Savings Account Statistics (2026)

A savings account is where most Americans keep the cash they are not spending, and by mid-2026 that cash pile is large but poorly paid. Households held about $10.5 trillion in liquid savings deposits in August 2026, yet the national average savings rate was just 0.37% in September (see the charts and tables below).

The headline story of 2026 is a wide and persistent gap: online high-yield accounts pay more than 10 times the national average, but most savers have not moved their money. That gap, and the balances and ownership behind it, is what the numbers below describe.

The FDIC publishes the official national average deposit rates, and in September 2026 the average savings account paid 0.37% APY, after 0.38% in June. Interest checking paid 0.07%, money market accounts paid 0.63%, and a 12-month CD averaged 1.73% (see the table below).

These averages are dragged down by the largest brick-and-mortar banks, which hold the bulk of deposits and pay very little. The FDIC also sets a savings rate cap, 4.38% in September 2026, that tracks near the top of the market and shows how much room savers have to earn more.

The defining feature of the savings market is the gap between what typical and top accounts pay. In mid-2026 the best online high-yield savings accounts paid around 4.2% APY (July 2026), versus the 0.37% national average (September 2026), a difference of nearly four percentage points (see the chart below).

In dollars, that gap is real money: $10,000 earns about $37 a year at the national average but roughly $420 in a top high-yield account (see the table below). The tradeoff is that high-yield accounts are mostly online-only, with no branch network.

Despite the gap, adoption of high-yield accounts is low. A CNBC Select and Dynata survey found about 82% of Americans do not use a high-yield savings account, and a 2025 Santander survey found 69% do not use any higher-rate account such as a high-yield savings account, money market, or CD (both figures are secondary survey data).

An earlier Bankrate survey (fielded February 2024) found about 67% of savers were earning less than 4% APY and only 22% were earning 4% or more, with 33% reporting no short-term savings at all. Inertia, branch preference, and unawareness of rates all play a role.

The most authoritative balance figures come from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances. In the 2025 survey, released in October 2026, the median US household held $8,200 across its transaction accounts (checking, savings, and money market), up from $8,000 in 2022, while the mean was $62,800 (see the table below).

Balances rise with age: households headed by someone 75 or older held the highest median in 2025, $14,000 (mean $97,140), while those under 35 held a median of $5,000. In 2022 the peak had been the 65 to 74 group at a median of $13,400. Figures are in each survey year's dollars.

The gap between the median ($8,200) and the mean ($62,800) in 2025 is the single most important thing to understand about savings data. The average is nearly eight times the typical household because a small number of very wealthy households hold enormous cash balances that pull the mean up.

Whenever a headline cites a large 'average savings' figure, it is almost always a mean. The median is the better description of a typical household, and it is far lower. Aggregators sometimes report a single average savings balance near $22,000 (secondary, derived), but that too is skewed by the top.

Savings balances track income steeply. In the 2025 SCF, the bottom 20% of households by income held a median of just $800 in their bank accounts, while the top 10% held a median of $105,000, about 131 times as much (see the table below).

The means diverge even more, from $7,580 at the bottom to $326,540 at the top. This concentration is why aggregate deposit figures look enormous even though the typical household's cushion is thin.

Account ownership is widespread but not universal. The FDIC's 2023 survey found 95.8% of US households, about 128 million, were banked, meaning at least one member had a checking or savings account. The remaining 4.2%, or 5.6 million households, were unbanked (see the table below).

That unbanked rate is the lowest on record, down from a high of 8.2% in 2011. Even so, coverage gaps persist by race: the unbanked rate was 1.9% for White households but 10.6% for Black and 12.2% for American Indian or Alaska Native households.

Being unbanked has real costs. In 2023, about two-thirds (66.2%) of unbanked households relied entirely on cash, while the remaining third used prepaid cards or nonbank apps such as PayPal, Venmo, or Cash App to make payments.

The steady decline in the unbanked rate, from 8.2% in 2011 to 4.2% in 2023, reflects the spread of low-cost and online accounts. Still, 5.6 million households have no insured place to save and earn interest at all.

At the system level, the sums are vast. The Federal Reserve's H.6 release put 'other liquid deposits,' which combine savings accounts and money market deposit accounts, at about $10.5 trillion in August 2026, alongside $3.1 trillion in retail money market funds and $1.5 trillion in small CDs (see the chart and table below).

Across all FDIC-insured banks, total domestic deposits reached about $19.0 trillion ($18.97 trillion) in the second quarter of 2026, up 0.8% and growing for the eighth straight quarter. Deposits are the raw material banks lend against, which is why the difference between what they pay and earn matters.

How much households save out of current income is measured by the BEA's personal saving rate. In August 2026 it was 4.1% of disposable income, with total personal saving of $990.2 billion, after BEA's September 2026 annual update revised earlier months upward (May 2026 now reads 4.4%) (see the chart below).

That is low by historical standards: the rate has averaged about 5.9% over the past two decades. It spiked to a record 33.7% in April 2020 as stimulus arrived and spending collapsed, then fell back sharply as households resumed spending and drew down pandemic savings.

Savings accounts are where emergency funds live, and many households are thin. The Federal Reserve's 2025 well-being survey (fielded October 2025, published May 2026) found 63% of adults would cover a $400 emergency with cash or its equivalent, unchanged for a fourth year and down from a high of 68% in 2021, while 18% said the largest emergency expense they could handle using only savings was under $100 and 55% had set aside three months of expenses.

Bankrate survey data (secondary) echoes this: about 46% of adults have enough saved to cover three months of expenses, while 24% have no emergency savings at all. A high-yield account does not create savings, but it makes the savings people do hold grow faster.

Savings rates move with the Federal Reserve's policy rate, but not evenly. When the Fed raised rates in 2022 and 2023, online banks passed most of the increase through to high-yield accounts, while big traditional banks barely moved, which is why the national average stayed near 0.4% even as top accounts crossed 5%.

By mid-2026, top high-yield rates had eased to around 4.2% as the market anticipated Fed cuts, and Bankrate's national average sat near 0.62% (July 16, 2026). The lesson is durable: the national average is a poor guide to what a motivated saver can earn.

The single highest-return move most savers can make is free: switch idle cash from a 0.37% account to a high-yield account paying around 4%. On a $10,000 emergency fund that is roughly $380 a year more, for a form filled out once (see the table above).

Cash still has a job, holding your emergency fund and near-term goals, but it is not a growth engine. Historically, stocks have returned about 7% a year after inflation, so money you will not need for years generally belongs invested, while the cash you keep should at least earn a competitive yield rather than the near-zero national average.