Best Fixed Index Annuity Rates for August 23, 2026

A fixed index annuity credits interest based on the movement of a market index, but it never credits a negative number. That single design choice, the 0% floor, is what you are buying, and every cap rate, participation rate, spread, and performance trigger on this page exists to pay for it. The table above shows what each carrier is willing to pay right now; the sections below explain what those numbers actually do to your money.

Key Takeaways

• The top standard cap rate available today is 13.00% on an S&P 500 1-year point-to-point strategy, from AuguStar (AM Best A). Ranked against the 12 carriers filing the same strategy.
• Participation-rate strategies credit a share of the gain instead of capping it, currently up to 62% on the S&P 500 and up to 260% on volatility-controlled indexes. Performance triggers pay up to 8.00% in any year the index is flat or positive.
• A negative index year credits 0%, not a loss. Your account value cannot fall because the index fell, but rider charges and withdrawals can still reduce it.
• Caps, participation rates, spreads, and triggers reset at every contract anniversary. The rate you are quoted is guaranteed for the first year only, which makes a carrier’s renewal history as important as its opening rate.
• Most fixed index annuities run 7 to 10 years and allow a 10% annual free withdrawal after the first contract year.

How Fixed Index Annuity Crediting Actually Works

A fixed index annuity is a fixed annuity, not an investment. You are not in the market, you own no shares, and you receive no dividends. The insurance company takes your premium into its general account and owes you a contractual amount, and the index is only the formula it uses to calculate the interest it credits.

Here is where the money actually goes. The carrier invests the bulk of your premium in investment-grade bonds so that the bond interest alone restores your principal by the end of the term. Whatever is left over, usually a small percentage, becomes the options budget, and the carrier spends it buying call options on the index.

That options budget is the entire story of your cap rate. When Treasury yields1 are high, the bond side needs less of your premium to guarantee principal, which leaves more money to buy upside, so caps rise. When yields fall or options get expensive because volatility2 is high, the budget buys less upside and caps fall.

The 0% floor and what it costs you

Because the carrier only ever owns options, and an option can expire worthless but cannot go below zero, the worst outcome in any crediting period is that you credit nothing. That is the 0% floor. It is not an insurance rider you pay for separately, it is a structural consequence of how the contract is built.

The cost of the floor is the ceiling. In a year the index returns 22% and your cap is 13.00%, you keep the cap and the carrier keeps the rest. In a year the index falls 19%, you credit zero and the index investor absorbs the loss, which is precisely the trade you agreed to.

The Four Crediting Formulas

Every fixed index annuity uses one of four formulas to turn an index move into interest, and a single contract usually offers several of them at once. You allocate your premium across the strategies you want, and you can usually reallocate at each contract anniversary. The crediting explorer above runs all four side by side at any index return you choose.

Cap rate

The carrier credits the index gain up to a stated maximum. With a cap of 13.00%, a 6% index year credits 6%, a 30% index year credits 13.00%, and a negative year credits 0%. Cap rates are the most common structure and the easiest to compare across carriers, which is why our rankings lead with the plain S&P 500 1-year point-to-point cap.

Participation rate

Instead of a ceiling, the carrier credits a stated share of the index gain. At today’s best S&P 500 participation rate of 62%, a 10% index year credits 6.20%. On the S&P 500 a participation rate usually loses to a good cap, because the cap only bites in the biggest years.

Participation rates get interesting on volatility-controlled indexes, where they currently reach 260% on the Momentum index. A participation rate above 100% is not a mistake and it is not free money. It sits on an index engineered to hold volatility near a target, which mechanically dampens the size of the moves it is participating in.

Spread, sometimes called a margin

The carrier subtracts a fixed percentage from the index return and credits whatever is left. At today’s lowest spread of 1.00%, a 10% index year credits 9.00%, and a 0.5% index year credits 0.00% because the spread swallows it. A spread hurts most in small positive years and matters least in large ones, which makes it the mirror image of a cap.

Spreads are rare on plain benchmark strategies. In our current catalog every spread strategy sits on a volatility-controlled index, which is why the spread figure in the stat strip at the top of this page is labelled separately from the standard cohort.

Performance trigger

A trigger pays one declared rate in any year the index finishes flat or higher, no matter by how much. At a 8.00% trigger, an index that gains 0.4% credits 8.00%, and an index that gains 28% also credits 8.00%. A negative year credits 0%.

Triggers are the best-performing formula in choppy, barely-positive markets and the worst in sustained bull runs. Nobody knows which of those they are about to get, which is the honest argument for splitting a premium across more than one strategy.

The four formulas at today’s rates

Illustrative mechanics at today’s best rate for each formula, applied to a hypothetical one-year index move. The cap, participation, and trigger rows use S&P 500 1-year point-to-point strategies with no strategy fee. The spread row uses a volatility-controlled index, because no spread strategy on a plain benchmark index exists in our catalog today, and that index does not move like the S&P 500. Not a projection or a quote.

How Often the Index Gets Measured

The formula is only half the design. The crediting term decides how many times the index is looked at and when your gains lock in, and two contracts with the same cap can behave very differently because of it.

Annual point-to-point compares the index on your contract anniversary to its value one year earlier. It is the cleanest structure, it locks a gain in every year, and it is the term our rankings use because it is the one every carrier files.

Two-year and three-year point-to-point measure once over a longer window, usually at a much higher cap. You give up annual lock-ins in exchange for that cap, and a crash in the final month of the term can erase two good years inside it.

Monthly sum caps each positive month at a low number, often 2% to 3%, counts every negative month in full, then adds the twelve results. It can beat annual point-to-point in a steady grinding advance, and one bad month can wipe out the whole year.

Monthly average averages the index across the twelve month-end readings and credits the change from your starting value to that average. It smooths a volatile year and it badly underperforms a year that does most of its work in the fourth quarter.

Benchmark Indexes vs Volatility-Controlled Indexes

Roughly half of the strategies in the table above track a public benchmark you can look up: the S&P 500, the Nasdaq-100, or the Russell 2000. The rest track a proprietary index built for the annuity market, usually with a volatility target in its name, such as a 5% ER or a risk-control series.

Volatility-controlled indexes shift between equities and bonds or cash to hold realized volatility near a fixed target. Because a low-volatility index is cheaper to buy options on, the carrier can offer an uncapped participation rate or a small spread instead of a cap. That looks generous on paper and it is being applied to an index designed to move less.

Neither type is better. They are different, and comparing an uncapped 100%-plus participation rate on a volatility-controlled index against a 13.00% cap on the S&P 500 as though they were the same offer is the most common mistake buyers make. Our rankings group strategies by index and crediting term before ranking them so the comparison stays honest, and volatility-controlled strategies are shown for reference rather than mixed into the standard cohorts.

What the 0% Floor Does Not Protect

The floor protects your account value from index losses. It does not make the contract free, and three things can still take your balance down.

• Rider charges. An optional income rider typically costs 0.95% to 1.25% of the account value every year, and it is deducted in flat and down years too. Two consecutive 0% credits with a rider attached means your account value is lower than when you started.
• Withdrawals. Money you take out is money that is no longer being credited, and anything above the free-withdrawal allowance triggers a surrender charge3 during the surrender period.
• Carrier failure. The guarantee is only as good as the insurer behind it. State guaranty association coverage4 is a backstop with a per-carrier limit, not a substitute for buying from a financially strong company.

Inflation belongs on that list too, in a softer way. A string of 0% years preserves your dollars and quietly costs you purchasing power, which is the real reason a fixed index annuity works better as one piece of a retirement plan than as the whole plan.

Fixed Index Annuity Carriers We Can Write

We are contracted with 90+ top annuity companies. Of those, 12 currently file fixed index annuity rates into our data feed, covering 139 products and every crediting strategy inside them. The table at the top of this page is that entire list, not a shortlist, and it is the same data our licensed producers quote from.

Financial strength is filterable in the table because it should be a decision you make, not one we make for you. We show the AM Best rating5 on every row, including the handful of carriers rated below A-, and for most retirees we recommend holding to A- or better with a Comdex score of 75 or higher. A carrier leading the table from below that line is not automatically a bad contract, but you should understand why its rate is higher before you sign one.

For a ranked walkthrough with products, pros, and cons, see our guide to the best fixed index annuity companies, or read the individual carrier reviews.

What Moves Fixed Index Annuity Rates

Treasury yields. Higher yields mean the bond side of the contract needs less of your premium to guarantee principal, which leaves a bigger options budget and higher caps. This is why fixed index annuity rates move broadly with the 10-year Treasury1.

Implied volatility. Options are priced off expected volatility2. When the market expects a rough ride, the same options budget buys less upside, so caps compress even if Treasury yields have not moved.

Competition and target margin. Carriers chasing market share accept thinner margins and lead the tables, sometimes by 100 to 200 basis points. That is a real advantage to the buyer and a reason to look at the carrier’s balance sheet rather than assuming the leader is simply being generous.

Renewal Rate Risk, the Number Nobody Quotes

Your cap is contractually guaranteed for the first contract year. After that the carrier may reset it at every anniversary, subject to a contractual minimum that is usually far below anything you would want to live with. A contract that opens at 13.00% can renew materially lower if yields fall.

There is no public database of renewal history, and it is not in the brochure. It is available from the carrier, and asking for five to seven years of renewal rates on the exact strategy you are buying is the single highest-value question in the whole process. A carrier that has held renewals close to its opening rates is a different proposition from one that leads with a headline number and cuts it in year two.

We pull that history on every fixed index annuity we place. Request a rate report and we will include it alongside the caps.

Fixed Index Annuity vs MYGA

A MYGA pays a known rate for the whole term. A fixed index annuity pays an unknown rate with a defined ceiling and a zero floor. Both protect principal, and neither is better in the abstract because they solve different problems.

A common structure is to split a deposit across both, using a laddered MYGA for the money that has a job and a date, and a fixed index annuity for the portion that can sit for ten years. See our best annuities for retirement guide for allocation frameworks, or compare today’s MYGA rates side by side.

Income Riders on a Fixed Index Annuity

Most fixed index annuities offer an optional income rider that converts the contract into guaranteed lifetime income later. The rider tracks a separate income account value that grows at a guaranteed roll-up rate until you switch income on, at which point an age-based payout factor is applied to the higher of your account value or your income value.

The income account value is not a real balance. You cannot withdraw it, annuitize it for a lump sum, or leave it to heirs, and it exists only to calculate a payment. Confusing it with your actual account value is the most common misunderstanding in this product category.

Riders cost roughly 0.95% to 1.25% a year, charged in every year including 0% credit years. They are worth it if you intend to turn income on, and they are a pure drag if you are buying for accumulation and plan to exit by lump sum or 1035 exchange. If you are comparing guaranteed income across carriers, our income rider calculator runs live carrier quotes.

How to Buy a Fixed Index Annuity

1. Decide the job. Growth, future income, or both. The answer determines whether you need a rider, which surrender period fits, and which crediting strategies are worth paying attention to.
2. Set a credit-quality floor before you look at rates. Pick your minimum AM Best rating first, then shop inside it. Doing it the other way around is how people talk themselves into a carrier they would not have chosen.
3. Compare within a strategy, not across strategies. A cap on the S&P 500 and an uncapped participation rate on a volatility-controlled index are not competing offers. Use the crediting explorer above to see what each would actually pay.
4. Ask for five to seven years of renewal history on the specific strategy you are buying.
5. Read the free-withdrawal provision and the surrender schedule. Most contracts allow 10% a year after year one. Some do not, and some only allow interest.
6. Check whether the contract has a market value adjustment and how it behaves if you surrender when rates have risen.

When you are ready, request a free fixed index annuity rate report. You will get a side-by-side comparison across the carriers that fit your state and age, with caps, renewal history, surrender schedules, and rider costs in one place, and you will work directly with a licensed My Annuity Store producer rather than a call center.

Fixed Index Annuity Rate FAQs