Best private credit in 2026

Private Credit evaluated across published default and loss history, named underwriter and first-loss capital, depositor's legal claim, and redemption terms and gating.

Kasu Finance

#1 of 7 · published ranking

Kasu Finance

78ChainChoice Score

Why it leads

Best in the pool on underwriter identity and skin (8/10; next 6/10)

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 private credit in 2026?

Kasu Finance ranks #1 overall for private credit on ChainChoice. Tranched USDC lending against Australian, US, UK and Canadian accounting-firm receivables originated by a named third-party credit originator. 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 private credit in 2026

Weighted on published default and loss history (30), named underwriter and first-loss capital (25), the depositor's legal claim (25), and redemption terms and gating (20). The finding that shapes the category: not one of the seven publishes a per-loan default and loss history with amounts and dates. The highest score awarded on that 30%-weighted criterion was 4 out of 10, and it went to a protocol young enough not to have had a loss yet. Every advertised APY here is a number offered without the loss record that would let anyone judge it. Size is misleading too — Maple is 52.8% of the $4.46bn across these seven, and its own risk page says Maple is not a lender, with a collateral ratio of 147.33% read from its GraphQL API on 2026-08-07. Most of this category's headline size is a crypto-collateralised money market wearing the private-credit label.

Best overall

Kasu Finance

Tranched USDC lending against Australian, US, UK and Canadian accounting-firm receivables originated by a named third-party credit originator.

Data checked Sep 2026

Tranched USDC lending against Australian, US, UK and Canadian accounting-firm receivables originated by a named third-party credit originator. Strongest on named underwriter and first-loss capital (8/10): Kasu names the Credit Originator behind each Lending Strategy (Apxium, InvoiceMate) and states it requested no First Loss Capital from Apxium, citing its zero loss history after 8 years of lending. Losses hit the originator's excess spread first; Rixon Capital's senior facility ranks ahead of Kasu lenders. Weakest on published default and loss history (4/10): Kasu documents the loss order (originator excess spread, then lender interest, then principal; junior option first) and publishes 0% lender losses as at 27 September 2026, but no realised loss figure of its own; its risk reporting page is marked coming soon. Published price: "You pay no platform fee. All platform fees are paid by the Credit Originator, and the Effective Interest Rate shown is the rate you receive." — Kasu user docs page "How fees are charged" (kasu.finance/docs/user/risk-warnings/how-fees-are-charged, marked…

Best for: Named underwriter and first-loss capital — 8/10

Why this score4 published criteria · leads 1 of 4

Published criterionWtScore, and the best hereGap/10Pts

Published default and loss history7.2−143.8

Named underwriter and first-loss capital6·86.4

Depositor's legal claim6−275.6

Redemption terms and gating4.8−353.2

Σ methodology points19.0/32

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 Kasu Finance leads this category right now

Best for

Named underwriter and first-loss capital — 8/10

Main tradeoff

In a liquidity squeeze the people who get their money out first are the people holding the most $KASU. The loyalty page states that Loyalty Level 3 is reached where locked rKASU "equals 5% or greater" of your combined USDC lending, and Level 3 confers "First order priority for Withdrawal Requests". A depositor holding no token is structurally behind token holders in the queue, and one who chose a fixed-rate strategy cannot join the queue at all. Note also that the APY shown in the app is gross: the docs state the quoted figure "refers to Gross APY (before fees)" and that 10% of interest earned is deducted, so a 10% gross quote is 9% net. DefiLlama put Kasu's TVL at $11,771,166 on 2026-08-07, so this is a small book concentrated on a single originator, Apxium, whose eight-year zero-loss record is self-reported and is the load-bearing fact in the entire proposition.

Verify before signup

"You pay no platform fee. All platform fees are paid by the Credit Originator, and the Effective Interest Rate shown is the rate you receive." — Kasu user docs page "How fees are charged" (kasu.finance/docs/user/risk-warnings/how-fees-are-charged, marked "Last updated Sep 24, 2026", fetched 2026-09-27). The only lender-paid charge on that page is the bank on- and off-ramp: "Converting between your bank's currency and stablecoins costs 0.5% of the amount sent, in both directions: 0.1% charged by Wayex and 0.4% charged by Bridge." The page's own worked example: "Adding funds, 1,000 US dollars less the 5 dollar fee arrives as 995 USDC"; stablecoins transferred in from another wallet "involve no conversion and no fee". No lending rate is published on this page; rates are set per Lending Strategy and Lending Option and shown in the app. Changed since the 2026-08-07 read: the fee model the pool quoted (a deduction from lender interest, with the dApp rate described as gross) is replaced in the new user docs by a zero lender platform fee paid by the Credit Originator. The older GitBook page docs.kasu.finance/lending-with-kasu/earning-interest.md still served HTTP 200 on 2026-09-27 with the old deduction wording, so two Kasu-hosted pages now disagree; the site navigation links the new user docs.

Recommendation summary

What should decide this category

Can you find what this protocol has lost, with amounts and dates, from the protocol itself?

Who underwrites the loans, and do they have first-loss capital at risk?

What is your legal claim, against whom — and can you actually withdraw today?

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

Kasu Finance

Tranched USDC lending against Australian, US, UK and Canadian accounting-firm receivables originated by a named third-party credit originator.

Best for: Named underwriter and first-loss capital — 8/10

Published default and loss history · 30%

4/10

Named underwriter and first-loss capital · 25%

8/10

Depositor's legal claim · 25%

7/10

Redemption terms and gating · 20%

5/10

Quick pick

Maple Finance

Pooled stablecoin lending to institutional borrowers, now predominantly against posted crypto collateral rather than off-chain credit.

Pooled stablecoin lending to institutional borrowers, now predominantly against posted crypto collateral rather than off-chain credit. Strongest on depositor's legal claim (9/10): syrupUSDC is issued by Maple International Operations SPC for the account of Secured Loan Segregated Portfolio 1; lender claims are limited to that portfolio's statutorily ring-fenced assets, and a net loss after collateral liquidation is shared pro rata. Maple Institutional's risk page names no issuer. Weakest on published default and loss history (3/10): Maple documents default and impairment mechanics in detail, including how losses fall on lenders who exit, stay or enter during an impairment, but its transparency page and docs publish no realised default or loss figure. Published price: The page titled "Transparency | Maple Finance" (maple.finance/transparency, fetched 2026-09-27) shows, in its Products list, syrupUSDC with an AUM of "$2.9B" and an APY of "5.2%", syrupUSDT at "$621.9M" and "4.9%", syrupUSDG at "$380.7M" and "5.0%", and Maple…

Best for: Depositor's legal claim — 9/10

Published default and loss history · 30%

3/10

Named underwriter and first-loss capital · 25%

5/10

Depositor's legal claim · 25%

9/10

Redemption terms and gating · 20%

7/10

Quick pick

Pareto

Cycle-based credit vaults lending stablecoins to named trading firms, prime brokers and one private-credit manager, with a per-vault curator.

Cycle-based credit vaults lending stablecoins to named trading firms, prime brokers and one private-credit manager, with a per-vault curator. Strongest on redemption terms and gating (8/10): Each Pareto vault publishes its cycle and notice period, such as "Weekly, 7-day notice" or "Monthly, 1-month notice"; requests queue for the next 6-to-24-hour buffer, and a rate cut of 1% or more lets lenders exit within 72 hours. Weakest on published default and loss history (2/10): Pareto publishes no realised default, loss amount or recovery for any vault. Its only loss provisions cover USP: a stability fund of 5% of USP fees, then sUSP stakers, who absorb further losses through a lower conversion price. Published price: Pareto publishes no headline APY; economics are disclosed per vault in the table on its "Live vaults" docs page (docs.pareto.credit/product/credit-vaults/live-vaults.md, fetched 2026-09-27), whose rate row is labelled "IRM".

Best for: Redemption terms and gating — 8/10

Published default and loss history · 30%

2/10

Named underwriter and first-loss capital · 25%

5/10

Depositor's legal claim · 25%

4/10

Redemption terms and gating · 20%

8/10

Quick pick

Clearpool

Whitelisted stablecoin vaults lending to fintech SPVs and institutional borrowers, alongside a fully reserved treasury pool.

Whitelisted stablecoin vaults lending to fintech SPVs and institutional borrowers, alongside a fully reserved treasury pool. Strongest on published default and loss history (4/10): Clearpool lists two terminated Alameda pools (2,500,000 and 3,000,000 USDC, terminated 11 November 2022 after Alameda's bankruptcy) with no loss or recovery figure, and documents default mechanics: a 99% utilization halt, a 120-hour grace period, an auction and a lender vote. Published price: The only published rate is for the fully reserved USDX Treasury Pool, quoted on its docs page (docs.clearpool.finance/clearpool/products/usdx-treasury-pool-t-pool.md, fetched 2026-09-27) as "~4% APY in USDX + bonus FLR rewards" with "Stake or withdraw…

Best for: Published default and loss history — 4/10

Published default and loss history · 30%

4/10

Named underwriter and first-loss capital · 25%

4/10

Depositor's legal claim · 25%

4/10

Redemption terms and gating · 20%

4/10

Frequently asked

Questions people ask before choosing private credit

Where do I find a protocol's default history?

Usually nowhere, and the omissions are specific enough to check. Maple's page titled Transparency, standfirsted "Protocol analytics, treasury data, and yield performance", carries AUM, APY, deposit and token-price charts and no loss history at all; the word "Orthogonal" — the counterparty whose December 2022 default is the best-known credit event in this category — appears zero times on that page and zero times in Maple's documentation index. Goldfinch's own wind-down proposal GIP-87 of 12 June 2026 says only that across approximately $100m of loans a number of pools experienced serious performance issues: no borrower, no amount, no date. The number it omits is public on chain — its SeniorPool returned sharePrice() of 0.944448 at block 25,703,840 on 2026-08-07.

Can I withdraw when I want to?

Read the contract, not the homepage. Goldfinch's legacy Senior Pool returned usdcAvailable() of 0 against totalLoansOutstanding() of $53,053,838.53 and 37,994,196.46 FIDU of outstanding claims, all read at block 25,703,840 — there is literally nothing to pay out — while the page above it still advertises a 10-12% net estimated yield. Elsewhere the terms contradict themselves rather than the chain: Kasu states that losses are not pooled and that you can opt out, on a protocol whose own page describes a mutualised loss waterfall. Redemption terms carry 20% of the weight here because a yield you cannot exit is not a yield.

Is the advertised APY the one I would earn?

Often not, in ways that are checkable. Maple advertises 4.9% for syrupUSDC; its own GraphQL series shows 4.90% on 2026-07-31 falling every day since to 4.68% on 2026-08-06, so the marketing figure is seven days stale, and against a benchmark of 3.52% the real spread for taking this credit risk is 1.16 percentage points rather than the ~1.4 implied. Kasu's advertised APY is gross of its 10% fee. And Clearpool's uncollateralised credit product — the thing this category is actually about — held $255,837 on 2026-08-07 against $17,612,657 in its fully-reserved T-bill pool: the product with no published APY, no notice period and no loss history holds 1.4% of the money.

Free advisorNo signup needed

Still unsure? Get your best private credit pick

Answer a few quick questions and get one clear recommendation based on how you actually plan to use crypto — then review the evidence before deciding.

No signupFree first pass · PrivateNo spam · No account

Not financial advice · Independent · Always do your own research

Browse this network

How this ranking is built

Reviewed on published default and loss history, named underwriter and first-loss capital, depositor's legal claim, and redemption terms and gating.

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

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