Provider at a glance
- Category
- Lending & Borrowing
- Entity
- All 5 Aave products
- Official website
- aave.com
Independent rankingchecked How it works
Details
Scored 71 out of 100 under methodology 2026.10.18, from the evidence read in September 2026.
Aave
Shared-pool lending market
Lending & Borrowing
#8 Overall
Ranked #8 of 8 lending & borrowing in the published ranking
71
ChainChoice Score
The ChainChoice Score, shown against 100: published scores run from 41 to 99.- High evidence confidence
Is Aave right for you?
Right for you if these matter most
- Who sets your rate9/10; the category best is 10
Look elsewhere if these come first
- Liquidation price6/10 here; the category best is 9
- Contagion between markets6/10 here; Kamino Lend scores 9
- Loss record published7/10 here; Compound scores 8
Not yet tested for your country. Markets it lists: Global.
to test where you can use it.
The rank above is the published one, the same for every reader. Find my best crypto lending platform shows where it lands for you.
What will Aave cost you?
Not priced on this basis
- Amount borrowed
- $10k
How safe is Aave?
- Evidence: verified4 of 4 criteria rest on quoted, sourced receipts. Read September 2026.
- LicenceMiCA (EU): no authorisation required. The register record
- On the registersMiCA: authorised, PUSH VIRTUAL ASSETS IRELAND LIMITED (IE, since 2025-11-12). Read 3 November 2026. Open the register
Alternatives to Aave
Compare all 4- 5Kamino Lend3 points above · stronger on contagion between markets (9 against 6)74
- 6Compound3 points above · stronger on contagion between markets (7 against 6)74
- 7Fluid (Instadapp)2 points above · stronger on contagion between markets (8 against 6)73
For your setup
Find out if Aave fits you
The rank above is the published one — the same for every visitor. Answer the category's questions and this section shows where Aave lands for you, which criteria your answers weight up, and which stated needs the record does or does not meet. The published rank stays beside it.
- A few questions
- No account required
- Ranking-blind: no commercial input
- Personalised in under 60 seconds
Find my best crypto lending platformNothing is inferred from clicks, popularity or commercial value.
Why this rank
Why Aave ranks #8
Each strength is read from evidence on a 0–10 ladder and weighted as the published methodology states. The 32 objective points these produce (22.1 here) sit inside the score; availability, friction, trust record and measured data add the rest.
4 published criteria · Σ weight 100
CriterionWeightStrength · 0–10ScoreContrib.MedianBestRankEvidence
326+6.146.59#5/8Loading evidence…
249+6.919.010#2/8Loading evidence…
246+4.618.09#8/8Loading evidence…
207+4.487.09#4/8Loading evidence…
Hairline = best in this ranking · tick = its median · a missing bar is "not scored", never zero
Margin−2behind Fluid (Instadapp), #7
RobustnessOne point from changingacross a one-point change to each of its 4 criterion scores, the re-run scores 69–73 and ranks #7–#8
Evidence4 of 4 scored4 quoted, 4 with a source link
What would move the rank
Each line is the ranking run again with one of Aave’s criterion scores changed and every other value held: the smallest whole-point change on that criterion that moves its rank, and where the re-run puts it. Up to 4 climbs and 3 falls are listed, smallest change first. Nothing here is a forecast.
What price gets you liquidated, and how far can it drift? 6 → 7 on its ladder · passes Fluid (Instadapp)+173#8 → #7
Who sets your rate — a utilisation curve or a curator? 9 → 10 on its ladder · passes Fluid (Instadapp)+173#8 → #7
If one market goes bad, how much of yours goes with it? 6 → 7 on its ladder · passes Fluid (Instadapp)+173#8 → #7
Has it lost lender money before, and did it publish it? 7 → 9 on its ladder · passes Fluid (Instadapp)+274#8 → #7
Smallest climb: “What price gets you liquidated, and how far can it drift?” 6 → 7 passes Fluid (Instadapp), #7.
Strengths
1 from the score dataWhere it leads
Best for readers who weight
- Who sets your rate — a utilisation curve or a curator? — 9/10, category best 10/10
Tradeoffs
3 from the score dataWhere it trails
Not for readers who put first
- What price gets you liquidated, and how far can it drift? — 6/10 against a category best of 9/10
- If one market goes bad, how much of yours goes with it? — 6/10 against a category best of 9/10
- Has it lost lender money before, and did it publish it? — 7/10 against a category best of 9/10
Record watch-outs
- Read the April 2026 rsETH incident report before you supply anything to a WETH reserve — https://governance.aave.com/t/rseth-incident-report-april-20-2026/24580 — but read it together with its 2026-05-09 sequel, because the outcome was better than the report's models. An exploit entirely outside Aave (a 1-of-1 DVN bridge on someone else's LRT) put 89,567 rsETH ($221.39M) of collateral into Aave markets against $190.86M of WETH borrows. LlamaRisk modelled $123.7M-$230.1M of bad debt landing on ordinary WETH suppliers by reserve write-down — but those were explicitly labelled hypothetical scenarios, and per https://governance.aave.com/t/direct-to-aip-weth-unfreeze-and-ltv-restoration-across-aave-v3-instances/24878 the attacker's Aave positions were liquidated on 2026-05-06, all 89,567 rsETH was recovered, and the residual was covered by the DeFi United coalition. What you should still price is the machinery the event exposed, which has not changed: the Umbrella backstop covers Ethereum Core only and was PAUSED rather than drawn, so an Arbitrum, Base or Mantle supplier has no backstop at all; every affected WETH reserve sat at 100% utilisation with "idle balances below $20 on every chain", meaning a supplier with a perfectly healthy position could not withdraw; and the collateral that caused it was priced by an oracle whose deviation threshold and heartbeat appear nowhere in Aave's 91-page documentation corpus. None of this appears on https://aave.com/security, which still says "zero bad debt".
Competitive position
Where Aave leads and where it trails
Rank on every objective dimension among the rows scored on it. A criterion in the top third of its pool is listed as a lead, the bottom third as a trail; the middle is neither. Popularity, size and commercial terms are not dimensions.
Availability#1 / 814.0 of 20 · constant here
Published criteria#8 / 816.6 of 30 · best 20.4
Friction#1 / 82.7 of 10 · constant here
Trust record#1 / 83.2 of 8 · constant here
Measured data#1 / 88.3 of 18 · constant here
Where Aave leads
- Who sets your rate — a utilisation curve or a curator?#2 / 8
Where it trails
- If one market goes bad, how much of yours goes with it?#8 / 8
Closest alternatives
The 3 nearest rows by score
Nearest by published score in either direction. Each card states the criteria on which the two rows differ and the cost difference under the same scenario inputs; the compare arithmetic below shows why the higher one ranks higher.
Fluid (Instadapp)#7 of 8 · score 73 · 2.0 points ahead
Aave leads on
- Who sets your rate — a utilisation curve or a curator?9 vs 8
Fluid (Instadapp) leads on
- If one market goes bad, how much of yours goes with it?8 vs 6
Largest single reason Fluid (Instadapp) is ahead: published criteria (+1.6 display points).Scenario cost: Fluid (Instadapp) has no verified pricing for this scenario.
Compound#6 of 8 · score 74 · 3.0 points ahead
Aave leads onNo scored criterion
Compound leads on
- If one market goes bad, how much of yours goes with it?7 vs 6
- Has it lost lender money before, and did it publish it?8 vs 7
Largest single reason Compound is ahead: published criteria (+2.9 display points).Scenario cost: Compound has no verified pricing for this scenario.
Kamino Lend#5 of 8 · score 74 · 3.0 points ahead
Aave leads on
- Who sets your rate — a utilisation curve or a curator?9 vs 8
Kamino Lend leads on
- If one market goes bad, how much of yours goes with it?9 vs 6
Largest single reason Kamino Lend is ahead: published criteria (+3.1 display points).Scenario cost: Kamino Lend has no verified pricing for this scenario.
Against the leader
81 vs 71 · gap 10.0Why Venus ranks above Aave
The compare workspace's arithmetic applied to these two rows. Each dimension's share of the gap is its weight × the difference, on the displayed scale — it reproduces the displayed gap of 10.0 to within rounding.
DimensionThisVenusGap share
Availability · 23% weight · constant here14.014.0same
Published criteria · 35% weight16.620.4−9.9, worse
Friction · 12% weight · constant here2.72.7same
Trust record · 9% weight · constant here3.23.2same
Measured data · 21% weight · constant here8.38.3same
Published criterionThisVenusPoints
What price gets you liquidated, and how far can it drift? · w3269−3.07, worse
If one market goes bad, how much of yours goes with it? · w2467−0.77, worse
Has it lost lender money before, and did it publish it? · w2079−1.28, worse
Net7181−10.0
Your scenario
Aave is not priced for this scenario
Interest on what you borrow at the published rate. Variable rates move; excludes origination and liquidation penalties. Change an input and every figure recomputes from the published rate; the published rank does not move.
interest/yr · default scenario — set your own
Amount borrowed · your input$10k
Rate read from the provider’s published pricing ↗ on 28 September 2026.
interest/yrCost is stated as interest/yr in USD; it is never a yield, never annualised, and it does not enter the score.
Not priced on this basis
Under the default inputs · USDCategory median and cheapestNot statedOnly 1 of 8 rows publish a comparable price; a median and a cheapest row need at least 3.
7 of 8 rows in this ranking have no verified rate for this scenario and are absent from the median, not counted as free.
Evidence
Evidence read 28 September 2026
One row per published criterion: the page each strength was read from, its source type by domain, the reading date and whether the file and the published table agree. Open a row for the quote and the receipt.
4 of 4 cells scored
Score evidenceVerified4 of 4 criteria reconstruct from receipts
4 of 4 criteria reconstruct from a quoted, sourced receipt equal to the published strength.Public receiptsReading…4 quoted with a source URL
The receipt file has not been read yet.Evidence confidenceHighcoverage and corroboration, never freshness
4/4 criteria scored, with 4 dated sources quoted.RobustnessOne point from changingrank #7 to #8 across one-point re-runs
Whether the position holds when one criterion score is changed by one point and the ranking is run again. It is always a re-run of the ranking, never an estimate.The newest evidence read on the platform is 3 November 2026; this category's reading is older. The scores stand as read on 28 September 2026.
Reading the evidence ledger…
CriterionSourceTypeReadFreshnessStatusReceipt
What price gets you liquidated, and how far can it drift?strength 6 · weight 32Report an error—28 September 2026*
Unknown
No reading date is recorded for this cell or its category.No receipt
A strength is published but no quote or source page is on file for it.Who sets your rate — a utilisation curve or a curator?strength 9 · weight 24Report an error—28 September 2026*
Unknown
No reading date is recorded for this cell or its category.No receipt
A strength is published but no quote or source page is on file for it.If one market goes bad, how much of yours goes with it?strength 6 · weight 24Report an error—28 September 2026*
Unknown
No reading date is recorded for this cell or its category.No receipt
A strength is published but no quote or source page is on file for it.Has it lost lender money before, and did it publish it?strength 7 · weight 20Report an error—28 September 2026*
Unknown
No reading date is recorded for this cell or its category.No receipt
A strength is published but no quote or source page is on file for it.How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
- Control failure (Aave 9/10): a key or vote changes the rules, freezes or mints.Scored by Who sets your rate — a utilisation curve or a curator? · 24%
- Oracle failure (Aave 6/10): a wrong price or outcome liquidates or settles a position.Scored by What price gets you liquidated, and how far can it drift? · 32%
- Insolvency failure: the firm or issuer that owes you cannot pay.Scored by If one market goes bad, how much of yours goes with it? · 24% (Aave 6/10)Scored by Has it lost lender money before, and did it publish it? · 20% (Aave 7/10)
Not assessed by this ranking: Contract failure, Regulatory failure, Execution failure, Exit failure. A high place says nothing about these; the Methodology tab says what each means.
Facts
facts, not scoresWhat the record publishes
- Pricing
- Aave charges no deposit or curator fee; suppliers earn borrower interest net of each reserve's reserve factor, and both rates float on a two-slope utilisation curve. The Interest Rate Strategy page (https://
aave .com /docs /aave-v3 /smart-contracts /interest-rate-strategy, fetched 28 September 2026): "Implements the calculation of the interest rates depending on the reserve state. The model of interest rate is based on two slopes" around the OPTIMAL_USAGE_RATIO kink. Aave's docs carry no live values (https:// aave .com /docs /resources /parameters still shows only an SDK pointer); the numbers are published per change on the governance forum. LlamaRisk's Risk Steward post of 28 September 2026 (https:// governance .aave .com /t /risk-stewards-cap-and-irm-changes-on-aave-v 3-2026 -09-28 /25718) gives USDT on Aave V3 Core: "At the current 92.8% utilization, the post-change variable borrow rate would be 4.34% APR, down from 4.39% under the current IRM, and the supply rate would be 3.63% APR, down from 3.67%." It also states the protocol's take on one asset: "the 25% reserve factor that applies to USDe on all five reserves". Rates reprice every block with utilisation; these are point-in-time figures, not a quote.Aave — official pricing page ↗ · 28 September 2026 - Prices published in
- USDAave — official pricing page ↗ · 28 September 2026
- Licences held
- Not published
- Compliance level
- partial
- Regulatory note
- Not published
- Supported chains
- Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, BNB Chain, Gnosis, Metis, Scroll, zkSync, Linea, Mantle, Ink, Sonic, Soneium, Celo, X Layer, Plasma, MegaETH, Monad, Aptos
- Markets served
- global
- Primary markets
- Not published
- Restricted markets
- Not published
- Operating limits
- Not published
- Availability note
- Permissionless protocol reachable from anywhere; the aave.com front end excludes sanctioned jurisdictions by Terms of Service, not the contracts themselves. Bucket: global.
Legal entity on file: Aave, placed in 5 products. Only confirmed entities are shown; nothing is inferred from the brand name.
If something goes wrong with Aave: where to complain, and where to report a scam
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How this page is reviewed
Reviewed means this product in this category was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.
Accountable for this review: Mathias Siemonsmeier, Founder.
How we review · Review calendar · Corrections log · How we make money
History
What the record carries
Changes to published ranks are recorded in a ledger; every step and its cause is listed on the rank-history page. The entries below begin with the current verified snapshot, then the methodology versions whose changes applied to this category, newest first.
10 methodology entries
- 28 September 2026Current verified snapshot · methodology 2026.10.18Score 71, #8 of 8. 4 of 4 criteria scored. History starts here; earlier values are not interpolated.
- 11 October 2026
2026.10.9No live feed or market rate moves a score- fixed Lending and borrowing: the borrow rate leaves the fee term, which now scores every protocol alike, so the category ranks on its four published criteria. Venus, first on those criteria, moves from #7 to #1; Spark stays #2; Morpho moves from #1 to #3 and Compound from #8 to #6.
- fixed Exchanges: the fee term reads each exchange's taker fee from the catalog instead of a table dated 1 April. Kraken (0.80 %) moves from #6 to #9 and Gemini (1.20 %) from #10 to #11; Coinbase, Luno, Bitvavo and VALR each move up one place, and Bybit stays #1.
- removed Staking: a yield no longer stands in for a staking provider's missing commission. No published score moves.
- added /methodology/live-data publishes which numbers may move a score; on every build a test fills each live feed with extreme values and fails if a single score moves.
- 10 October 2026
2026.10.8When nothing serves your country, the list shown for reference is the published ranking · platform-wide- fixed The reference list shown when nothing serves your country is the published order with the published scores, and a build check now fails any such list out of that order or with a score the ranking does not publish.
- fixed The explorer prints an overall rank only for a row the published ranking holds; a country entrant such as Coinbase Commerce for US merchants shows no overall rank.
- changed Published orders do not move. Country results change only where nothing serves the country: in India bill pay keeps Bitcoin Well first and now shows Strike second, as published; 35 such runs across all categories and countries now match the published list exactly.
- 10 October 2026
2026.10.6A criterion you require re-scores the rows that meet it · platform-wide- changed The explorer sends each criterion you require, at any band, as fit_required with your other answers; region, licence, chain and fact filters stay filters. On /best, a required criterion joins For you as a marked preference does, which needs your country; Overall stays the published ranking, filtered.
- added Every published criterion has a golden case as the explorer sends it (require:<criterion>), so the order a requirement gives is replayed and gated as the published order is, and a change to it needs an entry here.
Methodology 2026.10.18, the same published run every visitor sees · receipt lending_borrowing:aave:2026.10.18:57a5bb9ffe4f
Are you Aave? Reply to this verdict, or send evidence, ask for a correction or claim the listing. Every message gets a public ticket number; none of it changes a rank unless a public page or a signed statement supports it.
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Editorial review of Aave , on file since April 2026 — the review is separate from the score.