Here is the number that should decide what you do next. From 5 August through 19 August 2026, the Bank of Canada’s series for chartered bank savings deposits read 0.01%, every single week.
Not 1%. One hundredth of one per cent. On $20,000 that is two dollars a year.
| Where it sits | Rate | Interest earned |
|---|---|---|
| Chartered bank branch savings | 0.01% | $2 |
| One-year GIC | 2.70% | $540 |
Two dollars against five hundred and forty, for the same money, with the same CDIC protection if both institutions are members. That gap is the entire reason this page exists.
This page is deliberately narrow. It’s about the Canadian market specifically: CDIC-insured accounts, the Bank of Canada policy rate, and what a TFSA does to the maths. If you landed here searching something broader, like general savings account rates without a country in mind, the general savings account interest rate guide is the better starting point; everything below assumes you’re banking in Canada.
What the market actually pays
View the data
| GIC, 5-year | 2.75% |
|---|---|
| GIC, 1-year | 2.70% |
| Personal deposit, 5-yr fixed | 2.65% |
| GIC, 3-year | 2.55% |
| BoC policy rate | 2.25% |
| Chartered bank savings | 0.01% |
Source: Bank of Canada, selected interest rates via Valet API, accessed .
The chartered bank savings figure is not a typo and it is not unusual. Canada’s big banks hold enormous, sticky deposit balances from customers who opened a chequing account years ago and never revisited it. They have no commercial reason to bid for money they already have.
Everything above that bottom bar is available to the same money, with the same CDIC protection.
Big banks vs. online banks: why the branch costs you money
The 0.01% baseline isn’t a Canada-wide ceiling. It’s what happens when a deposit doesn’t have to compete for anyone’s attention. A Big Six branch network is expensive: physical locations, tellers, legacy core banking systems built up over a century. That cost gets funded somehow, and one of the quietest ways is simply not paying much for deposits it already has.
An online-only institution or a federally regulated online-focused bank skips almost all of that overhead. No branches to lease, no teller staff, often a single national call centre. The commercial logic flips: that institution has to actively attract every dollar it holds, so it competes on rate instead of on the value of the branch you never visit.
| Big-bank branch account | Online-only account | |
|---|---|---|
| CDIC protection | Identical, if CDIC member | Identical, if CDIC member |
| Typical rate posture | Near the branch-bank floor | Actively competes for deposits |
| Why the gap exists | Deposits are sticky; no need to bid | Has to win every dollar it holds |
| Branch access | Yes | Usually none — phone/app/web only |
You don’t have to guess which brand pays more this month. You have to confirm the institution is a CDIC member before you move anything. Canada’s better-known online savings brands and many credit unions (which carry equivalent provincial deposit insurance rather than CDIC) exist specifically to win deposits with rate rather than convenience. Check CDIC’s own member list, since the coverage is only as good as the membership behind it, and not every product sold by a bank is itself a covered deposit.
For a concrete look at one end of that spectrum, RBC vs CIBC walks through how two of the Big Six actually price their own high-interest products against each other.
GICs, if you can lock the money away. Look again at the chart above: every GIC term shown pays multiples of the 0.01% baseline, though the gap between terms is small (more on that below).
Registered accounts. A TFSA or FHSA holding a high-interest savings product keeps the return out of tax entirely, which is worth more to most Canadians than squeezing an extra tenth of a percentage point out of the headline rate, and it’s the single most overlooked lever in rate comparisons.
TFSA vs. a taxable account: the tax math nobody puts in writing
Two accounts can pay the exact same rate and still hand you very different amounts of money, because one of them is taxed and one of them isn’t.
Interest earned in an ordinary, non-registered Canadian savings account is fully taxable as income, at your marginal rate, every year it’s earned, unlike capital gains, which get a partial exclusion. Interest earned inside a Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) is not taxed at all, on the way in, while it sits there, or when you withdraw it.
Here’s what that’s worth using a rate already on this page. Say you’re holding $20,000 in a one-year GIC paying 2.70%, which is $540 in interest for the year.
| Account type | Tax on the interest | What you keep |
|---|---|---|
| TFSA | $0 | $540 |
| Non-registered account (example marginal rate) | ≈$162 | ≈$378 |
The marginal rate in that table is an example, not a forecast of yours: Canadian marginal rates vary by province and income band, so the actual number you’d keep differs. The structural point doesn’t: the TFSA keeps 100% of the interest, full stop, and the taxable account never does.
Room matters here. The CRA’s 2026 annual TFSA dollar limit is $7,000, added on 1 January each year, and cumulative room since the account’s 2009 launch is $109,000 for anyone who was a Canadian resident and at least 18 that year and has never contributed. Withdrawals aren’t lost either — whatever you take out gets added back to your room, just not until the following calendar year. Practically, that means a TFSA is rarely “full” in any permanent sense; check your actual available room through CRA My Account before assuming you’re out of space.
One more registered option worth a mention if you’re saving toward a first home rather than a general goal: the First Home Savings Account (FHSA) is also a CDIC-insured category in its own right and, unlike a TFSA, contributions are tax-deductible going in as well as tax-free coming out for a qualifying home purchase. It’s a narrower tool: it exists for exactly one purpose. But if that purpose is yours, it beats a TFSA for the same dollars.
The GIC curve is nearly flat
Look again at the GIC numbers from the chart: 2.70% at one year, 2.55% at three, 2.75% at five.
That is essentially no reward for committing longer, and a small dip in the middle. When the curve is flat, the case for locking money away for years is weak — you are giving up access and getting almost nothing for it. One year is the sensible default, and five years only makes sense if you specifically want the certainty.
A cashable GIC is worth knowing about if the flat curve tempts you toward a longer term anyway: it typically pays less than a locked-in GIC of the same length, but lets you break it early without losing all the accrued interest, which is a reasonable middle ground between a savings account’s full flexibility and a standard GIC’s full commitment.
Getting the CDIC coverage right
CDIC insures CA$100,000 per insured category, per member institution, across nine categories:
deposits in one name · joint deposits · TFSA · RRSP · RRIF · RESP · RDSP · FHSA · deposits held in trust
CDIC’s own site puts the mechanics this simply:
“CDIC insures eligible deposits if a member institution fails. Each category is insured separately up to $100,000, including principal and interest.”
— CDIC, How deposit insurance works, accessed 22 August 2026
The practical consequence is better than most people assume. Someone holding a chequing account, a TFSA and an RRSP at the same bank has three separate $100,000 limits, not one. You do not need to spread money across banks until you exhaust the categories. And since the TFSA and FHSA are each their own category, a high-interest savings product held inside either one gets its own $100,000 ceiling on top of whatever else you hold at the same institution.
Worked example: someone holding $80,000 in an everyday chequing account, $60,000 in a TFSA and $90,000 in an RRSP, all at the same bank, is fully covered on every dollar: $230,000 total, because each sits in its own category, each under its own $100,000 cap. Move all three into one undifferentiated account instead and only $100,000 of it would be protected. The category, not just the bank, is what CDIC is insuring.
Check that the institution is a CDIC member before you open anything, since some financial products sold by banks (certain investment or wealth products, for instance) are not deposits and are not covered even when the bank itself is a member for its ordinary accounts.
Why Canadian rates look low next to everyone else’s
Because the policy rate is. The Bank of Canada held its target for the overnight rate at 2.25% on 15 July 2026, with the next scheduled announcement on 2 September 2026. Why a policy rate decision moves your deposit rate at all is the same mechanism in every market this site covers.
In the same month the RBA was at 4.35% after three increases (see the Australian side of this same comparison), the Bank of England at 3.75% and the US Federal Reserve at 3.50–3.75%. Deposit rates anchor to the local policy rate, so an Australian article promising 5% is not describing an opportunity you can access — it is describing a different country’s monetary policy.
The prime rate, for context, was 4.45% on 12 August 2026, which is what your borrowing costs are indexed to while your branch savings account earns 0.01%.
What to do this week
- Check what your current savings account actually pays. Log in and look at the actual posted rate rather than guessing. Most people are surprised, and the surprise is the motivation.
- Move at-call money to a competitive high-interest savings account. Confirm CDIC membership first, whether it’s an online bank or a credit union with equivalent provincial coverage, before you initiate the transfer.
- Use TFSA room before anything else. A tax-free 2.70% beats a taxed 3% in most brackets. Check your actual available room in CRA My Account rather than assuming you’re either full or empty.
- Consider a one-year GIC for money with a known date — but not for your emergency buffer, and don’t pay up for a longer term given how flat the curve currently is. A cashable GIC is the compromise if you’re unsure.
- Check the licence and the categories if your balance is near a limit, and remember TFSA and FHSA each carry their own separate $100,000 ceiling on top of whatever else you hold at the same bank.
Move the at-call money first; that’s the highest-value ten minutes on this list. What a high-yield savings account is and why branch banks pay so little fill in the mechanics behind the 0.01% baseline, and the savings guide rounds out the rest, including the general savings interest rate comparison if Canada isn’t the only market you’re weighing.