TD Bank

TD Bank holds about $343 billion in assets and $278 billion in deposits across 1,051 branches — the smallest balance sheet of any bank in this catalog, and a network concentrated along the East Coast. Founded in 1852, it's the U.S. retail arm of a Canadian parent, which is why its footprint follows the Atlantic corridor rather than spreading nationally.

For a depositor the practical question is coverage. A thousand branches is real if you live where they are and irrelevant if you don't, and TD's distribution is more uneven than the branch count alone suggests.

TD Student Checking has no monthly fee and no balance requirement for ages 17 to 23, and TD Complete Checking waives its fee across the same bracket. Starting at 17 matters: most student accounts in this catalog begin at 18, which leaves high school seniors on a standard fee-paying account for a year.

TD Simple Savings adds the widest set of waiver paths on any savings account here — a $300 minimum daily balance, a linked TD checking account, recurring transfers of $25 or more a month for the first year, or being under 18 or over 62. The $25 recurring transfer route in particular is designed for someone starting from nothing, which is a genuinely thoughtful piece of product design.

The rate attached to it is 0.02% APY. That's twice what Wells Fargo and Truist pay and still, in absolute terms, nothing — about two dollars a year on a $10,000 balance. The waivers make the account cheap to hold; they don't make it worth holding much money in.

TD rates 4.8 on the App Store and 4.1 on Google Play. That 4.1 is the lowest Android rating of any bank in this catalog, and the 0.7 gap between platforms is the widest we track. Store ratings are a blunt instrument and one bad release can hold a score down for a long time, so it isn't a verdict — but it is the kind of signal worth spending five minutes on before committing, because for a bank with a thin branch network the app is most of the service.