Editorial policy and scoring method

The five criteria

Each platform receives a score from 1.0 to 5.0 on five dimensions. The overall figure is a weighted composite, not an average — the weighting is set out in the next section.

1. Rates and value

What a realistic balance actually receives. Where a tier table exists, we model a mid-sized account — $5,000 for stablecoins — and report the blended result. Where a rate is quoted gross of commission, we deduct the commission. Where the top rate requires holding a native token, we score the rate available without it and note the condition separately.

A platform advertising 11% that pays a blended 3.5% on a real balance scores as a 3.5% platform, not an 11% one.

2. Transparency

Whether the platform tells you where the yield comes from, what it costs and what the terms are. Specifically: are staking and lending presented separately? Is commission stated next to the rate or buried in help documentation? Is there a published tier table? Are licences named entity by entity with verifiable numbers? Is proof of reserves published?

This is the criterion where the spread between platforms is widest, and in our experience it is the best single predictor of how a platform behaves on everything else.

3. Asset coverage

Breadth and usefulness of supported assets. We weight useful coverage over raw count — two hundred assets with thin liquidity and emission-funded rates is not obviously better than thirty-five well-supported ones. Coverage of assets that are genuinely hard to earn on elsewhere earns credit.

4. Ease of use

Onboarding, interface quality, reporting and whether the product can be understood without research. This is where DeFi protocols score lowest and mainstream exchanges score highest, and those scores should be read as descriptive rather than as criticism — Aave's 3.4 reflects that it requires wallet competence, which is inherent to what it is.

5. Risk controls

Licensing, custody structure, reserve reporting, operating history and conduct through stress. A separately chartered custody entity scores above assets held on the operating balance sheet. Regular proof-of-reserves attestation scores well. Operating through 2022 without freezing withdrawals counts heavily, because it is the only real-world stress test that has happened. Recent enforcement actions and a narrowing regulatory footprint count against.

How the criteria are weighted

We weight risk controls and transparency most heavily, because in this category the difference between a good outcome and a total loss is almost never the rate.

If you would weight rate more heavily than we do, the individual scores are published on every review page and you can recompute. We think that is a better answer than pretending our weighting is objective.

How we verify rates

Every rate on this site is checked against the provider's own published rate page or documentation — not against another comparison site, and not against a press release. Each figure is dated, and the whole dataset is re-verified monthly.

For regulatory claims we check the named entity against the relevant public register: the FCA register for UK cryptoasset registrations, the Gibraltar FSC for DLT provider authorisations, FinCEN's MSB registrant search for US money services businesses, and the equivalent registers elsewhere.

For historical and enforcement facts we cite the primary document — an SEC press release, a court filing, a regulator's published guidance. We do not cite news coverage of a filing where the filing itself is available.

Where a figure is inherently variable — a DeFi supply rate, a real-time APR — we say so and give a range rather than a point estimate.

Commercial relationships

Some outbound links on this site are commercial partnerships and we may be compensated when a reader opens an account. Those links carry a sponsored attribute in our HTML, which is the standard disclosure convention and is machine-readable.

Three commitments about how this works.

Scores are set before any commercial conversation. A platform's rating is determined by the criteria above, recorded, and not revisited because of a commercial discussion.

Ranking is not for sale. We do not offer paid placement in any list, table or comparison. If we ever did, this page would say so.

Criticism is not negotiable. Every platform we cover, including those we have relationships with, has a "what to weigh" section listing genuine drawbacks. We do not remove findings at a partner's request.

The test you should apply: do platforms we have no relationship with score above ones we do? On our current rankings, several do. If that ever stops being true, treat this page as unreliable.

What we refuse to score

Price predictions. We do not forecast what any asset will be worth, and we do not treat a platform's token performance as a criterion. Where holding a native token is a condition of a rate, we flag it as a separate investment decision rather than pricing it.

Investment merit of any asset. Whether you should hold Bitcoin, Ethereum or anything else is outside what we do. We cover what happens to an asset once you hold it.

Anything we cannot verify. If a platform makes a claim we cannot check against a primary source, we do not repeat it. Unverifiable claims are noted as unverifiable rather than reported as facts.

Platforms we cannot assess. A venue with no named legal entity, no verifiable registration and no published terms does not get a low score — it does not get covered.

Corrections

Rates change constantly and we get things wrong. When we do, we correct the page and, where the error was material, note the correction.

If you find an error — a rate that has moved, a licence that has lapsed, a term we have misdescribed — please write to editor@earnbitcoin.guide. Factual corrections take priority over everything else in our queue, and we do not require you to identify yourself or explain why you are asking.

Every page carries a verification date. As of this writing, the current dataset was verified on 16 September 2026.