Beefy Review

How Beefy scores in yield aggregators

This entry rates Beefy's autocompounding vaults in our yield aggregator ranking. The basis is desk research of Beefy's documentation and its beefy-contracts GitHub repository, checked on November 1, 2026. No deposit was made. The category uses five criteria, each marked 0 to 10 and weighted equally, as described in our ratings methodology. Displayed APY is not scored.

The overall score is the plain average: (8 + 8 + 10 + 9 + 7) / 5 = 42 / 5 = 8.4.

Four marks changed at this check. Fee disclosure rose from 4 to 8 after we read Beefy's fees breakdown, which publishes the 9.5% maximum and the 0.1% withdrawal ceiling as figures. Strategy transparency rose from 6 to 7 because the vaults page states plainly that displayed APYs are net of all vault fees. Custody & control moved from 10 to 9: the custody statement is as explicit as before, but Beefy's own Contracts & Timelocks page shows that a multisig can still swap the strategy behind a vault. Licence & code openness moved from 1 to 8 when the category's licence scale was applied consistently on November 6, 2026: MIT terms declared through SPDX headers, with no LICENSE file in the repository, score 8. The previous overall was 6.2.

Strongest criteria: audits and the custody statement

Audit disclosure carries the full 10. Eight firms are named, each against the product it reviewed: DeFiYield and CertiK for the core vault and strategy contracts, Zellic for the BIFI token and ERC-4626 wrapper, OpenZeppelin for the zap tools, Zellic, Cyfrin, Certora and Sherlock for the concentrated liquidity manager (CLM), and Electisec for beS. The reports sit in a public repository. Because a Beefy vault deposits into other protocols, the audit list covers Beefy's own layer only. The protocols underneath carry their own risk, and an audit is not insurance.

Custody & control scores 9. The vaults page says that user funds are never locked in any vault and that Beefy does not own user funds staked in vaults. Few peers state it this directly. The mark stops short of 10 because of an inconsistency in the docs. The vaults page says that no one can modify vaults and strategies. The Contracts & Timelocks page says strategy changes and upgrades pass through a 6-hour timelock run by a 3-of-6 developer multisig. The strategies page adds that strategies can be replaced and that panic and pause controls exist. A depositor can withdraw while a change is queued, but the destination of funds is not fixed by code alone.

Weakest criteria: per-vault detail, then the licence file

Strategy transparency at 7 reflects what is and is not written down. The net-of-fees statement is clear. What a specific vault does with deposits is described only generically. The docs explain the farm, harvest, swap and reinvest cycle, and the app names the underlying platform, but there is no per-vault strategy document that states allocation, leverage or every dependency. Historical, non-projected performance is not published in the docs. For a multichain catalogue of hundreds of products, that leaves the depositor to inspect each vault and its strategy contract.

Licence & code openness scores 8. beefy-contracts has no LICENSE file, no licence detected by GitHub and no licence field in package.json. Contract files we sampled, such as BeefyVaultV7.sol, open with an MIT SPDX identifier. The category scale gives open-source terms declared only through SPDX headers, with no LICENSE file in the live repository, an 8. Adding a LICENSE file would move it to 10.

Fee disclosure at 8 is not higher because the published figures are ceilings. The fees breakdown gives "up to 9.5%" and "up to 0.1%," and the vaults page still describes the performance fee as a percentage shown in the deposit and withdraw module. Older vaults use a lower legacy split that the breakdown itemizes without a total. Peers that state one rate for every product score higher here.

What the score does not cover

• APY, TVL and returns, which move daily and are set by the protocols underneath.
• The safety of any underlying DEX, lending market or token. A failure there reaches Beefy depositors, and Beefy's risk checklist is not an endorsement.
• Impermanent loss in LP and CLM positions, which our guide to how yield farming works explains.
• Who operates Beefy. The rubric has no entity criterion, and the team is pseudonymous.

Beefy vs Yearn Finance and Pendle

Yearn Finance scores 8.2, 0.2 points behind. Beefy beats it on fees, audits and custody and trails on licence and strategy transparency: Yearn's vaults carry an AGPL-3.0 licence file, worth 10, against Beefy's 8. Pendle scores 7.4, a point behind. It is level with Beefy on fees and licence, both 8, while Beefy is ahead on audits, custody and strategy transparency. Peer marks are as currently published and may change as those entries are rechecked.

Who it suits

The score suits a depositor who wants a protocol that names its auditors product by product, publishes its fee ceilings and states in writing that it does not hold deposits. It suits less well anyone who needs a repository-level licence file, or who wants a single fixed fee and a written allocation for each vault before depositing. Read the fee and strategy shown in the vault panel before committing funds.