1-Year CD Calculator
America's most-opened CD term. See what twelve months at today's top rate pays on your deposit — and what going longer would have added.
Why twelve months is the default choice
Among American deposit accounts the one-year CD is the most frequently opened term, and rate is not the reason — twelve months is simply the longest stretch most savers can say with confidence they will not need the money. A term you can genuinely keep beats a better rate you end up breaking. On $25,000 at 4.40%, twelve months pays $1,100.00, whereas the same deposit in a savings account drifting from 4.20% down to 3.40% across the year pays nearer $950. The CD comes out roughly $150 ahead for doing nothing except staying put.
Pricing in the middle of the curve is odd at the moment. The best 12-month rate out-pays everything shorter, and the 18-month and two-year terms as well — only the longest certificates pay more. That is the tail end of the 2024–25 inversion unwinding, and it leaves the popular choice among the best-paying terms on the board.
What a twelve-month term costs you
Picking a one-year term means picking to re-price in a year. Should the expected cuts arrive, your renewal twelve months from now might come in at 3.75% rather than 4.40% — about $160 of annual income gone on $25,000. The saver who took five years at 4.50% earns more this year and holds that rate through every cut. Across a full five-year horizon containing two half-point cuts, the five-year lock finishes well over a thousand dollars ahead.
The honest framing: a one-year CD is right when the money has to come back inside a year, or when you genuinely believe rates will hold. It is the wrong instrument for money you will simply re-deposit — that money belongs somewhere longer, or in a ladder that takes the guess away.