How we rank

Highest honest yield, first

For each asset we collect every live opportunity across DeFi and CeFi and surface the best current APY, with the full range one click away. We split base yield (organic interest, LP fees, staking rewards) from reward yield (temporary incentive-token emissions) so you can see how durable a rate really is. Flexible lending, fixed-term, staking and CeFi earn products are labeled so you compare like with like, and every APY is the platform’s own live figure, never a cached or estimated number.

Neutrality

• Commissions never change the ranking. Both the comparison tables and the personalized matcher are ordered by live yield and risk alone. Where we earn an affiliate commission, that platform is labeled with a Partner tag, and that label is the only thing it buys: an affiliate platform is never moved up, and a higher or safer yield we do not earn on is never hidden or pushed down. The label is disclosure, not a placement.
• Every APY is a real, live figure. We show the actual current rate from each platform’s own feed and DefiLlama, stamped with when it was fetched, not a cached or estimated number.
• We don’t custody your funds. BitcoinYield is not a platform or an exchange and holds no deposits of its own. We compare everyone else’s live rates, so there is no incentive to steer you to any particular platform.
• The biggest APY is a warning, not a recommendation. The highest headline numbers are usually inflated by temporary token incentives or sit in unaudited, thin pools, so we grade risk from A to D alongside the rate and cap ranking credit when a reported historical mean is available. Missing history limits what the ranking can establish.

How each yield is produced, and how it can break

Two yields at the same rate are not the same bet. The grade below weighs how risky an offer is; this is the shape of that risk. Every offer we track is one of these mechanisms, and each has its own reason a rate can fall or a deposit can be lost.

How we grade risk

Beyond the rate, we surface the signals that decide whether a high APY is actually a good deal, never an invented safety score:

• Product type: flexible DeFi lending vs LP and vaults (impermanent-loss exposure) vs staking (lock-up) vs custodial CeFi earn, which is graded on counterparty and custody risk rather than on-chain security.
• Audits and track record: how many security audits a protocol has (a COUNT of audits on record, a coverage proxy, not our judgement of their quality), and any prior exploit, weighted by how recent it was and whether user funds were returned, not a flat ever-or-never.
• TVL and liquidity: how much is actually deposited, and for lending markets how fully utilized they are, because a high APY on a thin pool (or one lent out to the limit) is fragile and hard to exit.
• The dollar behind the rate: for every stablecoin, its own token’s live price and how much of it circulates. We score how far below $1 it trades, and more than 5% below is always grade D. A small dollar cannot earn a top grade from a clean-looking vault alone. A yield-bearing token is checked against the dollar it redeems into, and a dollar we cannot price independently is marked unverified rather than assumed healthy. We also score what backs it: a dollar backed by a trading strategy (synthetic), by loans (credit) or by an algorithm carries that design’s risk wherever it is held, so staked USDe in a fixed-rate Pendle position is graded for Ethena’s basis trade exactly as it is in Ethena’s own vault. The price shows a dollar that has broken; the design shows how it can break.
• Structural category risk: extra weight for structures a pure on-chain read misses, such as bridges, uncollateralized lending, real-world assets and leveraged strategies.
• Yield durability: whether the current APY is stable or spiking above its own 30-day norm on short-lived rewards, shown through the base-versus-reward split.

It is not a judgement call. Each signal below adds a fixed number of risk points, we add them up, and the total sets the grade on fixed cutoffs. Nothing here depends on whether we earn a commission. This is the exact rubric the site runs, published so you can reproduce any grade yourself:

Follow the source of the yield

Lending interest, trading fees, investment income and token incentives have different risks. A payment stablecoin, a yield-bearing token and a tokenized fund are different products. Check the actual instrument, eligibility and withdrawal terms at the linked source. The quoted APY alone cannot establish who owes you money or whether you can withdraw it.

Data and freshness

We track 223 platforms across 66 assets, pulling APYs, TVL and risk signals from each platform’s own feed and DefiLlama continuously. Compare platforms, or start from the live yield table.