APY (Annual Percentage Yield)
The total interest you earn in a year, expressed as a percentage and including the effect of compounding. Required disclosure under the Truth in Savings Act.
APY stands for Annual Percentage Yield. It is the total amount of interest you earn on a deposit account in one year, expressed as a percentage of your starting balance, and it accounts for compounding — the fact that interest itself earns interest over time.
APY is different from APR (Annual Percentage Rate). APR is the simple interest rate before compounding. For a savings account that compounds daily and pays 4.00% APR, the resulting APY is roughly 4.08%. The Truth in Savings Act requires banks to advertise the APY (not the APR) so that consumers can compare offers on equal footing.
Why this matters: when you compare two HYSAs, the APY is the only number that lets you make an apples-to-apples comparison. Two banks may quote different "rates" but identical APYs, or vice versa.
Every rate shown on HYSA Compare is the APY as published by the bank, scraped daily from their official disclosure page.