Best fixed-rate yield in 2026

Fixed-Rate Yield evaluated across what happens at maturity, is the rate actually fixed, and who can change it, the price of leaving early, and who owes you the fixed leg if the strategy misses.

Pendle

#1 of 7 · published ranking

Pendle

82ChainChoice Score

Why it leads

Best in the pool on maturity handling (10/10; next 9/10)

Cost

Not priced · No comparable price is published

Below the table

How this ranking works

Everything the table draws on continues here: how firm the #1 is, the per-criterion arithmetic behind each score, who pays ChainChoice, and the full guide to choosing.

Direct answer

What is the best fixed-rate yield in 2026?

Pendle ranks #1 overall for fixed-rate yield on ChainChoice. Splits a yield-bearing token into a zero-coupon principal token and a yield token, so the PT buyer holds a rate fixed at execution and redeemable 1:1 for the accounting asset at a named expiry — the category's documentation reference, and the only venue left in it whose exit costs can still be measured at institutional size after an 86% TVL decline. It holds that rank under an affiliate-blind methodology scored across 4 published, weighted criteria — the code that ranks providers physically cannot read affiliate payouts (CI-enforced), so a payout can't move a rank. The verdict re-computes on every fee change, incident, or regulatory action; full reasoning and the audit receipt are below.

Best picks

Best fixed-rate yield in 2026

A fixed rate is a promise with a date attached, so the first question is not how large the rate is — it is what happens when it ends. That carries the most weight here because the published answers diverge completely: some venues state, with a worked formula, that a matured position simply stops accruing and can be claimed with no deadline; on others nothing published tells a holder what happens if they hold past maturity and do nothing at all. Then ask whether the rate is genuinely fixed or merely quoted, because on at least one venue the protocol fee is an on-chain parameter an admin can change, with no numeric rate published anywhere in its documentation and an on-chain ceiling of one hundred percent. Then price the exit, since the whole point of a term is that leaving early costs something — and this category has consolidated so hard that depth is scarce: the leader's TVL fell roughly 86% in twelve months and is still, by a wide margin, the only venue deep enough to sell into. Read the mechanism and the order book separately, because a clean redemption invariant with nobody on the other side is a rate you can enter and cannot leave.

Best overall

Pendle

Data checked Aug 2026

Splits a yield-bearing token into a zero-coupon principal token and a yield token, so the PT buyer holds a rate fixed at execution and redeemable 1:1 for the accounting asset at a named expiry — the category's documentation reference, and the only venue left in it whose exit costs can still be measured at institutional size after an 86% TVL decline. Strongest on what happens at maturity (10/10): Re-fetched 2026-08-13 from raw server-rendered HTML, because summarising fetchers truncate this answer mid-sentence. The FAQ is character-exact: "Nothing is lost. Your PT stays redeemable 1:1 and your LP rewards stay claimable, but neither earns any further yield, so your capital sits idle. You can roll over into a… Weakest on who owes you the fixed leg if the strategy misses (7/10): The criterion's own 3-4 reference says Pendle's risk warning covers third-party exploits "without addressing an underlying that simply under-earns." That premise does not survive checking.

Best for: What happens at maturity — 10/10

Why this score4 published criteria · leads 2 of 4

Published criterionWtScore, and the best hereGap/10Pts

What happens at maturity7.7·1010.2

Is the rate actually fixed, and who can change it6.2−186.7

The price of leaving early5.8·96.9

Who owes you the fixed leg if the strategy misses4.3−374.0

Σ methodology points27.8/32

Each bar is the score on that criterion’s own 0–10 scale, never rescaled to the pool. The dark line is the best any product here reached on that axis. Wt is the most the criterion can add to the 86-point weighted total. Pts is weight × score × 32; the sum is the methodology score, and each weighted point behind the leader costs 2.6 on the displayed score. how these are weighted

Why it ranks first

Why Pendle leads this category right now

Best for

What happens at maturity — 10/10

Main tradeoff

Pendle is the best-documented survivor in a category consolidating hard, and the two facts are related — it is the last venue with real depth, so it is the only one whose exit costs can still be measured. I re-confirmed the decline against DefiLlama's per-protocol API on 2026-08-12: TVL $1,183,733,243 that day, versus $8,509,165,143 on 2025-08-11 (-86.1%) and an all-time high of $13,386,295,280 on 2025-09-19 — the two historical points match the draft to the dollar. Do not read the four scores as a verdict on the yield: the headline APY is never scored here, and the 10.749% implied APY I read on PT-reUSD is a market price for term and credit risk in a third-party stablecoin, not a Pendle guarantee. Four specifics a buyer should carry: (1) PT redeems 1:1 for the ACCOUNTING asset, not the underlying — 1 PT-ezETH pays 1 ETH worth of ezETH, documented by Pendle but not by the tile; (2) doing nothing after maturity is safe for principal but not free — the Fees page confirms the yield an idle matured position keeps generating is redirected to Pendle's treasury, which the FAQ's "Nothing is lost" does not say; (3) the PT, YT and Market contracts are immutable by contract read and Pendle documents that, but 10 of the 12 deepest Ethereum markets wrap their asset in an upgradeable SY proxy, no page names the key holders, there is no timelock, and Pendle separately reserves the right to "pause its own contracts as a precautionary measure"; (4) selling PT is not guaranteed to be possible — the AMM page states that once a pool's implied yield leaves its configured range, "buying YT (or selling PT) might no longer be possible." Note also that Pendle runs two products — V2 yield tokenisation and Boros, an interest-rate-swap DEX — and this assessment scores V2 only. Chain support is the field the draft got wrong: it listed Katana and Ink, which Pendle's own API rejects, and omitted Plasma, its third-largest chain by TVL.

Verify before signup

From the Fees page (docs.pendle.finance/pendle-v2/ProtocolMechanics/Mechanisms/Fees), re-fetched from raw HTML and confirmed character-exact 2026-08-13: "Pendle collects a 5% fee from all yield accrued (including points) by all YT in existence, and all yields (including all points negotiated) from the SYs of matured unredeemed PTs." · "Pendle collects a percentage-based swap fee, scaled with maturity, from all PT swaps. Each fee tier will be displayed in the dApp and is decided by the pool deployer (currently only the Pendle team deploys pools on Pendle)." · "Trading Fee = (Fee Tier / 365) * Days to Maturity" · "The Fee Tier is specific to each market and can be found by clicking the "specs" button on the market's trading interface. Redeeming PT for the underlying asset after maturity incurs no protocol fee, only standard network gas fees." · "20% of all swap fees are given to LP providers of the pool as yield." The remainder is split "80% for PENDLE buyback", "10% to Protocol Treasury", "10% to Protocol Operations". · "If a user does not redeem their PT or LP position after maturity, the underlying asset remains in the SY contract and continues to accrue yield and points. However, all yield and points generated by these unredeemed, matured positions are automatically redirected to the Pendle treasury fee wallet." The Order Book page adds a discretionary term the draft omitted: "The taker of the order pays both the gas fee and the swap fee. The maker of the order does not incur these costs (maker order fee is currently set to 0). The team has full discretion on when to scale-up fees for maker orders." Per-market fee tiers are machine-readable: on 2026-08-12 the public markets API returned feeRate 0.0800% (sUSDe), 0.1155% (USDat) and 0.2090% (reUSD).

Recommendation summary

What should decide this category

If you hold past maturity and do nothing, what happens — does it stop accruing, auto-roll, or must you claim it by a date?

Is the rate fixed by contract at deposit, or quoted and changeable before settlement — and who can change it?

What does it cost to leave before maturity, at the size you would actually sell, and is there depth to sell into?

Who owes you the fixed leg if the underlying strategy does not earn it?

Quick picks

Strong options in this category

Start with the lead choice first, then use the shortlist only if you still need a challenger or stronger fit for a specific setup.

Best overall

Pendle

Best for: What happens at maturity — 10/10

What happens at maturity · 32%

10/10

Is the rate actually fixed, and who can change it · 26%

8/10

The price of leaving early · 24%

9/10

Who owes you the fixed leg if the strategy misses · 18%

7/10

Quick pick

Term Finance

Non-callable on-chain tri-party repo: weekly sealed-bid auctions clear at a single rate, lenders hold ERC-20 Term Repo Tokens that redeem 1:1 after maturity, with no early redemption and a pro-rata haircut published in advance. Strongest on is the rate actually fixed, and who can change it (9/10): RAISED from 8. The draft's sole stated reason for withholding 9-10 — "No roles, admin, multisig or timelock page exists" and "I found no timelock" — is false. Term runs a SECOND official docs site the draft never opened, developers.term.finance, whose Access Controls page publishes a role-by-role table with named… Weakest on the price of leaving early (7/10): Score held at 7; two underlying numbers corrected. Term is honest that there is no protocol redemption before maturity: "While lenders are not allowed to redeem prior to the repurchase date, they are free to find willing buyers of their Term Repo Tokens if they find themselves in need of liquidity", and the FAQ… Published price: Term Finance FAQ (https://docs.term.finance/protocol/faq, re-fetched 2026-08-12): "Generally speaking, lenders are not subject to any protocol fees.

Best for: Is the rate actually fixed, and who can change it — 9/10

What happens at maturity · 32%

8/10

Is the rate actually fixed, and who can change it · 26%

9/10

The price of leaving early · 24%

7/10

Who owes you the fixed leg if the strategy misses · 18%

9/10

Quick pick

Exactly Protocol

A variable-rate lending market that also sells fixed terms: each 4-week maturity is its own pool, the depositor's interest is stamped into contract storage at deposit, and exit before maturity is priced by a published discount formula the protocol will quote you on-chain before you sign — but the fixed-deposit book is ~$176k of a $5.59m protocol, and on Base, where the growth is, it is exactly zero. Strongest on what happens at maturity (9/10): Re-fetched docs.exact.ly/guides/fixed-rate-operations/deposits.md on 2026-08-12 (HTTP 200); every quotation below is character-exact. Section "Late Withdrawals": "Depositors can also withdraw once the maturity date is reached." followed by "There's no limit to the time they have to withdraw their funds but bear in… Weakest on is the rate actually fixed, and who can change it (5/10): Fixed at execution on Optimism, but the payout on an open position is movable by parties disclosed nowhere near the product page. The stamp is real: docs.exact.ly/guides/protocol/market publishes "function depositAtMaturity(uint256 maturity, uint256 assets, uint256 minAssetsRequired, address receiver) external… Published price: docs.exact.ly/guides/parameters, re-fetched as raw markdown 2026-08-12 (HTTP 200); every string below is character-exact. Section "F.

Best for: What happens at maturity — 9/10

What happens at maturity · 32%

9/10

Is the rate actually fixed, and who can change it · 26%

5/10

The price of leaving early · 24%

9/10

Who owes you the fixed leg if the strategy misses · 18%

7/10

Quick pick

TermMax

A fixed-rate lending AMM whose zero-coupon FT token redeems for face value at a hard-coded maturity, with a loss waterfall published on the lender's own FAQ — but whose only published rollover is for borrowers, leaving the lender who does nothing on expiry day with no answer at all. Strongest on who owes you the fixed leg if the strategy misses (10/10): Raised 9 → 10: the draft's own docking reason does not survive checking. It held back because "the waterfall sits on a technical page, not the lender page." It sits on both. The FAQ, https://docs.ts.finance/protocol-mechanisms/faq, carries a dedicated lender-facing question — "What is the physical delivery mechanism… Weakest on what happens at maturity (6/10): Re-fetched 2026-08-13; every quotation verifies character-exact. The tutorial's entire "Redeem FT" section: "You can also hold FTs until maturity.

Best for: Who owes you the fixed leg if the strategy misses — 10/10

What happens at maturity · 32%

6/10

Is the rate actually fixed, and who can change it · 26%

8/10

The price of leaving early · 24%

7/10

Who owes you the fixed leg if the strategy misses · 18%

10/10

Frequently asked

Questions people ask before choosing fixed-rate yield

What happens if I just hold past the maturity date?

It depends entirely on the venue, which is why this question carries 32% of the weight — more than any other on this page. At the documented end, a protocol publishes an explicit no-deadline and no-accrual statement with a worked example: the position stops earning at maturity and can be claimed whenever, with nothing lost by being slow. At the undocumented end, nothing published tells a holder what happens if they hold past maturity and take no action, which for a dated instrument is the most consequential silence there is. A fixed-rate position is not like a savings balance you can ignore — it has an ending, and whether that ending is written down is a property of the product, not a detail of the interface.

Is the rate actually fixed, or just quoted?

Both exist in this pool, and the difference is not visible on a landing page. A rate fixed by contract at deposit is a different instrument from one quoted and settled later, and separately from either, the protocol fee sitting on top may not be fixed at all. On one venue no numeric protocol fee rate appears anywhere across a nineteen-page documentation corpus or its public API, and the fee is an admin-settable on-chain parameter whose only ceiling is 10,000 basis points — one hundred percent. An unpublished rate and a revocable one are separate problems; that is both at once, and it is scored as such rather than as a missing FAQ entry.

How much does it cost to get out before maturity?

More than it used to, because the category has consolidated hard. The deepest venue here saw its TVL fall from roughly $8.41bn in August 2025 to about $1.18bn a year later — an 86% decline — and it is still by a wide margin the only place with enough depth to exit a meaningful position into. Exactly one protocol in this pool grew over the same period, up 89.6% year on year, and even that sits 21.9% below its own January 2026 peak. So read the mechanism and the market separately: one venue publishes a redemption invariant that verifies on-chain to the decimal and has almost nobody to trade against, which is a clean fixed rate you can enter and cannot leave.

Why is the headline APY not scored on this page?

Because a fixed rate is a promise with a date, and the size of the number tells you nothing about whether the promise holds. The sibling page ranking stablecoin yield states the same discipline in its own methodology — the headline APY is shown as a dated fact and never scored — and the reasoning is stronger here: an advertised fixed rate you cannot exit, whose fee is changeable, and whose maturity behaviour is undocumented, is worse than a smaller rate with all three written down. This page scores the mechanism, the exit and the obligor, and shows every published rate as a dated fact beside them.

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How this ranking is built

Reviewed on what happens at maturity, is the rate actually fixed, and who can change it, the price of leaving early, and who owes you the fixed leg if the strategy misses.

Data checked Aug 2026 · Independent rankings · We show our work

Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research