank is hiding anything. It is the wrong number because a bank does not have "a CD rate." It has a separate rate for every term it offers, priced independently, and the difference between the best and worst of those terms at a single institution can be larger than the difference between two different banks at the same term.

As of the verification date above, the best available 12-month CD pays … APY and the best available 5-year CD pays … APY. Look at those two figures before you assume that locking your money up for longer buys you a higher rate. When the short end pays as much or more than the long end, the entire "longer term equals better rate" instinct works against you.

This guide is about reading one bank's full CD menu properly. If you already know you want the highest number available and do not care which bank it comes from, start with our best CD rates guide instead. If you already know which bank you want to check, SwitchWize now publishes a full term curve for every bank we track, for example Ally's CD rates by term. Skip ahead to that page and come back here for how to read it.

Bank CD Rates Are a Curve, Not a Number

Pull up any bank's CD page and you will typically find several standard maturities, commonly spanning 3 months through 5 years. Some banks add odd-length terms on top. Each of those gets its own APY, set by what that bank wants its deposit book to look like, and the shape of that line across terms tells you more about the bank than any single point on it.

There are three shapes worth recognizing.

Rising across terms. The textbook curve. Longer money earns more, because the bank is paying you for committing to a longer lockup. This shape shows up when banks expect rates to stay flat or rise.

Flat across terms. Every term within a few basis points of every other term. This means the bank sees no advantage in your longer commitment, which usually implies it expects to be able to fund itself more cheaply later. In a flat curve, a long CD is nearly all cost and almost no benefit: you accept the lockup and the early withdrawal penalty and get essentially nothing extra for it.

Peaked in the middle, or inverted. The highest APY sits at a short or middle term, and the longest terms trail well behind. This is the shape that catches savers out, because it inverts the instinct that longer is better. The peak term is where the bank actually wants your money right now.

None of these shapes is a scam. They are pricing decisions. You cannot see any of them by looking at one number, which is exactly what a bank's landing page invites you to do. See any individual bank's page for a real example of a full curve, laid out term by term rather than as a single headline rate.

The Featured Term Is Not the Menu

Most banks feature one term prominently. Frequently it is an odd-length maturity: 7 months, 9 months, 11 months, 13 months, 17 months. That is a promotional term, and the APY on it is genuinely real. There is nothing deceptive about the rate itself.

Two things about it are worth knowing before you fund one.

First, the promotional term tells you nothing about the rest of the menu. A bank can lead with a strong 9-month rate and still price its 12, 24, 36, and 60-month CDs near the bottom of the market. If your actual timeline is two years, the featured 9-month number is irrelevant to you.

Second, promotional terms normally do not renew at the promotional rate. When the CD matures, it typically rolls into the standard rate for whichever maturity range it falls into, which is usually the ordinary, uncompetitive one. The bank is not obligated to warn you loudly, and the grace period to act is often short. Our guide on what to do when a CD matures covers that window in detail, and it is one of the most common places where a good CD decision turns into a mediocre one.

Where Your Bank Actually Ranks

Knowing that your bank pays a given APY on a 24-month CD does not tell you whether that is good on its own. It only becomes meaningful against the distribution of what every other bank pays on a 24-month CD.

SwitchWize tracks CD rates at 70 institutions, with each bank's own term menu ranging from a handful of maturities up to seven, depending on what that bank actually offers. The point of the breadth is not the number itself. It is that it makes the ranking question answerable. Every tracked bank now has its own page (for example, Ally) showing its full term curve and where its best rate ranks against every other bank we track, so "is my bank's CD good" has an actual answer instead of a guess.

Ranking tends to hold up better than the raw APY, because it survives rate moves. When the Fed shifts and the whole market reprices, every bank's number changes and a raw-APY comparison you did last quarter goes stale faster than a relative ranking does. This is a general pattern, not a number we have independently measured for CDs specifically. We have documented the closely related dynamic for standard savings rates at the largest branch banks, which stay pinned near zero regardless of what the broader market does, in the big banks savings rate analysis.

The dollar version of the ranking question is the one that should actually drive your decision. On a $25,000 deposit, one percentage point of APY difference is about $250 per year of interest you either earn or do not. Over a 24-month term, that is roughly $500 before compounding. SwitchWize calls this difference your Rate Gap, but the label is not the useful part. The dollar figure is.

Big Branch Banks vs Online Banks

The generalization that online banks pay more than branch banks is directionally true for CDs, but it is less clean than it is for savings accounts, and it is worth stating precisely rather than as a slogan.

Large branch-based banks do compete on CDs, but they tend to do it selectively. The competitive APY shows up on one or two specific promotional terms, is often gated behind a relationship checking account, and sometimes requires a higher minimum deposit than the standard menu. Away from those specific terms, the standard CD menu at a large branch bank is usually well below the online leaders. See Chase's own tracked CD rates for a concrete example of this pattern across its full term menu.

Online and direct banks generally price the whole curve closer to market, because deposits are the entire business rather than a byproduct of a branch relationship. That does not mean any given online bank leads at your term. It means you are less likely to find a single strong term surrounded by weak ones.

What this means practically: if you bank at a large branch institution, do not assume its CDs are bad. Check the promotional term specifically, check whether you already meet the relationship requirement, and then check every other term against the market. It is entirely possible for the answer to be "the promo term is fine, everything else is not."

The Three Numbers That Decide It

Once you have the full term menu in front of you, three things decide whether to move.

The dollar gap over the term. Take the APY difference between your bank's rate for your term and the best available rate for that same term, multiply by your deposit, and multiply by the term length in years. If a two-year CD gap works out to $40, the paperwork is probably not worth it. If it works out to $700, it is.

The early withdrawal penalty. This varies by bank and by term. Check your specific CD's disclosure before funding, since it is the real cost of being wrong about your timeline, and it is why a slightly lower rate on a shorter term is sometimes the better trade. Our CD early withdrawal calculator turns your bank's actual penalty schedule into a dollar figure. If you are weighing breaking an existing CD to chase a higher rate, that specific math is here.

Whether one term is even the right structure. If the curve at your chosen bank is flat or peaked in the middle, a single long CD is usually the weakest available choice. Splitting across maturities keeps part of the balance reachable and lets you reprice as terms mature. The CD Ladder Optimizer models that against a single CD, and the ladder versus long CD comparison walks through when each wins.

What About Just Staying Liquid?

Worth asking honestly, because a CD is not automatically better than a savings account. The trade is rate certainty for access. A CD's APY is fixed the moment you open it and does not move for the full term. A savings account APY is variable and can drop at any time with no notice.

As of the verification date, the best available savings rate is 4.20% APY against … for a 12-month CD, with the federal funds upper bound at 3.75%. When those two figures sit close together, the CD's advantage is not the current rate, it is the guarantee that the rate holds if the market falls. When the savings rate is clearly higher, the CD is buying certainty at a visible cost.

Money you might need within 90 days does not belong in a CD at any rate. Full comparison in our CD versus high-yield savings guide.

Do This Next

1. Open your bank's CD page and write down every term and every APY, including any minimum deposit or relationship requirement attached to each. Or look up your bank's tracked CD rates by term directly if we already cover it.
2. Identify the shape of the curve. Rising, flat, or peaked. If it is flat or peaked, cross the 60-month term off your list unless you have a specific reason for it.
3. For your actual timeline, compare your bank's rate against the best available rate for that term, term for term.
4. Convert the gap to dollars over the full term length. That number decides it.
5. Before funding, confirm the early withdrawal penalty and the auto-renewal behavior, and put the maturity date in your calendar with a two-week warning.

CD rates last verified recently.