Four business accounts, one identical headline: no monthly fee, no minimum balance, built for solo operators. All four are free on the base tier and all four are sold by fintechs rather than banks. The decision is not the price, because there isn't one. It is the fine print in four places: what idle cash earns, what transfers cost, who holds the deposits, and what the free tier actually includes.
Everything below was read from each company's own pages on September 27, 2026, and the sources are listed at the end. Where a page does not print something, this page says so rather than filling it in.
The Same Headline, Four Sets of Fine Print
The reason these four get compared is that their marketing is nearly interchangeable. The reason the choice matters is that the fine print is not. Two of them advertise deposit insurance far above the standard limit through sweep arrangements, one pays a rate on checking and the others pay on savings or through a separate product, and one prints its transfer terms while another refers to a schedule.
None of that is visible from the headline both of them lead with. It is worth saying plainly: at $0, the account is not the product. The product is the arrangement behind it.
What Your Money Earns, and the Conditions
| Account | Rate | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Bluevine Standard | 1.3% APY on checking, up to $250,000 | Requires $500 a month of debit card spend or $2,500 a month in customer payments |
| Bluevine Plus ($30/mo, fee waivable) | 1.75% APY on checking, up to $250,000 | None printed |
| Relay Starter ($0) | 1.19% APY on savings | Savings only, not checking, and the rate is variable |
| Relay Grow / Scale ($30 / $90) | 1.87% and 3.21% APY on savings | The higher rate is the reason the tier exists |
| Mercury | Yield through Mercury Treasury | No checking rate is quoted on the pricing page; the yield product is separate |
| Novo | No rate printed on the checking page | Its pitch is no fees rather than a yield |
Read the first two rows together, because they show the shape of the whole category. Bluevine's free rate comes with a behaviour requirement: spend on the card or receive payments into the account every month, or the interest goes away. The paid tier removes the condition rather than raising the ceiling, which is a different thing from what the higher number suggests at a glance.
What Moving Money Costs
This is where the four stop being comparable from a pricing page alone, because two print their terms and two do not.
- Novo prints the clearest terms of the four: free standard ACH, incoming wires at no cost, and ATM fees rebated every month.
- Bluevine prints free standard ACH transfers and unlimited transactions on the free account.
- Relay prints "no fee for same-day ACH" as a feature of its $90 tier, and refers to a fee schedule for the rest: "additional transaction fees apply". No wire or ACH rate table was reachable on the pages this review read, only a calculator that estimates the cost from your volume.
- Mercury prices the invoicing feature rather than the transfer: ACH debit invoicing is $1 per transaction on its paid tier and $0 on Pro, alongside a published statement of how the company makes money.
For a freelancer whose clients pay by ACH, all four are workable. For one who receives wires, or who needs same-day settlement, the comparison has to be done by asking, because only Novo and Bluevine have printed the answer on the page.
Who Actually Holds the Money
Every one of the four is a fintech with a partner bank behind it, and every one of them discloses it:
| Account | Partner bank | Insurance advertised |
|---|---|---|
| Relay | Thread Bank | Up to $3,000,000 via a sweep network, on the paid tiers; $250,000 standard otherwise |
| Mercury | Choice Financial Group and Column N.A. | Standard coverage; yield is offered through Mercury Treasury |
| Bluevine | Coastal Community Bank and its program banks | Up to $3,000,000 per depositor through Coastal Community Bank |
| Novo | Middlesex Federal Savings, F.A. | Standard coverage |
The number that matters for a business is the one after the partner bank's name, not the fintech's. FDIC insurance covers the failure of an insured bank; it does not cover the failure of the company whose app you are using. A sweep arrangement that spreads deposits across several banks raises the ceiling, and the account still lives inside the same single point of failure at the top.
What the $0 Tier Gives You
Relay puts the most on the free tier: 20 checking accounts under one login, invoice creation with payment links, QuickBooks and Xero integrations, and unlimited users. For a side hustle, the sub-accounts are the feature that matters, because they are what makes separating tax money automatic rather than a monthly act of will.
Mercury's free tier is a complete business checking account with cards, invoicing, bill pay and expense management, and it publishes how it makes money instead: interest on deposits, foreign exchange on international wires, fees on Treasury and venture debt, and foreign currency card transactions. Novo's free tier is a no-frills checking account with 40-plus integrations, including Stripe, QuickBooks, Shopify, Square and Xero. Bluevine's free tier is checking with bill pay and a conditional yield.
None of the four is missing a feature a freelancer needs to receive money, pay a contractor or hand clean books to a preparer. The differences start when the business grows a second person, a second entity, or a balance large enough that the yield becomes the point.
What These Pages Cannot Settle
How each account behaves when something looks wrong. Every business account in this category runs transaction monitoring, and the experience of being asked to verify a large deposit is the one that matters most and is documented by none of the four: how long a review takes, what gets asked for, and whether outgoing payments pause while it runs.
That is also the argument for the boring precaution. Keeping a second free account at a different provider, with a different partner bank, costs nothing and turns a bad week into an inconvenience rather than a missed payroll. Two of the four advertise sweep networks for insurance, and none of them sells redundancy for the interface.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are Mercury, Relay, Bluevine and Novo all free?
All four publish a $0 base account, and all four sell something above it. Relay adds Grow at $30 and Scale at $90, Bluevine adds Plus at $30 with a waivable fee, and Mercury adds Plus and a Pro tier at $299 a month for businesses that want a relationship manager. Novo advertises no monthly fee and no transaction limits on its checking account.
Are these real banks?
No, and every one of them says so. Relay is a financial technology company and its deposits sit at Thread Bank. Mercury is a fintech and uses Choice Financial Group and Column N.A. Bluevine uses Coastal Community Bank and its program banks. Novo uses Middlesex Federal Savings, F.A. In each case the FDIC insurance protects the deposit at the partner bank, not the fintech interface on top of it.
Which one pays the most on idle cash?
On checking, Bluevine publishes 1.3% up to $250,000 with a condition attached, or 1.75% on its $30 Plus plan with no condition. Relay pays on savings accounts rather than checking: 1.19% on the free plan, 1.87% on Grow and 3.21% on Scale. Mercury points to its Treasury product rather than quoting a checking rate, and Novo does not quote a rate on the page this review read.
Which one is best for moving money?
Novo prints the clearest terms: free standard ACH, incoming wires at no cost, and ATM fees rebated monthly. Bluevine prints free standard ACH. Relay prints free same-day ACH on its top plan and refers to a fee schedule for the rest that this review could not read. Mercury prices ACH debit invoicing at $1 per transaction on its paid tier and $0 on Pro.
How much of my money is insured?
The standard limit is $250,000 per depositor per bank. Two of the four advertise more through sweep arrangements: Bluevine states FDIC insurance up to $3,000,000 per depositor through Coastal Community Bank and its program banks, and Relay states up to $3,000,000 when Thread Bank places funds through a sweep network, a feature of its paid tiers rather than the free one.
What should I check before moving tax money into one of these?
Not the pricing page. Ask their support directly how the account behaves when a large incoming payment is held for review: how long the review takes, what documents they ask for, and whether outgoing transfers pause while it runs. That is the failure that hurts a freelancer, and none of the four documents it.
Sources
Prices, rates, plan contents and quoted wording were checked against these pages on September 27, 2026.
- Relay pricing, for the three plan prices, the savings rates and the as-of date, the 20 and 50 checking account lines and the same-day ACH waiver on Scale
- Mercury pricing, for the $0 account, the Mercury Pro price and features, the ACH debit invoicing price, and the disclosure of how Mercury earns money
- Bluevine business checking, for the 1.3% and 1.75% rates with their conditions, the $30 Plus tier, the free standard ACH line, and the Coastal Community Bank insurance disclosure
- Novo business checking, for the no-fee terms, the free standard ACH and incoming wires, the ATM rebate line, the integrations list and the Middlesex Federal Savings disclosure
For the full review of the one with the sub-account structure, see the Relay review. For why the separation matters at tax time, see quarterly estimated taxes.
