Update 9/8/26: New round of this deal, again for both new and existing customers. It had gone down to $200, and now they brought back the $300 version. They lengthened the hold time from 60 days to 90 days. Updated below. (ht to readers Costco Corgi and Jorge)
Update 4/14/25: Deal is back until 5/16/25
Update 2/4/25: Deal is back until 3/31/2025
Offer at a glance
- Maximum bonus amount: $300
- Availability: Nationwide. You must be at least 18 years of age and a U.S. citizen or permanent resident of the U.S. to open a new account.
- Direct deposit required: None
- Additional requirements: See below
- Hard/soft pull: Soft pull
- ChexSystems: No
- Credit card funding: No
- Monthly fees: None
- Early account termination fee: None
- Household limit: No
- Expiration date:
1/13/2510/16/26
The Offer
- Live Oak Bank is offering a $300 bonus when you open a new savings account and complete the following requirements:
- Open a Live Oak Bank personal savings account by
5/16/2510/16/26 - Deposit at least $20,000 into your account by
5/16/2510/16/26 - Maintain a balance of at least $20,000 for
6090 days.
- Open a Live Oak Bank personal savings account by
The Fine Print
- New and Existing Customers:
- Only one bonus is available per Tax Identification Number per promotional period.
- Only personal savings accounts are eligible for the bonus offer. Checking accounts, CD accounts and fiduciary accounts (e.g., trusts) are not eligible for this offer.
- Opening of a new account will be subject to approval by Live Oak Banking Company in its sole discretion.
- A new Live Oak Bank personal savings account must be fully funded with at least $20,000 by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on 01/13/2025 to be eligible for the bonus. If the account is not fully funded by January 13th, then the account is not eligible for the bonus offer.
- All funding of the new personal savings account must consist of funds originating from an external financial institution to qualify; deposits or transfers originating from an existing Live Oak Bank account (whether personal or business) via internal transfer, CD redemption, check, ACH transfer, wire, or loan proceeds do not qualify for bonus offer.
- Beginning on the date in November or December 2024 or January 2025 that the new account attains a balance of at least $20,000, if the balance remains equal to or exceeding $20,000 for 60 consecutive days, then the account will be eligible for the bonus if all other conditions are met. If all eligibility criteria are met, the $300 cash bonus will be deposited to your open, eligible account within 45 days following the expiration of the 60-day period.
- Your new account must not be closed or restricted at the time of payout in order to receive the bonus. Live Oak Bank reserves the right to withdraw or withhold the bonus offer from any customer, with or without notice, if fraud or other suspicious activity is suspected.
- Any promotional amounts received may be subject to taxation.
- Existing Customers:
- In addition to the other requirements for the bonus offer, existing Live Oak Bank customers must maintain their existing account balances (not including interest accrued but not credited to the account) at or above the end of day balance as of November 11, 2024 11:59:59pm (ET) across their existing personal savings in order to be eligible for the bonus offer.
- All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them
Avoiding Fees
Monthly Fees
This account has no monthly fees.
Early Account Termination Fee
There is no EATF.
Our Verdict
This account also earns 4.3% 4.00% APY, this is competitive with the top rates currently. This is better than the recent $200 savings bonus as the bonus is bigger and the hold period is shorter. This works out to be an extra 9.125% 6.08% annualized. Worth doing if you need to tie up some funds.
Hat tip to reader seven
Useful posts regarding bank bonuses:
- A Beginners Guide To Bank Account Bonuses
- Bank Account Quick Reference Table (Spreadsheet) (very useful for sorting bonuses by different parameters)
- PSA: Don’t Call The Bank
- Introduction To ChexSystems
- Banks & Credit Unions That Are ChexSystems Inquiry Sensitive
- What Banks & Credit Unions Do/Don’t Pull ChexSystems?
- How To Use Our Direct Deposit Page For Bank Bonuses Page
- Common Bank Bonus Misconceptions + Why You Should Give Them A Go
- How Many Bank Accounts Can I Safely Open Within A Year For Bank Bonus Purposes?
- Affiliate Links & Bank Bonuses – We Won’t Be Using Them
- Complete List Of Ways To Close Bank Accounts At Each Bank
- Banks That Allow/Don’t Allow Out Of State Checking Applications
- Bank Bonus Posting Times
LL 🔗 Regular pull needs to be before the 5pm daily cutoff to count the same day. Was sort of addressed here: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/live-oak-bank-300-savings-bonus/#comment-2427148
Hey Gadget 🕵️♂️ Bank Bonus Geek 🔗 Can you remind me, if pulling into an existing LOB account (not initial funding) on Friday, does it just have to be any time before 5pm EST to count towards current balance Fri but not be withdrawn til the next business day? Or does it have to be 5-7pm on Fridays as well if not initial funding? I usually fund Thu 5-7pm EST then let it sit, but I am considering pulling some extra in today since Monday is a bank holiday, making it a long weekend. Pulling from WF if that makes a difference. I know this has been discussed before, but all the comments I’m finding about Friday pulls either don’t specify the exact time or were for initial funding. My memory is fuzzy on the subject. I haven’t done a Fri pull in a long time. Thank you!
P2 is getting reminder emails about depositing the $20k by the deadline to get the bonus, but it’s been in the account for weeks. I am not getting them on my email. Should I be concerned and contact them?
If funding later, then it will credit & pull via their standard rules… Which a Thursday 5-7 PM pull would show as Friday, not Thursday, and would be sent out Friday, and pull Monday… So you lose the Thursday advantage. Not a big deal, but won’t be quite as good. I had already explained that here: “ Also, if you open the account in advance and try to fund at 5-7 PM Thursday, you lose a day of double-dip, but will show the deposit on Friday, and double dip the weekend. Still nice. “
ends oct 16th
My P3 opened her first-ever Live Oak Bank acct on 9/10/26. There was no hard or soft credit pull on EQ, EX, or TU. We just pulled all three to verify. JayEss Someone mentioning a soft pull of Experian in the comments on this page was in reference to a different bank/CU.
Since nobody complained about needing to thaw any credit reports, likely no credit soft pulls either. Out of 1800 comments, at least one person would have mentioned it by now…. since the standard advice given by data breach notification letters is to freeze your credit. Chex can certainly be frozen.
Sure, it’s not Chase you are signing up for and not as polished. But what really matters is they pay out like clockwork. You don’t need confirmation of being enrolled as a new or existing customer, as ALL new accounts are enrolled. The only thing you cannot do is use an old account to earn a new bonus. That’s the only failures I have noticed. New offer comes out? Make a new account! Done! You don’t need to use the app… if it’s so “janky”.
With a 4% APY, wouldn’t it just be safer to add a day or two to the hold time? 🙂 I liken it to keeping a little bit more than needed in case there’s an unforeseen fee.
For the purpose of earning interest, Live Oak (as well as most banks) counts the deposit date as day 1 and if that money is withdrawn on the 61st day it will earn 60 days of interest. That is called “date of deposit” to (but not including) “date of withdrawal”. This should be the standard for the hold period to earn a bonus as well.
I guess you really needed that $50? or did you move it to a different bank for 6% APR? For $1 more in interest a year? Mind sharing the bank?
Was there a DP for the other way?
I’d put the $50 back, and then open the new account for the $20K. But, either should work and it’s not “busted”.
I had $50 sitting in an existing Live Oak savings that I unwittingly withdrew 1 day after the lookback date for the new Promo period. This means that if I open a new account for the current promo, I will need to deposit $20,050+ instead of just $20,000+ to be eligible, correct? Or have I accidentally just busted the whole thing.
“forgot”, over the years in order to fund 2 of these accts I had to wire funds in from other banks. That was no problem. But sending bank charged 15.00 and LOB charged 10.00.So bonus of 300 back then was 275.00 and 200 bonus was 175.00 Still worth it with the high interest they paid.
Bit of a head scratcher. Family has 4 LOB accts over the years. Each person has 3 accts plus this new one = 4 total accts (16 for the family). All acct paid out bonuses, all $ xferred to other accts waiting for the new offers. Problem is Citi will not work to link for years. Joint acct myself and p2. They will not link with Plaid or manually. So I send funds from Cit to a linked acct (MTB). MTB is linked on LOB accts. Then have LOB take the funds from MTB. Don’t know why this does not work with Citi. Same problem with Marcus..”cant link acct right now”. TIA
Thank you for sharing your experience. I wish this were the standard practice throughout the banking industry. Some banks remove the money from the funding account but don’t post it to the receiving account for several days—or sometimes even a week. I’ve always wondered who benefits from the interest during that gap. Live Oak’s approach seems much fairer and more transparent.
With Live Oak, when you received a text from them saying “Your deposit of $xx,xxx was successful” is the day your money starts earning interest, although your account will show “Available: $0, Pending: $xx,xxx”. I opened a new account and initiated a pull of $20K from my external account at 7AM on 9/8 and got the text at 8AM. The money was not deducted from my external account until the next day 9/9.
Find a bank or credit union that accepts credit card to fund the account and counts as a purchase, not a cash advance. https://www.doctorofcredit.com/does-funding-a-bank-account-with-a-credit-card-count-as-a-purchase-or-cash-advance/ But not one of these: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/credit-cards-that-do-not-earn-points-on-bank-account-funding/
How do you tap the cash from SUB cards? Aren’t they usually charge 3 or 4% transaction fees, which negates the potential bonus.
Like Gadget, I do them both and then some.
Apples & oranges. I’d do ’em both.
None of that is worth the 300 bonus. Lol. My last bonus I DD 500 to get 400. Now that makes sense
Added to post, thanks
Well bummer, apparently people who are on Visas aren’t allowed to open this account this should be mentioned in the post. Got this message at the end of the application “ You may not proceed with your application. You are ineligible to open an account. You must be at least 18 years of age and a U.S. citizen or permanent resident of the U.S. to open a new account. “
Natalie Everyone should always read the full terms / fine print (at the bottom of the official offer page). Those terms are quite clear. While the fine print in the post above is a bit outdated, it does say “… across their existing personal savings …”
I did read it and appreciate your work here as well. It just was not clear to me if you meant existing non-savings account owner or anything
Where does it clearly state the existing account could be a savings account with bonus? Tell me, could I be an existing account owner with a checking account looking to apply for a savings account? Can’t tell if the lights are on because no one answered the door
You could just literally find your answer in the first sentence of the post “Update 9/8/26: New round of this deal, again for both new and existing customers”. Your ignorance is mind-boggling.
I went for it first day, best chance to miss the next cut off, though probably will overlap.