EQ Bank vs KOHO (2026): which one is worth paying for?

If you’re weighing EQ Bank vs KOHO, the short answer is that EQ Bank wins on savings and KOHO wins on spending, and the gap on savings is wider than the gap on spending. EQ pays 2.75% without charging you anything for it. KOHO’s headline 3.5% is real, but it sits behind a plan that costs $177 a year at best, and its free tier pays 2%. What KOHO gives you for the money is the card: 1% to 2% back on groceries, restaurants and transit, plus round-ups and budgeting in the same app.

What’s the difference between EQ Bank and KOHO?

EQ Bank is a bank, and its rate is set by whether your paycheque lands there. KOHO is a fintech, and its rate is set by which plan you buy. That one difference explains almost every other one: who insures your money, what the card costs, and whether the good rate is something you qualify for or something you subscribe to.

EQ Bank is the digital arm of Equitable Bank. The Personal Account acts like chequing and pays like savings, there are no monthly fees or minimums, and the money is insured at Equitable Bank itself. What you need in return is a direct deposit.

KOHO is a spending app first, with a savings side built on top. Everything runs through a reloadable prepaid Mastercard, and the plan you pick sets your cash back, your interest rate and your foreign exchange fees all at once. The free tier is genuinely usable. The best of KOHO isn’t free.

Both of these give you a prepaid Mastercard, not a chequing debit card. There’s no branch and no chequebook on either side. What separates them is the business model.

EQ Bank: no plan to buy, and two ways to reach 2.75%

The Personal Account pays a 1.00% base rate, and a 1.75% bonus on top of it once your recurring direct deposits total $2,000 or more in a month, per EQ Bank’s rates page (opens in a new tab) (rates effective June 11, 2026). That’s 2.75% all in. The bonus takes effect within the first two weeks of the following month and holds as long as you keep clearing the threshold.

The account most people miss

If nobody’s paying you $2,000 a month, the Personal Account drops to 1.00%, which is worse than KOHO’s free tier. But EQ has a second door to the same rate. The 30-day Notice Savings Account (opens in a new tab) pays 2.75% with no direct deposit, no minimum balance and no fees. The 10-day version pays 2.35%.

The trade is patience. A withdrawal request sits pending for the notice period you chose, and the money lands on the 11th or 31st day. Deposits are unlimited and instant from a Personal Account. So it suits an emergency fund you’re not planning to touch this month, and it doesn’t suit rent money.

Who insures it

EQ Bank is a trade name of Equitable Bank, and Equitable Bank is the CDIC (opens in a new tab) member. There’s no partner in the middle and nothing to switch on. The one catch is aggregation: deposits you hold under both names share a single $100,000 limit per insured category, not one each. Our guide to CDIC deposit insurance covers how the categories work.

The card, and what it doesn’t do

The EQ Bank Card is a free prepaid reloadable Mastercard with no monthly or annual fee. It pays 0.5% cash back on everything, charges no foreign exchange fees, and reimburses Canadian ATM operator fees up to $5 per withdrawal, five times a month. Money loaded on it keeps earning your Personal Account rate until you spend it.

It won’t take a cash deposit, and it isn’t Interac debit, so the handful of Canadian merchants that only take debit will turn it down.

KOHO: how the plan sets the price

KOHO has three tiers, and the rate climbs with the tier: 2% on Essential, 2.5% on Extra, 3.5% on Everything, paid on your entire balance with no minimum, per KOHO’s rates page (opens in a new tab) (as of August 2026). Extra runs $18 a month and Everything $22, dropping to $12 and $14.75 if you pay for the year up front. Essential is $0 if you set up a direct deposit or move $1,000 in each month.

What $177 a year gets you

Everything’s 3.5% is the highest savings rate here, and the cheapest way to hold it is $177 a year. Against EQ’s free 2.75%, the gap is 0.75%, so the plan pays for itself at roughly $23,600 saved. Below that you’re paying to earn less.

On $10,000, EQ’s 2.75% is $275 and KOHO’s Everything is $350 less $177, or $173. On $30,000, EQ pays $825 and Everything nets $873, so Everything wins by about $48 a year, and only if you commit to annual billing. Pay monthly at $22 and the $264 fee pushes break-even past $35,000.

The plan can still be worth its price, just for other reasons. Everything also brings 2% cash back on essentials, 0.5% on everything else, no foreign exchange fees, 50% off Credit Building and a free 3GB eSIM. Priced as a bundle it holds up. Priced as a savings rate it doesn’t.

Where the money sits

KOHO isn’t a bank. Its security page (opens in a new tab) is specific: it has “partnered with Peoples Trust, a federally regulated bank, to safeguard your funds,” and “once you opt-in to Earn Interest, up to $100K of your funds are eligible for CDIC protection.” So the coverage is real, and you turn it on rather than getting it by default. If you’ve carried a KOHO card for a while without touching that setting, go and check it.

KOHO has been pursuing a federal bank licence with OSFI since 2021 and raised $130 million in June 2026 toward it. Until that’s granted, this is the structure.

Which one pays more on your savings?

EQ Bank, at almost every balance. Free against free, EQ pays 2.75% and KOHO Essential pays 2%, and EQ’s Notice Savings reaches that 2.75% without asking for a direct deposit at all. On $15,000 that’s $412.50 against $300, for the same $0.

KOHO takes the rate only by buying it, and only above about $23,600 on annual billing. There’s one range worth flagging if you’re new to EQ: before your first qualifying direct deposit lands, the Personal Account pays 1.00%, which is below KOHO’s free 2%. Open the Notice Savings alongside it and that gap closes. If you’re purely rate-shopping and don’t want to think about tiers at all, our roundup of the best high-interest savings accounts in Canada has the rest of the field, including the promo rates that collapse after five months. Neither of these two runs one, which is worth something on its own.

Which one is better to spend from every day?

KOHO, and the reason isn’t cash back. Run the math and the cards are closer than the marketing suggests. On $2,000 a month of spending with half of it in KOHO’s categories, Essential’s 1% pays about $120 a year and EQ’s flat 0.5% pays about $120 too. Everything’s 2% plus 0.5% on the rest comes to $300, which is $123 after the annual fee. All three land within a few dollars of each other.

What separates them is everything around the card. Round-ups push spare change into savings without you deciding to. Spending categories show where the month actually went. Goals and Vaults split money without another account. There’s a free Equifax score, instant e-Transfers, and Credit Building that needs no deposit and no hard credit check. EQ Bank does none of that. It gives you up to eight accounts and free automated transfers between them, which does the same job if you set it up yourself.

So pick on habits, not on percentages. If you want your money app to nudge you, that’s KOHO. If you want a plain account that pays well and stays out of your way, that’s EQ. If neither lineup fits, we’ve looked at the alternatives to EQ Bank and the alternatives to KOHO separately.

Which one is better for spending abroad?

EQ Bank, if you’d rather not pay for a plan. The EQ Bank Card charges no foreign exchange fees and passes on Mastercard’s rate, which skips the 2.50% markup most Canadian cards add. That’s the biggest cost of spending abroad, and EQ waives it for free.

KOHO drops foreign transaction fees too, but only on Extra and Everything. On the free Essential plan they apply, so the same waiver starts at $144 a year.

Pay for a KOHO plan and you get more than the waiver. Extra and Everything each cover your first international ATM withdrawal every month, and include eSIM data, 1GB and 3GB respectively. EQ matches neither. It charges no ATM fee of its own anywhere in the world, but the $5 rebate on the machine operator’s fee applies only in Canada.

So EQ wins on price, and a paid KOHO plan wins on the extras.

Can you use both?

Yes, and it’s a natural split. EQ Bank has no monthly fee, and KOHO Essential is free with a direct deposit, so the pair can cost you nothing at all.

Savings at EQ, where 2.75% is free and the insurance sits at the bank itself. Spending on KOHO, where the cash back covers your groceries and your commute and the round-ups fill a Goal on the side. The one thing to sort out is where your paycheque lands, because a direct deposit is what keeps either free tier free. Point the direct deposit at EQ for the 2.75%, then move $1,000 a month across to KOHO, which is the other way Essential stays at $0.

If your paycheque goes to KOHO instead, use EQ’s Notice Savings rather than the Personal Account. You get the same 2.75% and you’re not leaving money at 1.00%.

A weekly draw on whichever one you pick

We make Lodavo. Connect a savings or chequing account at virtually any Canadian bank or credit union, and every $25 you save earns you a free ticket in a weekly cash draw. Nothing moves, so the rate you settled on stays exactly as it is.

Someone wins at least $100 every week and the jackpot runs to $10,000. Every draw is published on the provably fair page, and eligibility and odds are in the contest rules.

Neither EQ Bank nor KOHO paid to appear in this comparison.

So, which one?

Take EQ Bank if the money is mostly sitting still. It pays 2.75% for free, the deposit insurance runs straight to Equitable Bank, and the card is the better one to travel with. Take KOHO if the money is mostly moving, and you want the round-ups, the categories and the cash back on the same screen you spend from. Buying Everything for the 3.5% alone is worth it above roughly $23,600 and not below it. Rates move, so check each provider’s own page before you shift anything.

Terms and conditions apply. No purchase necessary (alternate method of entry available). Skill-testing question required. Open to legal residents of Canada who are the age of majority. Odds depend on the number of eligible entries received. Full rules and odds at our contest rules.