By the Math awards
How the awards work
Products earn By the Math awards on the numbers: how they rank on our published formula across a whole month. Nobody can buy a rank or an award, and we publish every winner free.
The first awards: Q4 2026
- December 1 to 31, 2026: the qualifying window. Every day at 23:50 UTC we record the rank of every product on every ranking list across Your Best Financial Network, in the order the pages show. That’s 18 national lists, 306 state lists and 19 Canadian lists today.
- The 60%-of-days rule. A product wins #1 or Top 5 on a list when it holds that position on December 31 and on at least 60% of the days in the window (19 of 31). This stops a one-day rate spike from earning an award.
- Data checks. The winning rate must come from the institution’s own website, verified within our freshness window, and not under review. A product ranked on rates we can’t verify on a public page doesn’t qualify.
- January 15, 2027: winners published. We post the full winners list on bythemath.com, free, whether or not anyone licenses a badge.
What a product can win
| Award | Who qualifies |
|---|---|
| #1 By the Math (national) | The #1 product on a national ranking list |
| Top 5 By the Math (national) | Products ranked #1 to #5 on a national ranking list |
| #1 or Top 5 in a state | The same, on a state page (Your Best Savings best banks and credit unions by state, Your Best Loan Rates state loan pages) |
| Canada | #1 or Top 5 on a Canadian list. Canadian lists rank by rate at a $10,000 deposit, not by the formula score, so these awards say “by rate”. |
Each award names one product and one category, with the quarter. A Top 5 checking award says nothing about the same institution’s CDs.
Money never touches the ranking
- Rankings are never sold. Nobody can pay for a rank, a place on a list or an award. Partner status never moves a product.
- No payment before an award. We take no money for a badge until we publish the winners list. There’s no “pay now, badge if you win”.
- Badges license an award already earned. After we publish an award, the winner may license the badge artwork for its website, branches and ads. The license covers the artwork and its use. It never affects any score or rank, and it never keeps an expired award on display.
- Reservations stay apart. Institutions can reserve founding badge pricing now, for free. Reservations sit in their own table with no link to products or scores, and the scanner, the verifier and the rankings never read them. Correction requests from reserving institutions go through the same check as everyone else’s, with no fast track.
- We revoke a badge if the data was wrong. If a rate turns out to be wrong, we revoke the license, refund the unused months and correct the winners list.
See where your institution ranks today. Today’s rank is a preview: the award depends on all of December.
Founding reservation
Name the products or categories you want to hear about. If one of them earns an award, you get first access to the badge license at 20% off the list price, locked in for 2027 renewals. If none does, you owe nothing. There’s no payment and no card.
Questions
- Can we improve our rank?
- Yes, the same way anyone can: rates, fees and minimums. The methodology page publishes the formula. We take data only from your public website, and we correct errors you point out once we can verify them there.
- Will reserving a badge help us win?
- No. Rate checks run on a schedule set by rank and data age. Reservations sit in their own table, apart from products and scores, and the ranking system never reads them.
- What if our rate drops in December?
- The award covers the whole month. A product needs its rank on at least 19 of the 31 days and on December 31, so one bad week won’t cost the award, and one good day won’t earn it.
- Do we have to pay to be listed as a winner?
- No. We publish every winner free, whether or not it licenses a badge. Winners may also use a plain-text mention of the award at no cost.
See also the methodology and the editorial policy. Questions: contact@bythemath.com.