High-Yield Savings Account Calculator: See How Much You Could Earn
Opens on $10,000 at a 5.00% APY, compounded daily, over one year. Put in your own balance and the rate your bank is posting to see the interest per day, per month, and per year.
High-Yield Savings Account Calculator
Starts on a $10,000 deposit at a 5.00% APY. Change any field and the numbers move with you.
Leave at $0 for a single deposit left alone.
Banks advertise savings accounts in APY. Use APR only if you were handed a nominal rate.
$10,000.00 grows to $10,500.00 in 1 year at 5.00% APY compounded daily.
That's $500.00 in interest on $10,000.00 of your own money.
Balance after 1 year
$10,500.00
Interest earned
$500.00
Effective APY
5.00%
= 4.879% APR, compounded daily
Roughly per day
$1.37
Roughly per month
$41.67
First 12 months
$500.00
Daily and monthly figures are the first year's interest split evenly; real deposits post a little more each month as the balance grows. Interest is shown before tax.
Switching the compounding frequency doesn't change the balance — and that's correct. A 5.00% APY already has the compounding baked in. Whether the bank credits interest daily or once a year, 5.00% APY pays 5.00% over twelve months. What the frequency changes is the nominal rate underneath: 5.00% APY compounded daily runs on a 4.879% APR. Flip the toggle to Quoted as APR to go the other way.
Traditional Savings vs. HYSA vs. CD
The same $10,000.00, left alone, in three places. Edit the traditional and CD rates to match what you've actually been offered.
| Account | APY | 1 year | 3 years | 5 years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional savingsBig-bank rate | 0.50% | $10,050.00 | $10,150.75 | $10,252.51 |
| High-yield savingsYour rate, above | 5.00% | $10,500.00 | $11,576.25 | $12,762.82 |
| Certificate of depositLocked for the term | 5.20% | $10,520.00 | $11,642.53 | $12,884.83 |
Lump sum only, no monthly deposits, so all three are comparable — most CDs don't accept additional deposits anyway. The CD row assumes you can hold a matching term at that rate; a 5-year CD rate is rarely the same as a 1-year one, and money pulled out early forfeits months of interest. Savings rates are variable and can change any day. Default rates here are illustrative placeholders, not quotes.
Over five years, the gap between the two savings accounts is $2,510.30 on $10,000.00 — for the same deposit, the same access to your money, and the same federal insurance. That difference is the entire case for moving the money.
What that number actually means
$10,000 at a 5.00% APY is $10,500.00 after a year. Not approximately — exactly, to the cent, and that is worth understanding, because it is the single most useful thing to know about savings accounts. APY means “what one dollar becomes after twelve months.” It is the finished number. You don't add anything to it for daily compounding, and you don't need to know how often the bank credits interest to work out what you'll have.
Which is why switching the compounding dropdown above from daily to annually leaves the balance untouched. Two banks both advertising 5.00% APY pay you the same money on the same balance, whatever their compounding schedules say. Anyone selling daily compounding as a meaningful advantage over monthly is selling you a rounding error.
Day to day, that $500 shows up as roughly $41.67 a month, or about $1.37 a day. Interest posts once a month at most banks, so the balance ticks up on a statement date rather than continuously, and each month's payment is slightly larger than the last because it's calculated on a slightly larger balance. That is compounding doing its work, quietly.
APY vs. APR, in plain English
APR is the rate before compounding.It's the sticker rate: divide it by the number of compounding periods to get what you earn each period. A 5.00% APR compounded daily pays about 0.0137% a day.
APY is the rate after compounding.It rolls a year of those daily payments together, including the interest you earned on your interest, into one honest annual figure. Because each day's interest starts earning its own interest the next day, the APY always lands a little above the APR that produced it.
Run the numbers on our $10,000 and the gap is small but real. At a 5.00% APY, you finish the year with $10,500.00. At a 5.00% APRcompounded daily — a nominal rate, which works out to a 5.1267% APY — you finish with $10,512.67. Twelve dollars and sixty-seven cents apart on the same headline “5%”. Flip the calculator's toggle to Quoted as APRand you'll see it convert.
The practical rule: on U.S. deposit accounts, banks are required to advertise the APY, so the rate in the ad is the real one and you can compare two accounts on that number alone. APR is what you meet on the borrowing side — credit cards, mortgages, car loans — where the convention flips and the quoted rate understates what compounding actually costs you. The APY vs. APR calculator converts in both directions at any frequency.
Where the money goes: savings, HYSA, or CD
The table in the calculator is the argument in one screen. At the default rates, $10,000 in a big-bank savings account earning 0.50% is $10,252.51 after five years. The same $10,000 at 5.00% is $12,762.82 — a difference of $2,510.30 for identical money, identical access, and identical federal insurance. The only thing you did differently was open the account somewhere else.
A CD pays a little more again, and charges you for it in flexibility: the rate is locked for the term, and pulling the money out early forfeits months of interest. That trade is worth it for cash with a known date and worth nothing for an emergency fund. Our CD vs. savings account calculator puts an exact dollar figure on what the lockup buys you, and a CD ladder is the usual way to keep most of the yield while still getting money back every year.
One caveat on the CD row: it assumes you can hold a CD at that rate for the full horizon. Five-year CDs and one-year CDs are rarely posted at the same rate, and when a short CD matures you reinvest at whatever the market is paying then. A HYSA has the mirror-image version of that risk — the rate is variable, so it follows rates down as readily as up.
Before you open one, check four things
The insurance, at the source
FDIC (banks) or NCUA (credit unions) covers $250,000 per depositor, per institution, per ownership category. Confirm it on the FDIC's BankFind or the NCUA's own lookup — not on the app's marketing page — particularly if you found the account through a fintech that partners with a bank rather than through the bank itself.
Whether the rate has strings
Some accounts pay the advertised APY only up to a balance cap, or only if a direct deposit lands each month, or only for an introductory period. Anything that turns the headline rate into a conditional one belongs in the fine print, and that's where it usually is.
How fast you can get money out
An external ACH transfer commonly takes one to three business days, and some banks still cap outbound transfers at six a month. If this account holds your emergency fund, test a small transfer when you open it rather than discovering the timeline during an emergency.
What's left after tax and inflation
Interest is ordinary income, reported on a 1099-INT and taxed at your marginal rate. A 5.00% APY in the 24% bracket is closer to 3.8% after federal tax, and inflation takes its cut from what remains. See the inflation-adjusted returns calculator for the real number.
Related Tools & Articles
CD vs. Savings Account Calculator
What the lockup actually pays you over a high-yield savings account
APY vs. APR Calculator
Convert a nominal rate to its effective yield, in either direction
Daily vs. Monthly vs. Annual Compounding
How much the frequency is really worth once the APY is fixed
Emergency Fund Calculator
How big the balance in this account should be in the first place
HYSA vs. CD vs. Index Fund
All three homes for cash over the same horizon, with the risk spelled out
Inflation-Adjusted Returns
What a 5% APY is worth once inflation has taken its share
Frequently Asked Questions
How much interest will I earn in a high-yield savings account?
Multiply your balance by the APY. That's the whole calculation for a deposit you leave alone for a year, because APY is defined as what you actually earn over twelve months with compounding included. At 5.00% APY, $10,000 earns $500 in a year — about $41.67 a month, or roughly $1.37 a day. Every $1,000 you hold earns $50 a year at that rate. The calculator above handles the messier versions: a shorter or longer horizon, a monthly deposit going in, or a rate quoted as an APR instead.
What's the difference between APY and APR on a savings account?
APR is the nominal rate before compounding; APY is what you actually end up with after it. On savings accounts, U.S. banks are required to advertise the APY, so the rate you see in the ad is already the real one — you don't add anything to it for daily compounding. The two only diverge when someone hands you a nominal rate. A 5.00% APR compounded daily works out to 5.1267% APY, which turns $10,000 into $10,512.67 rather than $10,500.00 after a year. That $12.67 is the entire practical difference at this rate.
Does daily compounding really beat monthly compounding?
Barely, and not at all in the way most people assume. If two banks both advertise 5.00% APY, you earn exactly the same on the same balance no matter how often either one compounds — the APY has already absorbed the frequency. Compounding frequency only matters when you're comparing raw nominal rates: 5.00% compounded daily is 5.1267% APY against 5.1162% for monthly, a difference of about $1 a year on $10,000. Chase the higher APY, not the more frequent compounding.
Is a high-yield savings account safe?
At an FDIC-insured bank or an NCUA-insured credit union, your deposits are federally insured up to $250,000 per depositor, per institution, per ownership category — the same protection a traditional savings account carries. The higher rate isn't compensation for extra risk; it comes from online banks having no branch network to pay for and needing deposits to compete. Verify the coverage yourself on the FDIC's BankFind or the NCUA's research tool before you fund an account, especially if you found the bank through an app or a fintech partner rather than the bank itself.
Can the bank lower my rate after I open the account?
Yes, at any time and without notice. A HYSA rate is variable and generally tracks the Fed's moves — this is the one real difference from a CD, which locks its rate for the term. In practice it cuts both ways: rates rise and your account follows them up within a statement cycle or two, with no action needed. Set a reminder to check your posted rate a couple of times a year. Banks are far quicker to advertise a new rate to new customers than to tell existing ones theirs has dropped.
Do I pay taxes on high-yield savings interest?
Yes. Savings interest is ordinary income, taxed at your marginal federal rate in the year it's credited, plus state income tax where it applies. The bank sends a 1099-INT for $10 or more of interest and reports the same figure to the IRS. In the 24% bracket, a 5.00% APY nets closer to 3.8% after federal tax — worth remembering when you compare it against a Treasury or a municipal bond, whose interest gets different tax treatment.
How much should I keep in a high-yield savings account?
Your emergency fund and any money with a job in the next two or three years — a down payment, a wedding, next year's tuition. Those are the balances where a guaranteed rate and instant access are worth more than expected return. Money you won't touch for a decade is a poor fit: after tax and inflation, a savings account roughly preserves purchasing power rather than growing it, while a stock index fund has historically done a great deal better at the price of the guarantee.
What's the catch with high-yield savings accounts?
There usually isn't one, but read the terms for three things. Some accounts pay the headline APY only up to a balance cap, dropping to a token rate above it. Some require a minimum balance or a monthly direct deposit to keep the advertised rate. And some still cap you at six outbound transfers a month, a holdover from a federal rule suspended in 2020 that many banks kept. Also check the transfer time — an external ACH transfer commonly takes one to three business days, which matters if this is your emergency fund.