How we rate

Where our facts come from

Each fact is tied to a source, ranked by authority:

1. 01Official sources — provider fee schedules, terms, help centres and regulators (BCRA in Argentina). The exact URL is cited per field.
2. 02Structured feeds — data-vendor feeds where available, so one update propagates to every page.
3. 03Tested by us — our team opening accounts as foreigners. The highest authority for onboarding facts.
4. 04Community reports — reader corrections, used only with a cited source and corroboration.

What a service has to earn

A score is a claim, and a claim needs evidence. Every service climbs the same four steps; each one unlocks exactly one thing. Where the evidence is not there, we say so instead of publishing a number anyway.

1. 01Candidate — We know this service exists, but a fact we consider critical is still missing — so it is not listed, scored or recommended.
2. 02Listed — Every critical fact is on file with at least one source. Enough to compare, not yet enough to score: we publish a number only once a second, independent source backs it.
3. 03Score-eligible — Backed by two or more sources, at least one of them official, with no unresolved disagreements. We publish a score. Ranked lists need one more step.
4. 04Fully verified — Independently corroborated, rated on the full model and checked within the year. This service can appear in our ranked picks.

Scenario weights

A use case is a ranking lens, not a filter. The six dimensions stay the same; what changes is how much each one counts. Every profile adds up to 100%, so scores stay comparable across scenarios.

Figures are percentages. Bold columns are the dimensions a scenario leans on (25% or more): leaving one of them unrated caps the score for that scenario — missing data never counts in a service's favour.

Rated on how much of the model

A score is capped by its coverage: rated on a quarter of the weighted model, a service can score at most 25 out of 100, however good that quarter is. Filling a dimension can raise the ceiling; leaving one blank can never raise anything. Each score shows the number of dimensions it was rated on next to it.

Coverage cap

Worked example: what "free maintenance" costs

A current account advertised at €0 a month, taken apart into the five charges that decide what it actually costs:

1. 01Monthly maintenance: €0 — but only while the waiver conditions hold.
2. 02Minimum balance to keep the waiver: €700. That money earns nothing here, so the real cost is the return you gave up on it — roughly €17 a year at a 2.5% remunerated rate.
3. 03Card issuance: €12 once, or annually if the card is renewed. Not part of the account fee, charged to the same account.
4. 04Inactivity: €3 a month after 6 months without a transaction — the charge that hits the account you opened as a backup.
5. 05Closure or transfer out: €18. Payable exactly when you have decided to leave.

Same account, honestly stated: €0 a month, conditional on €700 sitting idle, plus €12 to have a card, plus €18 to leave. This is why we store the waiver conditions as part of the price, and why a fee a provider does not publish is recorded as not disclosed rather than as zero.

Maintenance fee

Country availability

Country data answers three different questions — where a product exists, who may apply from here, and who actually gets in — and most published lists answer only the first. We store them separately. A service disappears from a country page only on evidence: an explicit exclusion by the provider, or absence from a list we know to be exhaustive. A list we merely hold cannot exclude, so a service we have not researched for your country stays visible, marked as unconfirmed, and ranked below everything we have confirmed. Being on a list is eligibility to apply; unless the provider states otherwise, it is never a guarantee of access.

• AvailableThe provider's own country list reaches this country. That is eligibility to apply — not a guarantee that your application is approved.
• Not confirmedWe hold no country evidence either way. Shown so you can check it yourself, ranked below everything confirmed, and never presented as a pick.
• Not availableDocumented as unavailable — an explicit exclusion, or absence from a list the provider states is complete. Removed from this page entirely.

Filtering is not ranking

A filter narrows a list to services that satisfy a condition; a ranking orders what is left by the published model. They are separate operations and we keep them separate: no filter reorders results, and no ranking silently drops a service that matched. A service missing the data behind a filter is excluded from that filtered list — an unknown value can never satisfy a filter — but it keeps its place everywhere else, and its profile says which fact is missing. A shortlist is a query result, not a recommendation.

Unknown (not disclosed)

How often we re-check

Fees & limits

Every 90 days

USD yield & cashback

Every 90 days

Document requirements

Every 180 days

Currencies, cards, transfers

On announcement

The dataset, right now

Services tracked

93

With a published score

92

Facts on file

1793

Verified against a source

1277

Marked not disclosed

34

Distinct sources cited

429

323 of them official

Weighted score components

6

Glossary terms

43

Counted from the same data the pages render, at build time — not typed in by hand.

Every term on this site, defined

Fees, documents, IBANs, rails, deposit protection and the evidence states above are defined once in the glossary, with what each one means for you and how we treat it.

Open the glossary →