Independent research desk — we are not a broker, exchange or adviser
Rate data verified
14 platforms tracked · rates re-checked every month
Independent reviews of the platforms that pay you to hold crypto — staking, savings accounts, lending and stablecoin yield. We publish the rate you would actually receive, the lock-up you would actually accept, and who is holding your coins while you wait.
Our top-scoring venue is registered with the UK Financial Conduct Authority, licensed by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission as a DLT provider and registered with FinCEN in the US. See why it ranks first.
Yield preview
Estimated reward, 12 months
$400
Per month
$33
Based on stablecoin savings at 4%
Illustration only, simple interest, no compounding or fees. Rates are variable and not guaranteed. Check current terms before you deposit.
CeFi exchanges, lenders and DeFi protocols
From BTC savings to DOT staking
Q2 2026, ~56,853 BTC
Lending still sits outside its scope
The leaderboard
Scored on realistic rates, transparency, asset coverage, usability and risk controls. Rankings are editorial — commercial relationships never move a platform up this list.
Highest overall score
Two clearly separated products — proof-of-stake staking with no lock-up, and flexible savings paid daily — run by a group that holds registrations in the UK, Gibraltar, the US and Spain.
Best for: People who want a regulated venue and will not chase double-digit promos
The highest published CeFi rates on major assets, but they are gated behind a loyalty ladder that rewards holding NEXO tokens and keeping a five-figure balance.
Best for: Larger balances willing to hold NEXO tokens for the top tier
A Nasdaq-listed operator with modest but dependable rates. USDC rewards and protocol staking are the core; the trade-off is a commission of roughly a quarter to a third of gross staking rewards.
Best for: US savers who value a listed, audited counterparty over the top rate
Splits staking into flexible and on-chain bonded terms. Bonded pays more and locks longer; flexible pays on only part of your balance. The distinction is the whole story here.
Best for: Stakers who understand bonding periods and want network-native exposure
Simple Earn, dual investment, launchpool and on-chain yields under one roof. Real-time APRs float minute to minute and the eye-catching bonus rates apply only to a small first tranche.
Best for: Experienced users who will read the tiered-APR small print
Rates scale with how much CRO you stake and how long you lock. That makes the top advertised figure a bundle of interest plus token exposure rather than a clean yield.
Best for: Existing CRO holders already inside the ecosystem
Scores reflect the product as offered to a typical retail user with a mid-sized balance, not the best case for a whale or a promotional first tranche. Read the scoring method for what each criterion means.
Every major exchange now has a tab called Earn. They all look the same: a list of assets, a percentage next to each one, a button. That interface hides the single most important fact about this entire category, which is that those percentages come from completely different places and carry completely different risks.
There are really only four engines under the hood. Staking pays you because a proof-of-stake blockchain mints new coins to reward the validators that secure it — the money comes from protocol issuance, and nobody has to repay you. Lending pays you because a trading desk or a leveraged retail borrower is paying interest, and the platform keeps a cut — the money comes from a borrower who might default. Savings accounts are almost always lending with a gentler name. DeFi protocols pay you the same way lenders do, except the loan book is a public smart contract you can audit yourself at three in the morning.
That distinction is not academic. When Celsius, Voyager and BlockFi collapsed in 2022, and Genesis froze roughly $940 million belonging to 340,000 Gemini Earn users, staking rewards on Ethereum and Cosmos carried on being minted exactly as scheduled. The blockchains did not care. The lending books did. If you take one thing from this site, take that.
Here is the honest picture as of 16 September 2026. Stablecoins pay the most on centralised venues because leveraged traders always want dollars and will pay for them. Bitcoin pays the least, because almost nobody borrows BTC — a fact that surprises newcomers more than any other in this market. Proof-of-stake assets sit in between, and their rates are set by the chain's own issuance curve rather than by any platform's generosity.
| Platform | Headline rate | Product type | Terms |
|---|---|---|---|
| CEX.IO Earn — Our highest-scoring venue Cosmos (ATOM) staking | 12% | Staking | No lock-up, monthly payout |
| Nexo USDT flexible savings | Up to 9.5% | Lending | Tier-gated, daily payout |
| Ledn USDC growth account | 6.5–8.5% | Lending | Rate rises above $100k |
| Binance Earn USDT flexible | Up to 6% APR | Savings | Bonus tier is capped |
| Aave v3 USDC supply | 3.8–5.2% | DeFi lending | Floats with utilisation |
| Coinbase USDC rewards | ~4.1% | Rewards | No lock-up, monthly |
| Lido stETH liquid staking | 3.8–4.1% | Liquid staking | Non-custodial, rebasing |
CEX.IO Earn — Our highest-scoring venue
Cosmos (ATOM) staking
12%
USDT flexible savings
Up to 9.5%
USDC growth account
6.5–8.5%
USDT flexible
Up to 6% APR
USDC supply
3.8–5.2%
USDC rewards
~4.1%
stETH liquid staking
3.8–4.1%
Most people arrive here wanting a single recommendation. We will not give you one, because the right answer genuinely depends on what you already hold and what you are willing to accept. What we can do is describe the trade-off each route asks you to make.
If you own SOL, ADA, DOT, ATOM or ETH and intend to keep owning them, staking is close to a free option. The reward is denominated in the same asset, it is minted by the protocol, and no counterparty owes you anything. What you give up is flexibility: some networks impose bonding or unbonding periods measured in days or weeks, and a few platforms add their own lock on top. A venue that applies no lock-up at all — and a handful do — removes that objection entirely. Our crypto staking guide covers the mechanics chain by chain.
Dollar-denominated yield is the only part of this market where you can forecast next year's income without also forecasting the price of an asset. That is worth a lot. The catch is that almost every stablecoin rate is a lending rate, so you are taking credit risk on whoever the platform lends to. Rates between 4% and 8.5% from a well-run venue are realistic; the gap between that and 15% is a risk premium, not a bargain. Start with our stablecoin yield guide.
Supplying USDC to Aave or holding stETH from Lido removes the custodian entirely. You can read the loan book, verify the collateral ratios and withdraw without asking permission. In exchange you accept smart-contract risk, gas costs that make small positions pointless on Ethereum mainnet, and the unforgiving reality that a mistyped address is gone forever. It is the most transparent option and the least beginner-friendly. See DeFi yield farming and our CeFi versus DeFi comparison.
Bitcoin has no native staking. Every BTC yield is manufactured: lending it out, wrapping it as WBTC or cbBTC to use in DeFi, or committing it through a timelock protocol like Babylon that pays rewards in its own token rather than in Bitcoin. Rates of 0.25% to 5.25% are what the market actually supports. Anyone promising materially more on Bitcoin is not doing something clever, they are doing something risky. We unpack all of it in where and how to earn Bitcoin and Bitcoin staking and BTCfi.
Explore the research
Each hub explains where the money comes from, what it costs you, and which platforms are worth your time. Start with whichever describes what you already hold.
Deposit, earn interest, withdraw. The closest thing crypto has to a savings product — and the furthest from a bank deposit.
Up to 8.5%
on stablecoins
Rewards paid by proof-of-stake blockchains for helping secure them. The only earn category where the yield is minted by protocol, not owed by a borrower.
1.5–12%
depending on chain
Your coins get lent to traders and institutions. Higher rates, real credit risk, and the category that blew up in 2022.
2–15%
wide spread
The busiest corner of the market. USDC and USDT rates track borrowing demand and short-term dollar rates.
2.6–9.5%
CeFi range
On-chain, self-custody, fully auditable. You swap counterparty risk for smart-contract risk and a steeper learning curve.
3.5–9%
blue-chip protocols
Every route in one place — from exchange savings to liquid staking to cashback cards — ranked by effort and honesty.
9 routes
compared
Earn by asset
Yield mechanics differ completely from one asset to the next. These pages cover only what applies to that specific coin — no filler, no duplicated advice.
How we work
Five criteria, applied identically to a Nasdaq-listed exchange and to a DAO-governed protocol. Nothing here is negotiable by a partner.
Not the promotional ceiling. Where a tier table exists we model a mid-sized balance and report the blended result.
Protocol issuance, borrower interest, token emissions or a basis trade. If a platform will not say, that is itself the finding.
Which legal entity holds the assets, which regulator it answers to, and whether that registration covers the earn product at all.
Lock-ups, unbonding queues, early-redemption penalties, minimum balances and the small print on withdrawal suspensions.
Operating history, past freezes, enforcement actions and whether customers were made whole when something went wrong.
"A platform that publishes its tier table in full is telling you something about itself before you read a single number in it."
An earn product is a loan you are making, or a validator you are trusting, or a smart contract you are relying on. It is never a deposit. There is no FDIC cover in the United States, no FSCS cover in the United Kingdom, and — this one catches people out — MiCA authorisation in the European Union does not extend to lending and borrowing at all. The European Commission has explicitly named DeFi, staking and lending as gaps beyond MiCA's original scope, with a consultation that ran to 30 September 2026. A platform can be fully MiCA-authorised and its earn product can still sit entirely outside that protection.
The 2022 cycle is worth remembering in detail rather than as a slogan. Gemini Earn offered up to 7.4% and froze in November 2022 when Genesis halted withdrawals. It took until mid-2024 for customers to receive $2.18 billion in kind — about 97% of assets owed — and until January 2026 for the SEC to dismiss its case with prejudice, citing full investor recovery. In August 2026 an arbitrator found Gemini itself not at fault for the collapse. Customers were, in the end, made whole and then some, because Bitcoin's price had risen sharply in the interim. That was luck, not design.
None of which means avoid the category. It means pick the counterparty the way you would pick a bank in a country with no deposit insurance: slowly, sceptically, and with a hard look at who is actually holding the asset.
340,000 users, November 2022
Genesis bankruptcy, mid-2024
that cover crypto earn products
on regulating staking and lending
Our highest-scoring venue publishes every rate openly, separates staking from lending instead of blending them, applies no lock-up on staked balances and pays savings interest daily with no minimum transfer.
Rates, terms and regulatory details on this page were checked against the following sources on . Variable figures move constantly — always confirm with the provider before depositing.