Startup Banking Cost Calculator
What does your bank account cost, and what does your idle cash earn there? Enter your balance, wires, international payments and card spend to compare fees, cashback and yield across startup banks and spend platforms, using each vendor's published fee schedule.
Your banking
Defaults are the seed-stage profile we use across our comparisons (our assumption, not vendor data). "Kept for operations" stays in checking; the rest goes to the vendor's yield product where it has one.
Fees: plan, wires, FX on payments and card FX. Yield: what your idle cash earns at today's published rate, which changes often; deposit interest is FDIC-insured, money market funds are not. Vendor data checked on each pricing page, latest October 23, 2026.
All accounts at your activity
| Account | Fees / yr | Cashback / yr | Yield / yr | Net / yr |
|---|
Net = fees minus cashback minus yield; negative means the account earns you money. "n/p" = the vendor does not publish that fee or rate, so the row's total leaves it out. Each yield shows its as-of date and product in the row note.
Fees and yield at pre-seed, seed and Series A
| Account (fees / yield per year) | Pre-seed | Seed | Series A |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mercury (free plan) | $504 / $11,550 | $3,600 / $86,250 | $18,720 / $365,000 |
| Relay Starter | $900 / $4,165 | $4,896 / $29,750 | $20,880 / $119,000 |
| Relay Scale | $1,848 / $11,235 | $5,520 / $80,250 | $20,700 / $321,000 |
| Bluevine Standard | $1,200 / $3,250 | $6,600 / $3,250 | $27,900 / $3,250 |
| Bluevine Premier | $1,830 / $15,000 | $5,160 / $90,000 | $18,690 / $360,000 |
| Rho | $360* / $11,270 | $2,880* / $84,250 | $14,400* / $357,000 |
| Brex Essentials | $144* / $12,635 | $720* / $92,750 | $4,320* / $376,000 |
| Ramp Free + Ramp Checking | $144* / $10,000 | $720* / $60,000 | $4,320* / $240,000 |
| Chase Business Complete | $1,224* / $0 | $4,440* / $0 | $14,580* / $0 |
Our assumptions, not vendor data: cash $0.5M / $3M / $12M with $150K / $500K / $2M kept for operations; 2 / 6 / 15 domestic wires and 1 / 4 / 12 non-USD payments a month ($3K / $6K / $10K each); card spend $4K / $20K / $80K a month, 10% / 10% / 15% of it non-USD. Fees = plan, wires, FX on payments, card FX. * = the vendor does not publish a fee this activity needs (FX on international payments for Brex, Ramp and Chase; card FX for Rho), so the figure leaves it out. Yields are the published rates on the dates shown in the calculator.
Two things stand out. Fees are small and yield is large: at seed, the accounts that publish every fee charge about $3,600 to $6,600 a year, mostly currency conversion on international payments, while cash earns from nothing (Chase) to over $90,000 depending on where it sits. And the yields are not the same product: Relay, Bluevine and Ramp pay interest on FDIC-insured deposits; Mercury, Rho and Brex invest idle cash in government money market funds, which are not FDIC-insured (Brex and Rho keep them in brokerage accounts covered by SIPC, which does not protect against a fall in value).
Worked example: a seed-stage SaaS
A seed-stage company holds $3M, keeps $500,000 of it for day-to-day operations and runs a modest volume of wires, international payments and card spend.
| Cash at the bank / kept for operations | $3,000,000 / $500,000 |
| Domestic wires / users | 6/mo / 10 |
| Non-USD payments | 4/mo at $6,000 each |
| Card spend / share non-USD | $20,000/mo / 10% |
| Lowest fees (every fee published) | Mercury (free plan): $3,600/yr |
| Highest fees (every fee published) | Bluevine Standard: $6,600/yr |
| Fee spread between them | $3,000/yr |
| Highest yield on idle cash | Brex Essentials: $92,750/yr at 3.71% |
Is my money safe at a fintech bank?
Mercury, Relay, Brex, Ramp, Novo and Bluevine are not banks. Your deposits sit at partner banks (for example Choice Financial Group and Column N.A. for Mercury, Thread Bank for Relay, Coastal Community Bank for Bluevine), and the FDIC says plainly that "nonbank companies themselves are never FDIC-insured". Your money is insured through the partner bank only if the records show who owns it and how much, and FDIC insurance "does not protect against the insolvency or bankruptcy of a nonbank company".
That gap is what hurt Synapse customers. Synapse, a middleware company between fintech apps and their banks, filed for bankruptcy on April 22, 2024; its trustee later reported a shortfall estimated at $65 to $96 million between what customers were owed and what the banks held. No bank failed, so deposit insurance did not pay. The FDIC proposed a recordkeeping rule for custodial accounts in October 2024; as of today it is neither final nor withdrawn.
"Up to $5M" (Mercury) or "$3M" (Relay, Bluevine) of FDIC coverage comes from sweep networks that split your balance into pieces under $250,000 at many banks. The coverage is real but depends on the vendor keeping accurate records. Mercury received preliminary conditional approval for its own national bank charter from the OCC on April 24, 2026; it is not open yet. Brex has been part of Capital One since April 7, 2026.
Idle cash yield is part of your runway. To see it next to burn, hiring and revenue, model it in Adlega.
Frequently asked questions
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Cite this page
Citation
Adlega. "Startup Banking Cost Calculator: Fees vs Yield." Updated October 22, 2026. https://adlega.com/blog/tools/banking-cost/
Link for your article
<a href="https://adlega.com/blog/tools/banking-cost/">Startup Banking Cost Calculator: Fees vs Yield</a> (Adlega, updated October 22, 2026)
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