Best Business Bank Account for Small Business & Freelancers 2026: 7 US Picks Compared

Picking a business bank account gets easier once you answer two questions in the right order: how your business is registered, and whether you ever touch cash. Everything else — fees, apps, integrations, interest — is a second-order choice. This guide compares seven US accounts for freelancers, self-employed professionals and small businesses, and tells you which ones you can actually open.

Start with your business structure and money workflow

Only one of these seven accounts is closed to sole proprietors. Start from your own situation rather than from a ranking.

• Six of seven are open to you

  You work under your own name and report on Schedule C. Only Mercury is unavailable, because it needs a state-filed formation document.

  Novo · Relay · Found · Lili · Bluevine · Chase

  Jump to the accounts

• All seven, Mercury included

  You have a registered entity, so nothing here is closed to you. The question becomes cards, sub-accounts and who else needs access.

  Mercury · Relay · Novo · Found · Lili · Bluevine · Chase

  Jump to the accounts

• One real option

  You deposit cash, handle checks or need notarisation. This is the one thing no fintech account here can substitute.

  Chase Business Complete

  Jump to cash and cards

• Set money aside automatically

  You want a tax pocket on every deposit, expense categorisation or invoicing inside the banking app.

  Found · Lili · Novo

  Jump to tax and bookkeeping

• Separate logins, not a shared one

  A co-founder, a bookkeeper or an accountant needs their own access, with permissions and spending limits.

  Relay · Mercury · Found

  Jump to team access

Our picks at a glance

• Found

  A tax pocket on every deposit, 20 sub-accounts and team cards — all on the free plan.

  Eligibility: sole prop, LLC, corp, partnership · No monthly fee

  View Found details

• Novo

  No monthly fee, no waiver conditions, reserve accounts and ATM fees reimbursed up to $7 a month.

  Eligibility: sole prop (US citizens), LLC, corp, partnership · No monthly fee

  View Novo details

• Relay

  Unlimited users with their own permissions on every plan, including the free one, plus 20 checking accounts.

  Eligibility: sole prop, LLC, corp, general partnership · From $0

  View Relay details

• Mercury

  A virtual card per vendor or subscription, cancellable one at a time, plus a public API.

  Eligibility: LLC, C/S corp, partnership, LLP, non-profit · No monthly fee

  View Mercury details

• Chase Business Complete

  A nationwide branch and ATM network for cash deposits, checks and notarisation.

  Eligibility: sole prop, LLC, corp · $15 a month, waivable

  View Chase details

Compare all 7 business banking options

“Not verified” means the claim was not on the provider’s own pages. That is not the same as “no”: treat it as a question to ask before you apply.

Mercury

Best for: registered US businesses that want a card per vendor, a public API and no monthly fee.

Eligibility

LLC, corporations, partnerships — no sole proprietors

Standout

Virtual card per vendor or subscription

Monthly fee

None

Watch out for

No cash deposits and no branches

Mercury needs a state-filed formation document (Mercury's own list of supported structures); coverage can extend through an opt-in sweep program, while Treasury funds are not FDIC insured. Pricing and partner banks: mercury.com/pricing.

Compare alternatives

View Mercury

Novo

Best for: a sole proprietor who wants business money separated from personal money and nothing else.

Eligibility

Sole proprietor (US citizens), LLC, corporation, partnership

Standout

Free ACH, reserve accounts

Monthly fee

None, no conditions

Watch out for

No interest, no sweep

The least complicated account here; requirements are on Novo's own checklist. If you want the tax set-aside automated, Found does that on its free plan.

Compare alternatives

View Novo

Relay

Best for: anyone who shares money access with a bookkeeper, an accountant or a second person, and anyone who budgets in separate pots.

Eligibility

Sole proprietorship, LLC, corporation, general partnership

Standout

Unlimited users, 20 checking accounts

Monthly fee

Starter $0, Grow $30

Watch out for

Bill workflows and same-day ACH from Grow

Relay takes sole proprietors, per Relay's own documentation, and keeps tax, payroll and reserve money apart without four banks. Plans and coverage: relayfi.com/pricing.

Compare alternatives

View Relay

Lili

Best for: owners who want banking, invoicing and expense tools in one app and will pay a monthly fee for the bundle.

Eligibility

Sole proprietor, LLC, corporation, partnership

Standout

Invoicing and tax tools in the bank app

Monthly fee

Core $0, Pro $15

Watch out for

Core is banking only

Worth it only if you have no accounting tool yet; with FreshBooks, QuickBooks or Bonsai already running, take Core for the banking. Current plans: lili.co/plans.

Compare alternatives

View Lili

Bluevine

Best for: businesses with regular card spend or steady deposits that want the balance to earn interest.

Eligibility

No entity restriction; credit line needs a corporation or LLC

Standout

Interest on the checking balance

Monthly fee

Standard $0, Plus $30

Watch out for

Free-tier interest stops if the account goes quiet

Standard suits a working account, not a dormant tax reserve: details on bluevine.com/business-checking. Treat the credit line and its published eligibility as a later option to verify, not a reason to open the account.

Compare alternatives

View Bluevine

Found

Best for: anyone who files a Schedule C and wants tax money set aside automatically, without paying for it.

Eligibility

Sole proprietor, LLC, corporation, partnership

Standout

Tax pocket on every deposit, free

Monthly fee

Free $0, Plus $35

Watch out for

Tax forms cover Schedule C and 1120-S only

The most generous free plan here, and the only one that ties tax set-aside to your transactions; treat its estimates as a planning aid, not tax advice. Plans: found.com/pricing.

Compare alternatives

View Found

Chase Business Complete

Best for: businesses that take cash or checks, or need a branch for notarisation.

Eligibility

Sole proprietor, LLC, corporation

Standout

Branches, cash deposits, notarisation

Monthly fee

$15, waivable

Watch out for

Extra fees for certain transactions and cash deposits

Chase lists its published ways to waive the $15; the balance condition is a daily floor, not a monthly average. If you never touch cash, the fee buys little — current fees are in Chase's fee schedule for business accounts.

Compare alternatives

View Chase Business Complete

Chime — the personal side of a freelancer’s setup Ad

Paid placement. The figures below were checked against Chime’s own pages and corrected where they differed from the copy we were sent.

Best for: a sole proprietor who already pays themselves from a business account and wants the receiving personal account to earn interest and build credit.

Eligibility

Personal account only — US residents 18 and over with a Social Security number. Not a business account

Cash / branch

Digital only; over 47,000 fee-free in-network ATMs

Savings

Chime Savings pays 1.00 % APY as standard, 3.00 % with Chime Plus ($200+ in qualifying direct deposits a month), 4.00 % with Chime Prime ($3,000+ a month); rates effective 6 October 2026

Credit building

Chime Card, a secured Visa with no annual fee, no interest and no credit check to apply

Rewards

2 % cash back on one category you pick each month with Chime Plus, 5 % with Chime Prime, on up to $1,500 in eligible purchases a month

Coverage

Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank; banking services from The Bancorp Bank, N.A. or Stride Bank, N.A.

Monthly fee

None, no minimum balance

Watch out for

The headline rates are tiers, not defaults — see the direct-deposit thresholds below

Chime sits on the other side of the workflow this guide describes. Once business money is separated into one of the seven accounts above, the personal account you route your owner draw into still decides what happens to your tax reserve, your emergency cushion and your credit file. Chime puts checking, savings and a credit-building card in one app, so those three jobs do not need three providers.

What the headline numbers actually cost you. The savings rate and the cash back are both tied to membership tiers, and those tiers are tied to how much lands in the account by direct deposit each month. The standard rate is 1.00 % APY. Chime Plus lifts it to 3.00 % and unlocks 2 % cash back with $200 or more in qualifying direct deposits a month; Chime Prime lifts it to 4.00 % and 5 %, and Prime requires $3,000 or more in qualifying direct deposits a month. For a freelancer paying themselves a regular draw above that line the condition is workable; below it, the realistic comparison is 1.00 % or 3.00 %, not the headline figure. That threshold is the one number to check before deciding whether this fits.

Where it stops. Chime is a personal account and cannot replace any of the seven business accounts above — routing business income into it is exactly the separation problem this guide exists to solve. There are no branches and no cash deposits the way Chase offers them, and the credit-building side runs on everyday spending rather than a separate loan product.

How to check whether a business account fits your risk level

Most accounts in this comparison are not banks. They are financial technology companies working with a partner bank, and in several cases with a network of program banks behind it. That is not a problem in itself, but it changes what “FDIC insured” means, and it means the answer can change without the app changing.

Five questions before you open anything:

1. Which legal structure can actually apply?
2. Is the provider a bank itself, or a platform?
3. Which bank holds the funds?
4. Does coverage run directly through that bank, or through a deposit-sweep program across several?
5. Do you need branches and cash, or only digital payments?

Two practical notes. A sweep ceiling is a ceiling, not a guarantee: it describes what can be covered if the conditions are met, and at Mercury it also requires opting in. And a yield product is not a deposit — Mercury Treasury holds money in funds and is explicitly not FDIC insured, while Bluevine's and Found's interest is paid on deposit balances. Partner banks change, so read the current terms of service rather than an article, including this one.

Cash, ATMs and what actually differs between the cards

You don't choose a business debit card on its own. It comes attached to the checking account, which means the account decision above is also the card decision — and it is worth knowing what actually varies, because it is not the plastic.

Virtual and disposable cards are the biggest practical difference. Mercury lets you spin up a separate card number for each subscription or vendor and kill it without touching the others. For anyone carrying a dozen software subscriptions, that is the difference between cancelling one tool and re-entering card details everywhere after a fraud alert. Found issues team cards with spending controls on its free plan, which solves a related problem: several people spending without several people seeing the whole account.

Cashback is the second variable, and smaller than the marketing suggests. Novo tiers debit rewards by balance: 2% on eligible purchases at $5,000 or more, 1% below that. On realistic small-business spending that is worth tens of dollars a year. Treat it as a tiebreaker, not a reason.

Two things matter more and get less attention. Cash and ATM access is the one thing the fintech accounts genuinely cannot match: if you take cash payments, a branch network is the reason to accept a monthly fee. And foreign transaction fees quietly tax anyone with overseas clients or non-US software, because they apply to every charge in another currency. Check the percentage before you commit, and keep the business card for business spend only.

Tax buckets and bookkeeping

The self-employed have a banking problem employees never face: money arrives gross. Nothing is withheld, quarterly estimated payments come due four times a year, and the difference between what landed in the account and what is actually yours is roughly a quarter to a third of every deposit. An account that helps you keep that separation is worth more than a slightly better interest rate.

Three of the seven address it directly. Found moves a percentage of every deposit into a tax pocket automatically and shows an estimated quarterly figure, on the free plan, alongside 20 sub-accounts and receipt scanning. Lili covers the same ground plus invoicing and expense categorisation, but on its paid tiers. Novo has reserve accounts, which is the manual version of the same idea. Relay solves it differently: 20 checking accounts let you run envelope budgeting without any tax feature at all.

These tools help organise reserves and expenses. They do not replace tax advice and do not establish what you owe. For the other half of the pairing, see our accounting software for startups guide and Best Invoice Software for Freelancers.

What your business structure decides, and what it doesn't

One question decides less of this list than most comparisons claim. Of the seven accounts here, six are open to sole proprietors. Only Mercury is not, and the reason is narrow: it verifies a state-filed formation document during onboarding, and a sole proprietorship has none. Novo, Relay, Lili, Found, Bluevine and Chase Business Complete all document sole proprietorship as a supported structure. Most will take your SSN in place of an EIN, Relay adds a DBA certificate if you trade under another name, and Novo requires sole proprietors to be U.S. citizens.

So do not form an LLC in order to reach a banking app. Choosing a legal structure affects liability, how you are taxed, administration and cost, and those consequences outlast any account decision. If you are weighing an LLC for legal or tax reasons, discuss your specific situation with a qualified professional and assess banking eligibility separately.

One thing does change with a registered entity: Bluevine's line of credit requires a corporation or LLC, along with $10,000 in monthly revenue and 12 or more months in business. That is a lending requirement, not a banking one. And if you expect to incorporate within the year, open a free account now rather than waiting — moving banks later costs an afternoon of updating client payment details, while running personal and business money through one account for six months costs far more at tax time.

You are no longer solo?

For teams, startups and businesses with a bookkeeper, vendor payments or several cardholders, access control and money separation usually matter more than a $0 monthly fee. Three things change, and none of them is “startups need more features”.

• More than one person needs access. A co-founder, a bookkeeper, a VA and an accountant should not share one master login. Relay includes unlimited users with their own permissions on every plan, plus 20 checking accounts on Starter and Grow and 50 on Scale. If what you need is spending limits rather than separate logins, Found's free plan already issues team cards with controls.
• Team spending needs cards, not one shared debit card. Mercury lets you create a virtual card per vendor or subscription and cancel it at any time. With three or four people signing up for software, that is the difference between a readable expense report and a monthly reconstruction exercise.
• The accounting integration stops being a nice-to-have. Once a bookkeeper reconciles monthly instead of you doing it quarterly, a missing bank feed costs real money in hours. Mercury syncs with QuickBooks Online; Relay adds QuickBooks and Xero from Grow.

The entity gate only closes one door: incorporating opens exactly one additional account here, Mercury.

This guide covers US accounts. Banking in the UK works differently, and the difference is worth knowing before you open anything: Tide, where most UK freelancers land, is not a bank but an e-money institution. Whether your balance is FSCS-covered depends on which sort code you were issued — the review explains which is which, alongside the plan tiers and the transfer fees.

See Best Invoice Software for Freelancers, Best Accounting Software for Startups, and our Best CRM for Freelancers guide. For broader picks, browse all finance tools, our top freelancer tools hub, or all freelancer guides.