Canadian savers are being asked how much their flexibility is worth. In early April 2026, the market’s answer appears to be: not much.
The best one-year GIC rate in Canada is 3.65 per cent from WealthONE. The best three-year GIC is 3.79 per cent from HomeEquity Bank, and the best five-year GIC is 4.00 per cent from EQ Bank. That means a saver is being offered just 35 basis points more to lock up money in a GIC for five years instead of one.
Savings accounts remain competitive. The best promotional savings account rates top out at 4.60 per cent, with Royal Bank of Canada RY-T and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce CM-T tied for first place, while Saven leads the standard-rate market at 2.85 per cent.
In other words, Canadians do not have to choose between keeping cash idle and locking it up for years. That is what makes today’s GIC rate market so strange.
For years, banks trained savers to expect longer terms to pay more. If you gave up access to your money, you were supposed to be compensated for the sacrifice. In today’s market, that extra compensation between short- and long-term GICs looks remarkably thin.
There is a small irony buried in the numbers. The best five-year GIC pays 4.00 per cent, while the lowest rate for an insured five-year fixed mortgage today is 3.75 per cent. That is a spread of 25 basis points in favour of the saver. Put differently, safe money can now out-earn cheap mortgage debt.
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Over the past month, compared to March 11, 2026, most rates barely moved, though the leaderboard has. Standard savings rates were unchanged, and the best one-year and two-year GIC rates also held steady.
Promotional savings rates eased slightly, with the top offer slipping to 4.60 per cent from 4.65 per cent in March, while the lead shifted from Bank of Nova Scotia BNS-T to a two-way tie between RBC and CIBC.
Bank of Nova Scotia now requires a total relationship balance of at least $500,000 to obtain a welcome promotional rate of 4.70 per cent for three months. Otherwise, balances under $10,000 would earn a promotional rate of just 2.50 per cent.
The real action was farther out, as the best three-year GIC rose to 3.79 per cent from 3.70 per cent, with HomeEquity Bank now in first place, while the best five-year GIC climbed to 4.00 per cent from 3.85 per cent, led by EQ Bank.
Even so, the reward for locking in remains modest. Longer terms pay slightly more, but not enough to make the loss of liquidity look generous.
Interest rates are provided by WOWA.ca, which gathers, aggregates and freely disseminates data on mortgage rates, savings accounts, and GIC rates from more than 50 Canadian financial institutions.
Jimmy Nguyen is a writer and content developer at WOWA.ca, a Canadian personal finance platform.
