Where our rates come from

These are pulled every day from FRED, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s public data service, and stored with their history. The top bar, the mortgage rates page, the physician mortgage calculator, and our rate alert emails all read from this table.

FRED data is provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and is not endorsed by it. Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey describes conventional conforming loans; physician loan quotes usually sit 0.125–0.5 points above it.

No free feed exists for what specific banks and lenders offer, so we check these on each provider’s own site and record the date. If a figure is more than a month old, treat it as a starting point and confirm on the provider’s site.

High-yield savings accounts

Other hand-checked figures

• Student loan refinancing: lowest advertised fixed APR with autopay, 3.95% fixed via Earnest, checked July 27, 2026. Your rate depends on credit, term, and income.
• 12-month CD: 4.15% APY, checked July 27, 2026.
• Lender, insurer, and card details on our review pages carry their own “current as of” date at the top of each page.

Savings APYs last verified September 14, 2026.

• Every rate carries an "as of" date. We never show today's date on a number we didn't check today.
• We label APR and APY and never mix them in one comparison. Savings accounts are quoted as APY; loans as APR or a fixed rate.
• A surveyed or sample quote is labeled as one, with the date and scenario. It is never presented as an offer.
• We don't estimate rates by state or by lender when we don't have the data. If a number isn't here, we don't show it.
• Commissions from providers never change which rate we show or how we rank a product. See our Advertising Disclosure.

A scheduled job pulls new FRED observations every day at 12:30pm Eastern and refreshes the pages within the hour. Hand-checked figures are reviewed roughly monthly and whenever a reader reports a change. Rate alert emails compare the newest benchmark against the rates each subscriber was last told about, and go out at most once a week.

The benchmark history behind our charts is public data and can be downloaded directly from the FRED links above. If you cite a figure from this site, please link to the page it appears on and include its “as of” date.