Savings guides: AER, ISAs, FSCS protection and autosave apps

About these guides

Savings apps make opening an account take minutes. Understanding what you have opened can take longer. A headline rate might include a boost that disappears after a year. An app might not be a bank at all, which changes how your protection works. A Cash ISA might let you put money back after taking it out, or it might not.

These guides answer those questions one at a time, in plain English. The rules come from primary sources: GOV.UK and HMRC for ISAs and tax, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme for deposit protection, and the providers’ own published pages for how accounts work. Each guide lists its sources at the foot of the page and shows when it was last checked.

Some of it is first-hand. Chris, who writes the site, has saved with Chip for between one and two years on the free Basic plan, using its savings accounts, its Cash ISA and autosave. Where a guide draws on that, it says so clearly. For the full first-hand view, read the Chip review.

Every guide follows the same rules as the rest of the site. A boosted rate is never shown without the standard rate underneath and how long the boost lasts. Chip’s figures come from a single facts file that is checked against Chip’s own pages, so when a rate changes it changes everywhere at once. And anything that depends on the tax year, like the ISA allowance, says which tax year it applies to.

Where to start

If you are comparing rates, read the AER guide first, then the guide to introductory bonus rates. Together they explain why two accounts with similar headlines can pay quite different amounts over two years. Our Chip interest rates page shows every Chip account with its boost and the standard rate underneath, and the savings interest calculator works out what a balance would earn, including the point where a boost ends.

If you are opening a Cash ISA, the allowance guide covers the £20,000 limit for this tax year and how it can be split, and the flexible ISA guide explains what happens when you withdraw. The best Cash ISA apps comparison then puts the app ISAs side by side.

If you are wondering whether an app is safe, the FSCS guide explains partner banks and why the protection limit is per bank, not per app. Our page on whether Chip is safe applies that to one app in detail.

If you like the idea of saving without thinking about it, the autosave guide covers how these features connect to your bank and what they cost. The ChipX calculator shows whether paying for a subscription would cost less than per-save fees, and the best savings apps comparison covers the alternatives.