How Much Is Your Bank's Savings Rate Costing You?

† Chase Premier Savings: must have linked eligible account

† Wells Fargo Platinum Savings: must have linked Premier Checking account

† U.S. Bank Smartly® Savings – Relationship Rate: requires Bank Smartly Checking or another qualifying product; $5,000+ balance

† TD Bank TD Signature Savings: requires a linked TD checking account

Chase

Chase is the largest US bank by assets, and that scale is exactly why its standard savings account pays just 0.01% APY — deposits flow in regardless of rate. The Premier Savings tier nudges the rate up only fractionally, and only if you also maintain a linked Chase Premier Plus or Premier Platinum Checking account. The structure is built to keep deposits, not to grow them. Move the bulk of your savings to a high-yield account and keep a small Chase buffer for autopay if you want to preserve the relationship.

Bank of America

Bank of America's Preferred Rewards program ties account perks to investment balances held at Merrill — not to your savings balance alone. Those perks accrue to credit cards and investments rather than the savings rate, so Advantage Savings stays put no matter how much you consolidate at Merrill. The standard rate sits at 0.04% APY, and even Diamond-tier members earn rates that fall far short of any top HYSA. Use the calculator to see what the gap costs you per year.

Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo's standard Way2Save savings pays just 0.01% APY on a $10,000 balance. Its relationship-tier Platinum Savings reaches only 0.05% APY, and only with a linked Wells Fargo Premier Checking account holding the rate in place. Step-ups across balance tiers are negligible. The product structure is engineered so almost no retail customer ever clears a competitive rate. Switching delivers the gain without another linked product.

U.S. Bank

U.S. Bank Smartly® Savings advertises 3.00% APY on a $10,000 balance, but only customers who also keep a linked U.S. Bank Smartly Checking account earn that rate. Without the linked checking, the same savings account drops to 0.05% APY — near the floor that Chase and Bank of America sit at. The two-tier structure is engineered to retain U.S. Bank's primary-banking relationship rather than to compete on standalone yield, and the with-relationship rate still trails the 4.21% APY at national HYSAs like Axos Bank.

Truist

Truist is the one bank here whose second savings account costs more and pays exactly the same. Confidence Savings — the checkless, no-overdraft product, openable only alongside a Truist Confidence Account — pays 0.01% APY with no monthly maintenance fee. Truist One Savings, the flagship, pays 0.01% APY at every balance tier in its published disclosure and adds a $5 monthly fee with four waiver paths. Six years after the BB&T–SunTrust merger, the deposit book is stable enough that neither product needs a competitive rate.

TD Bank

TD sells convenience — evening and weekend branch hours down the East Coast — and prices its savings accordingly. TD Simple Savings pays 0.02% APY on a $10,000 balance. Signature Savings reaches 0.10% APY, the highest big-bank tier rate on this page after U.S. Bank, but only with a linked TD checking account triggering the Rate Bump and only inside the $10,000–$24,999.99 band, and it carries a $15 monthly fee. The convenience is real; it is paid for out of the interest.

M&T Bank

M&T grew across the Northeast by buying other banks' branch networks, People's United Financial in 2022 most recently, which is a way of acquiring depositors that never required winning them on rate. Relationship Savings pays 0.01% APY and charges $7.50 a month unless you keep $500 or link an M&T checking account. Its step-up product, Premium Savings, has no APY published on mtb.com at all — the tier table renders its headers with the values blank, ZIP code entered or not.