Best Yield Aggregators

Best yield aggregators by use case

• You want every fee itemized before you deposit: Convex Finance is the only entry with a full 10 for fee disclosure. On Curve rewards it takes 17% of CRV and publishes the split to cvxCRV stakers, CVX stakers, the treasury and the harvest caller, with an absolute ceiling of 20%. Deposit and withdrawal fees are zero. It serves only Curve, Frax and f(x) Protocol liquidity providers.
• You want a yield-bearing dollar under open code: Origin (OUSD) scores 10 for licence (MIT) and 10 for audits, with reports mapped to each component. It takes a 20% performance fee on yield and says every APY it publishes is net of that fee. OUSD is backed by USDC, and direct redemption can take up to 24 hours.
• You want a plain statement that the vault never holds your funds: Beefy has the category's highest custody mark, 9. It states it never locks or owns deposits, and strategy changes by its 3-of-6 developer multisig wait behind a 6-hour timelock. Eight audit firms are named.
• You want audits tied to each vault version: Yearn Finance scores 10 for its AGPL licence (version 3) and 9 for audits, which are mapped to contract versions, the latest a yAudit review of V3.1.0 in June 2026. Factory-deployed vaults charge a 10% performance fee, and displayed APYs are net of fees.
• You trade or lock in yield rather than auto-compound it: Pendle charges a flat 5% on the yield and points accrued by YT and files audit reports from nine auditors by component (audits 9). Custody scores 6, because its newer SY wrappers can be upgraded with no documented timelock.

How the ranking works

Each aggregator gets a 0 to 10 mark on five criteria from the published rubric. The APY a vault displays is not scored. On 6 November 2026 the marks were checked against one scale per criterion, so the same evidence earns the same mark across the nine entries.

• Fee disclosure: performance, management and withdrawal fees as figures. Every component published with a cap, plus a stated zero for deposits and withdrawals, earns 10 (Convex). Published rates or ceilings that leave some fee unaddressed or the exact vault rate to the interface score 8 (Origin, Beefy, Pendle, Idle). A fee range, or rates set per vault with no full schedule, scores 7 (Yearn, Harvest, Yield Yak). A fee structure with no rates scores 6 (Sommelier).
• Licence & code openness: read from the contracts repository. A recognized open-source licence in a LICENSE file scores 10 (MIT for Origin and Convex, AGPL-3.0 for Yearn, Apache 2.0 for Sommelier). Open-source terms declared only in per-file SPDX tags or package.json, with no LICENSE file in the live repository, score 8 (Beefy, Harvest, Yield Yak), as does a BUSL licence whose change date has passed (Pendle). A maintained repository with no LICENSE file and a core contract tagged UNLICENSED scores 5 (Idle).
• Audit disclosure: named firms with reports. Reports mapped to components, or a long list of named firms, earn 10 (Origin, Beefy). Linked, attributed reports with one stated gap score 9: a report marked unavailable (Yearn), an undated summary page (Pendle), or recent work concentrated in one reviewer (Idle). Older or partly undated reports score 8 (Convex, Harvest). Firms named only in link addresses score 6 (Sommelier). One named auditor with no reports scores 3 (Yield Yak).
• Custody & control: whether the protocol says your funds stay yours and how admin power is limited. A never-locked statement plus timelocked admin changes earns 9 (Beefy). An untimelocked admin multisig with a written statement that it cannot take deposits scores 7 (Convex, Yearn), as does Sommelier's user-only withdrawal rule. Upgradeable contracts with no documented timelock, or no-control wording at the interface level only, score 6 (Pendle, Idle). Wording that covers the website but not the vault contracts scores 5 (Harvest). No documented admin powers, timelock or custody statement scores 4 (Yield Yak).
• Strategy transparency: whether the displayed return is stated net of fees and the strategy is documented. A net-of-fee APY with documented yield sources earns 8 (Origin, Convex, Yearn). A net APY with generic strategy docs scores 7 (Beefy, Harvest, Yield Yak). A gross headline APY, or no statement on the basis, scores 6 (Idle, Pendle). One-line vault descriptions score 4 (Sommelier).

The overall score is the plain, equal-weight average of the five marks, rounded to one decimal: Origin's (8 + 10 + 10 + 8 + 8) / 5 gives 8.8. Ties are listed alphabetically. The marks come from desk research of documentation, repositories, terms and audit pages, checked between 1 and 6 November 2026. We made no deposits. Marks are re-checked, and each review logs every change with its reason and source.

What changed in this update

The previous edition, checked on 24 July 2026, ranked ten aggregators. In this November 2026 update the biggest moves were:

• Beefy, up to 8.4 from 6.2: its fees breakdown publishes a 9.5% maximum performance fee, a withdrawal fee of up to 0.1% and a 0.05% zap fee (fees 4 to 8). Licence rose from 1 to 8 under the single licence scale, because its contracts carry MIT tags with no LICENSE file. Custody slipped from 10 to 9 for the multisig's power to swap strategies.
• Sommelier, up to 6.6 from 4.6: an official audits page now links reports (audits 2 to 6), its homepage states that only users can withdraw (custody 3 to 7), and Apache 2.0 was confirmed across its core repositories (licence 8 to 10).
• Harvest Finance, up to 7.0 from 5.2: licence rose from 2 to 8 on the single scale, custody from 3 to 5 for its terms and 12-hour timelock, and fees from 6 to 7.
• Convex Finance, up to 8.6 from 7.6, and Pendle, up to 7.4 from 6.0: Convex gained on licence, custody and strategy transparency. Pendle's BUSL change date passed (licence 5 to 8), and its revised terms state a non-custodial basis (custody 3 to 6).
• Idle Finance, down to 6.8 from 7.4: Idle's FAQ says its headline APY is a gross figure (strategy 7 to 6), and the tranches repository it now maintains has no licence file (licence 8 to 5).
• Smaller moves: Yield Yak rose to 5.8 from 5.6. Yearn held at 8.2, with strategy transparency up a point and custody down a point, matching Convex for an untimelocked multisig. Origin was unchanged at 8.8.

Aura Finance was withdrawn after it wound down under AIP-78 in April 2026.

Is the APY a yield aggregator shows net of fees?

Not always. Origin, Convex, Yearn, Beefy, Harvest and Yield Yak state that the returns they display already have their fees taken out. Idle's FAQ says its headline APY is a spot gross return and only its realized APY counts the performance fee. Pendle's docs do not say whether the underlying APY shown is net of its 5% YT fee. Check the vault's own wording before comparing two numbers.

What the scores do not cover

• Return levels: APY and TVL move daily and are set by the strategies underneath. Origin's published APYs are trailing averages, not promised rates.
• The protocols underneath: a vault inherits the risk of every pool, lending market or token it uses. Yearn's docs state that no one will compensate losses and there is no insurance. Convex's risks page warns that users can lose some or all of their funds.
• Incident history: not scored. Origin records that more than $7 million was drained from the original OUSD contracts in November 2020, and that holders were compensated. Harvest's docs record that $24 million was taken from two of its stablecoin vaults on 26 October 2020 through price manipulation of a Curve pool.
• Who runs it: Beefy's team is pseudonymous, Convex names no legal entity, and Idle's development has moved to Pareto.
• Eligibility: Harvest's and Idle's terms bar US persons and several other jurisdictions. Sommelier's site lists no terms of service.
• Impermanent loss and liquidation on LP and leveraged strategies. Our guide to how yield farming works explains both.

How to choose

1. Identify what the vault actually deploys into and whether you would accept the risk of each underlying protocol on its own.
2. Find the exact fee for that vault, not only the protocol's ceiling, and check whether the APY shown is net of it.
3. Read who can change the strategy and whether a timelock gives you time to exit first.
4. Check the withdrawal path: how long redemption takes and what happens if the underlying market is fully borrowed.
5. For a dollar product, assess the stablecoin behind it. Our guide on how to assess a stablecoin sets out the questions.
6. Confirm that the terms allow users in your country.