Top cash ISAs 2025/26

Many old ISAs now pay appalling rates, so check yours now. If they don't come close to the current top picks, you can transfer to boost them, but you must do it correctly. Consolidating new and old cash ISAs into one new shiny ISA makes it much easier to transfer again in future. You can also transfer an ISA without paying any new money in.

We note in all our top picks below whether an ISA allows transfers into it.

How to transfer an ISA

Transferring an old ISA is a technical process – it's not just like switching a normal savings account. Yet as long as you abide by the golden ISA transfers rule, it should go smoothly.

If you want to transfer, never withdraw money from a cash ISA! You'll immediately lose all the lasting tax benefits.

Instead, speak to the new provider and fill in an ISA transfer form. Your new provider should then sort it all out, including moving the money over for you – keeping your ISA cash permanently tax-free.

The banks have agreed to a guideline of 15 working days for the transfer to take place, so you should begin to receive interest within this time. If it goes much over 15 working days, it's worth complaining to the ISA provider to see if it can speed it up, or at least compensate you if the delay means you lose a decent chunk of interest.

Can I transfer more than one old ISA into a new one?

Consolidating all your old ISAs into one is allowed, and often a good way of upping the rate on your whole wodge of ISA cash, because providers regularly slice rates on the money you've saved in previous years.

To do this, just tell the new provider you want to transfer in from multiple old ISAs. However, watch that it doesn't push your combined savings with one financial institution over £85,000, as then you'd no longer be within the UK's savings safety limit (read Are your savings safe?).

Is there any reason not to transfer?

You may be charged a penalty by your current provider for transferring out. This is not common these days (except on fixed ISAs if you leave during the term), but always check, especially if your accounts are old.

A small penalty such as 30 days' lost interest isn't such a big issue, but a higher fee essentially locks you in, as the gain from switching is gazumped by the transfer charge. If your ISA has a penalty for leaving, work out whether you'll be better off by switching to the better interest rate.

Can I transfer my ISA to somebody else?

No, unfortunately not. You can withdraw the cash and give it to someone else but once money is taken out of an ISA, it loses its tax-free status – unless interest is then covered by your (or their) personal savings allowance. You also can't open a joint ISA with somebody else – ISA stands for 'individual savings account'. You get one ISA allowance each and that's it.

Can I transfer a stocks & shares ISA into a cash ISA?

This depends on the provider. Most providers allow you to transfer stocks & shares ISAs into cash ISAs and vice versa, however some only allow transfers in from other cash ISAs. So it's worth checking with the provider before you open the account.

Can I do a partial ISA transfer?

Yes, you can transfer all or part of an ISA deposit to a new ISA provider at any time. This can be current tax year subscriptions or money from past years. Following changes to the ISA rules on 6 April 2024, you can now do a partial transfer of current year subscriptions, as well as a full transfer.

Some cash ISAs are flexible meaning you can replace cash withdrawn from them in the same tax year without it using up your year's ISA limit.

In practice, this means that if you had £1,000 in a flexible cash ISA you could withdraw £500 and replenish it later in the tax year without affecting your ISA limit.

Current tax year subscriptions can be replaced in the same or any other ISA (it doesn't have to be flexible) and it won't count towards your £20,000 allowance.

If you withdraw subscriptions from previous years, you must replace in the same ISA you withdrew from for it not to count towards your £20,000 allowance.

A £500 withdrawal from a non-flexible ISA would reduce your annual ISA limit even if you later deposited £500 back into the account.

We note in our top picks below whether or not the ISAs are flexible – for full info on the flexibility, see Flexible ISAs.

The Lifetime ISA (LISA) launched on 6 April 2017 and offers a 25% state bonus on your savings, if you use them towards buying a first home or for retirement. You can only open one if you're aged between 18 and 39.

You can save a maximum of £4,000 a year into a LISA and use the bonus to buy property worth up to £450,000. However, access your money for anything other than purchasing a first home or for retirement aged 60+ and you'll pay a 25% withdrawal penalty. You can open LISAs and cash ISAs in the same tax year. Full info is in our Lifetime ISA guide.

Cash in an ISA stays tax-free as long as it's in there. The aim's to protect more of your money which is why we nag you about using the full ISA allowance if you can.

If you miss a year now, you might regret it five years later. If you've big savings, you can gradually protect more and more of your cash. Savers who opened ISAs when they were first introduced in 1999 could now be sitting on a good tax-free lump sum (up to £241,520 plus interest when using the 2023/24 allowance).

Each tax year (6 April until the next 5 April), everyone aged 18 or over gets a new ISA allowance. But if you don't use it, you lose it.

Once that year's closed, you can't put another penny in that specific ISA allowance. So if you put aside nothing in the 2023/24 tax year, when the maximum was £20,000, that's it – it's gone. Or if you put £2,000 in during 2023/24, you can't now top it up as that tax year is closed.

If you do deposit the cash in time, you can keep it in there, tax-free, for as long as you like. Then, as soon as the new tax year starts on 6 April, you can deposit a whole new year's allowance.

You can now open and pay into multiple cash ISAs in the same tax year – for example, a fixed-rate cash ISA and an easy-access one. And since the ISA rule changes on 6 April 2024, you can even open multiple ISAs of the same type – like two easy-access cash ISAs with different providers.

However, just because the rules allow this, doesn’t mean every provider supports it. Some ISA providers still only let you open or contribute to one cash ISA of each type with them per tax year, so always check with the provider first.

And remember that the total paid in per tax year across all ISA types can't exceed your £20,000 ISA allowance.

Safety for savings held in ISAs works the same as with normal savings. So provided your money is in a UK-regulated bank or building society account, it's protected under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). Its golden rule counts for cash ISAs too...

The first £120,000 per person, per financial institution is guaranteed

While that sounds simple, the exact rules are more complex – not every bank in the UK is UK-regulated and there are complicated rules involving how different banks are registered and what counts as a 'financial institution'. For full info about the rules, see our detailed Are your savings safe? guide.

How to maximise safety

If you've more than £120,000 of savings (including cash ISAs and others) in one bank, then, in the unlikely event it went bust, only the first £120,000 is fully guaranteed. So for total peace of mind, don't put more than this in any one institution. Spread it around instead.

The cash ISAs we include in this guide are all from banks protected by the UK's Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

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Yes, and you should. You can transfer ISA cash any time, whether that's in full or only part of your balance. It doesn't matter if this is current tax-free subscription or cash from ISAs opened in past years.

Any interest paid stays within the ISA wrapper but doesn't form part of your £20,000 limit. The limit is on what YOU put in to the ISA each tax year. You didn't put the interest in, the savings provider did. So you're fine.

If you want to access the cash, monthly because you can access it quicker, if not there's no difference. You might be thinking this because you've found an account that list different rates, for example a one-year fix paying 4.52% annually or 4.43% monthly.

This is a technical, not a real, difference. The annual rate includes compound interest. The monthly rate has to assume you withdraw the interest each month, so you don't get interest on the interest. If you don't withdraw it, it would compound and you'd have the same amount.

It's just a savings account you don't pay tax on, so if the rate is higher than normal savings, even if you won't pay tax on interest, then yes. Put what you have in there, and it may just mean if you did come into more money in future, you've got more room to protect that too.

Yes. You've always been able to from past years' ISAs, but since April 2024 you've been able to open more than one in the current year too (for example, a fix and an easy access) just as long as you're not putting in more than £20,000 in total.

Yes, both as then they can all be with the top payer, and as it makes it far easier administratively, as then they're all in one place and if the rate drops in future it's simpler to transfer in one go. There are two main exceptions...

- If you wanted different types on the go (say easy-access and a fix)

- If the total is over the £120,000 savings safety limit, in which case you may want to spread it across a couple of providers.

If that's your aim, for an easy life, when the first fix matures, transfer it to a top rate easy-access cash ISA, then keep transferring the others into the same one when they mature. Once they've all matured, then you could transfer all to a fix.

Of course, there’s a risk you might miss the best fix rates, but right now the top easy-access rates pay slightly more than fixes anyway, so hopefully it will work out well for you. You can't do it directly to a fixed cash ISA because you have to fund them within the first 30-90 days.

This is all about whether you gain more from putting savings into an ISA or using your ISA allowance for investing. The gain from putting cash into an ISA is simple – you never get taxed on the interest. But with investing, whether you actually gain from putting it in an ISA depends on your circumstances.

• Are you comfortable with an element of risk? If you invest in a cash ISA, you know that the interest rate you're given is the one you'll get. The nature of stocks & shares ISAs means that you don't have the same guarantee – there's ALWAYS risk involved when investing, as the value of your investments can go down as well as up, depending on how well your funds, bonds and shares do.

• Are you eligible for capital gains? Stocks & shares ISAs exempt you from capital gains tax (a tax on profits that you only pay when you sell an asset, such as your investments). Yet for 2025/26, you can make £3,000 a year of profits before being hit by this tax, so this protection only helps those who are selling sizeable assets within one tax year – otherwise it's irrelevant.

• Will you put money into bonds? If you're investing in bonds such as corporate bonds or gilts (government bonds), you get the income without it being taxed. For other bonds, a stocks & shares ISA will shelter the income from tax.

• Will you get an income? If you receive an income from dividends, you pay no tax on the first £500 earned. Anything over that is taxed at 8.75% for basic, 33.75% for higher, and a whopping 39.38% for additional-rate taxpayers. Within a stocks & shares ISA, you pay no tax on dividend income, regardless of your tax status. So if you earn more than your allowance, it can represent a significant saving.

If you pay tax on savings interest, you'd need to do a comparison between the amount of tax you'd get charged on savings outside a cash ISA and the amount of tax on any investments held outside a stocks & shares ISA. If you're unsure, you could always stick to the previous ISA situation where you could only split your allowance between cash and investments 50/50.

Small investors who won't use their capital gains and are putting cash in shares investments will gain more using their cash ISAs to the limit, then putting the rest in shares. Big investors, especially those putting money in bonds, should max out their stocks & shares ISAs. Read our Stocks & shares ISA guide for more information.

Yes, you can – and vice versa.

You can transfer your money to a cash ISA from a stocks & shares ISA and back again as many times as you like, giving you more flexibility in managing your tax-free savings.

Check that your intended provider accepts transfers – some don't. And also watch out for fees on stocks & shares ISAs. You may be charged to set up the ISA or to leave it, so multiple transfers may lose you money.

MoneySavingExpert.com is a national website serving England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. So we try to feature accounts open to everyone, which means you need to be able to open them online, by phone or by post.

Branch-based accounts are more difficult, as unless the account is offered by one of the big banks it's unlikely that everyone will be able to reach a branch. For example, someone in Carlisle couldn't access branch-based accounts offered by Suffolk Building Society as there isn't one close by.

It's always worth looking at local building societies and banks as they can occasionally have a corking branch-based account. But because we're a nationwide site, we can't feature them all.

If you're married or in a civil partnership, if your partner dies you can inherit a one-off extra ISA allowance on top of the annual £20,000, up to the total amount they had saved in ISAs. These are known as 'additional permitted subscriptions' (APS).

You have a few choices. You can simply keep the ISA with the same provider, move it to a different provider that accepts APS (not all do), or the ISA goes to someone else but you get the extra allowance. To claim your allowance, you'll need to give your partner's full name, address, date of birth and date of death, your marriage/civil partnership certificate and their national insurance number if you know it. Some providers may also require a copy of their death certificate.

The allowance you'll inherit will depend on when your partner died:

• Before 6 April 2018. You'll inherit an allowance equivalent to the total value of your partner's ISAs at the date of death.

• On or after 6 April 2018. You'll inherit an allowance equivalent to the total value of the ISAs once their estate is settled, when their ISAs are closed, or at the third anniversary of their death, whichever is earliest – so any growth in value will be taken into account.

The inherited allowance is available to make use of for three years after your partner has passed away, or 180 days after the completion of their estate, whichever is later.

Note that inheriting the allowance is not the same as inheriting the cash in the ISA – your partner could, for example, leave some or all of their ISA money to someone else. You'd still get the extra allowance, but would have to fund it with your own savings.

If you're not married or in a civil partnership, you won't inherit any extra allowance.