How we compare business bank accounts
We list 10 business bank accounts sold to US companies, and a published rate card exists for 10 providers. Where a provider negotiates terms instead of publishing them, we show a quote rather than invent a figure on its behalf.
The figure at the top of the table is each account's published monthly fee, and the plan that fee belongs to. Where a fee can be waived we state the condition rather than apply it, because applying it needs a balance figure we do not ask you for, and a $0 printed against an account that advertises $15 would be a claim about you rather than about the bank. Most of this table reads $0 because most of these accounts are genuinely free, which is a fact about the market rather than a gap in the comparison.
The rate column states what each account publishes and never projects it into an amount you would earn, and the condition attached to a rate travels with it. That distinction is the one most comparisons here get wrong, and it is worth being precise about, because several providers advertise a headline yield that belongs to a different product: a linked savings account, or an SEC-registered investment product quoted at a large assumed balance with real principal risk. A rate paid on a linked savings or investment product is not a rate on the money you spend from, and the table says so on the row rather than flattening the two into one number.
Accounts are ordered by that published fee, lowest first, and alphabetically where the fee is the same. We name no best account, because with most of the table free outright there is no arithmetic winner to point at and any badge would be an assertion we could not back. Commission never moves a provider up or down, we do not sell placement, and the best row is whatever the arithmetic returns. Every figure was read at the provider's own pricing page and, where one exists, its own fee schedule PDF. That matters more here than in most categories, because most of these hide their real fee detail from the page a search engine sees: one gates its schedule behind a US ZIP code, one publishes its binding rates only in a deposit agreement, and the rest bury them in accordions, a support subdomain or a carousel.
Two things are deliberately not modelled, and both are stated in the table rather than assumed away. Chase publishes several routes to its fee waiver that have nothing to do with balance, including card acceptance volume and card spend, and for a trading business one of those is often the realistic route to zero; they need figures you have not entered, so they appear in the conditions column for you to apply. Bluevine's waivers require a balance and a card-spend figure in the same month, so its fee is shown as charged: waiving on half a condition would remove a fee the bank is still taking.
Free, or waived: what a business bank account monthly fee actually is
The first thing to understand about this market is that the fee war is over, and the winners are the accounts that never charged one.
10 accounts are in this table and most of them carry no monthly fee at all. Mercury's free account row reads Yes, Novo's Yes, Relay's Yes and Grasshopper's Yes. Chase's reads No, and Piermont's No.
That distinction matters more than it looks. A free account and a waivable account are not the same product. A waived fee is a conditional charge, and the condition is a balance you have to keep meeting, month after month, or the charge comes back.
The condition is where these two diverge, and the number is the smaller half of the story. Chase's thresholds are $2,000, $35,000 or $100,000 by tier, and the test is Minimum daily balance, averages above. Piermont's threshold is $1,000 (two of three tiers) on a Minimum monthly average balance.
Read those two tests side by side, because they are not equally easy to pass. A minimum daily balance has to be held on every single business day of the statement period, so one bad Tuesday costs you the waiver. A monthly average tolerates a dip, because a payroll run that empties the account for two days is averaged against the rest of the month. On that basis the gentler test belongs to the smaller number, which is the opposite of what a threshold column alone would tell you.
There is a real cost to a waiver even when you clear it. The balance you are holding to avoid a fee is money you cannot spend, and if it sits in an account paying nothing then the waiver has a price: whatever that money would have earned elsewhere. On a fee of a few tens of dollars a month, that trade is frequently a bad one, which is the arithmetic the next section is about.
What a business bank account pays you, and why the advertised rate usually is not it
This is the number that decides the category, and it is the one buried deepest.
Interest on a business balance is worth an order of magnitude more than any monthly fee in this table. The catch is that the phrase "APY" is doing at least five different jobs across this table, and only one of them means what a reader assumes.
Grasshopper and Bluevine pay on the checking balance itself. Grasshopper's rate is 1.00% to 1.35% by band, on checking and Bluevine's is 1.3% to 3.0% by plan, on checking. Those two are the only accounts here paying on the balance you actually transact with.
The rest mean something else by it:
- Relay: None on checking (savings to 3.00% by plan). Its checking account is non-interest-bearing by contract, and the rate belongs to a linked savings account you would have to move money into.
- Piermont: Not published on checking (money market to 3.75%), and its interest-checking rate is not published at all.
- Mercury: Not published (Treasury, an investment product), which is Investment product, not a bank rate.
- Slash: Not published (Treasury, an investment product), on the same basis.
- Chase: None on checking.
- Novo: None.
An investment product is not a bank account. It can be the right place for cash you will not touch for a quarter, but it carries principal risk, it is not the balance your payroll leaves from, and putting its yield in the same column as a checking rate would compare two different decisions.
The two rates that are real behave differently from each other, and that is where the ranking moves. One of them applies a single rate to your whole balance depending which band it lands in, and its ladder rises and then falls again, so a larger balance can earn a lower rate on all of it. The other pays on the first portion of your balance and nothing above a ceiling, except on its dearest plan, which has no ceiling.
The practical consequence is that there is no single winner here, and the table is honest about that: a small balance, a mid-sized balance and a large one each have a different best answer, and on a large enough balance a paid account becomes the cheapest place to keep the money, because it is the only one still paying you on all of it. That is why this page asks for your balance instead of printing a league table. Enter the figure you actually keep, including the money you are holding to clear somebody's waiver.
One condition to read before relying on a rate. Bluevine's entry rate carries a monthly activity goal, listed as Activity goal on the free plan. It is an OR that most trading businesses clear without trying, and our estimate assumes it is met, which we would rather state than hide.
Opening a business bank account as an LLC, a sole proprietor, or on an EIN
More applications fail on eligibility than on price, and this is the question to settle before comparing anything else.
Providers are markedly less forthcoming here than they are about fees. Chase publishes its list: Sole prop, single-member LLC, S and C corp. Novo publishes Sole prop, LLC, corp, partnership, non-profit, and Relay LLC, corp, partnership, sole prop, non-profit. Bluevine, Grasshopper, Mercury, Piermont and Slash publish no enumerated list at all, which is why their cells read as unpublished rather than as a yes.
The EIN question splits the table cleanly, and it is the one that catches sole proprietors and brand-new single-member LLCs:
- Chase: No, SSN or TIN accepted.
- Relay: No for sole props, yes otherwise.
- Novo: Yes, on every entity type.
- Bluevine: Yes, stated flatly.
- Grasshopper: Yes, EIN or Tax ID.
- Mercury: Yes.
If you are an unincorporated sole proprietor without an EIN, that list is your shortlist, and it is short. Applying for an EIN directly with the IRS is free and issues immediately online, which is worth knowing before you pay anyone to do it or narrow your choice of bank around not having one.
Two other openings costs are worth checking before you commit. Grasshopper asks for $100 to open, the only account here that asks for anything, while Bluevine's is $0 and Slash's $0. And most of this table publishes no decision time at all; the ones that do are Novo at 24 to 72 hours, Relay at 1 to 2 business days and Piermont at Reply within 1 business day. If you need an account by a date, apply where the answer is published.
Who actually holds the money in a digital business bank account
This is the fact that most comparisons of these products leave out entirely, and it is not a small one.
Several of the best-known names in this table are not banks. They are financial technology companies, and your deposits sit at a partner bank under an arrangement between the two of them. Reading down the table:
- Chase: Chase itself (bank).
- Grasshopper: Grasshopper itself (bank).
- Piermont: Piermont itself (bank).
- Mercury: Fintech; Choice Financial and Column N.A..
- Relay: Fintech; Thread Bank.
- Novo: Fintech; Middlesex Federal Savings.
- Bluevine: Fintech; Coastal Community Bank.
- Slash: Fintech; Column N.A..
This structure is normal, legal and extremely common, and none of it is a reason to avoid these products. But it changes what is being promised, in two ways worth understanding.
Deposit insurance covers the failure of the insured bank. It is not a guarantee against the failure of the technology company sitting in front of it, and the practical difference in that scenario is not the money, it is how long it takes to establish whose money is whose. That is an operational risk rather than a credit one, and it is the reason the row exists on this page.
The second is that the headline coverage figures differ by orders of magnitude, and they are not the same product either. Novo's reads $250,000, one bank, no sweep, while Slash's reads Up to $200M via sweep and Mercury's Up to $5M via sweep. The large numbers are produced by sweeping your balance across a network of partner banks so that no single one holds more than the statutory limit. That is a real mechanism and it works, but it is a sweep agreement rather than a bigger guarantee from one institution, and it is conditional on the terms of that agreement.
Worth noticing before treating two brands here as diversification: the same partner bank can sit behind more than one brand in this table. Mercury and Slash both use Column N.A.
If the balance you keep is comfortably under the statutory limit, none of this changes your answer. If it is not, the sweep rows are the ones to read, and they are a better use of your attention than a difference of a few dollars in a monthly fee.
Paying cash into a business bank account, and who will not take it
If your business takes cash, this row eliminates most of the table before price is even a question, and it is the single most common reason a digital account turns out to be the wrong choice.
- Chase: Yes, free at Chase ATMs.
- Relay: Yes, no Relay fee.
- Grasshopper: Yes, at select MoneyPass ATMs.
- Bluevine: Yes, charged from the first dollar.
- Piermont: Yes, by appointment only.
- Mercury: Not accepted.
- Novo: Not accepted.
- Slash: Not published at source.
Only the account with branches comes with a genuine free cash allowance. Chase's is $5,000 to $25,000/mo by tier, and there is a detail in its own fee schedule that most summaries miss: cash paid in at a Chase ATM is free and unlimited on every tier, and the published allowance applies to counter and night-deposit cash. A business that banks its takings at a machine pays nothing however much it deposits. Our estimate charges the counter rate on whatever cash figure you enter, so if you deposit at ATMs it overstates Chase, and we would rather tell you that than quietly pick the flattering reading.
The branch row is the same question asked another way, and it is the reason the answer usually resolves to a single account. Chase's is Yes, 5,000+ branches; every other row in this table is No or close to it, with an ATM network in place of a counter.
The honest summary is that this is not really a price decision. If you handle notes and coins in any volume, the shortlist is the accounts that accept them and the ATM networks behind them, and the fee and the interest are then a comparison within that shortlist rather than across the whole table. If you take no cash at all, you can ignore this row entirely, and the accounts it eliminates are among the strongest on everything else.