Show HN: Bankrank.io – Search hundreds of bank accounts to find the best rates

I’m the main developer of bankrank.io, but I’m part of a passionate team of financial-techies. We were inspired by credit card churning, which is when people cycle through credit cards to optimize their rewards [0]. We wanted to apply a similar approach to checking and savings accounts so consumers could maximize their interest rates and minimize fees. There are approximately 10,000 banks and credit unions in the US that offer deposit accounts, and since banks can change rates and fees on a daily basis, there’s huge variance what constitutes the “best” account at any given time.

Additionally, we noticed that most existing financial blogs/tools don’t provide a wide view of the market. Sites like nerd wallet, bank rate, or businessweek cherry pick a list of products that partner with them to provide kickbacks, referrals, or pay for exclusivity, which is why you’ll often see “Advertiser disclosures” at the top of their articles [1, 2]. We wanted to build a tool that enables users to query as much data as possible, and make an informed decision without bias. We currently monitor hundreds of products, and we’re adding more to our catalogue each day. To that end, we don’t serve ads, monetize user data, or allow banks to pay for sponsorships or preferred placement. Instead, we plan on monetizing premium features which offer convenience to users, kind of like “managed deposit accounts as a service.”

We also exclude products and tiers which require activity such as setting up direct deposits and spending thresholds, or products that do not offer interest rates on account balances. Your money gets loaned out to other people who pay interest to the banks, and we think you deserve a portion of that without having to jump through hoops.

Along those lines, we show the minimum and maximum balance range that earns the listed APY for each account. If a product has multiple tiers, each gets listed separately. We also set the minimum balance to whatever is required to both earn the advertised interest rate and avoid monthly fees. We found that many banks allow you to open an account with lower balances, but will charge you a recurring fee until your balance reaches a threshold. We consider this a “dark pattern” in banking, so if the balance listed on our site is higher than the bank’s, it’s probably because the bank is charging hidden fees.

We’d love to get the community’s feedback on our proof-of-concept. There are 3 pages you can visit:

- bankrank.io, where you can see a demo gif and read about some features.

- bankrank.io/search, where you can search and compare products.

- bankrank.io/waitlist, where you can read more about the premium product we’re building, and signup to join the alpha version when it launches (u can also access it via the “coming soon!” tags on the landing page).

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/wiki/index/.

[1] https://www.nerdwallet.com/best/banking/best-online-banks-of....

[2] https://www.bankrate.com/banking/savings/rates/.

DCU was chartered in 1979 for employees of Digital Equipment Corporation following complaints to CEO Ken Olson that employees were having difficulties securing mortgages.

Just like with all sorts of other things (CPU architecture, OS kernels, etc.), DEC never really died.

It’s only on the first $1000 or something, so it seems like a promotion to get them listed on those “top 20 bank” listicles. Regardless, I plan on opening a savings account with them because that’s ridiculously good for a risk free product