You’ve got several factors to consider in the process of opening a checking account, and often you can find better offerings at smaller community banks. Free web service CheckingFinder compares perks between community banking institutions to find the best one for you.

The main goals behind CheckingFinder is to help you find free checking accounts from banks with high interest rates, no minimum balance, ATM fee refunds, and other such perks—CheckingFinder will even help you open the account right away. Just punch in your zip code and you’ll get a list of local banks and credit unions, from which you can compare up to three banks side-by-side to decide which is best for you. If you want to do all your banking online, you can even open accounts in banks from other states.

The only catch is that certain banks may require other things, such as a certain number of transactions or some sort of direct deposit setup. In these cases, you can usually still have the free account, but you won’t necessarily get the interest rates displayed by CheckingFinder—you’ll just get the base rate, and probably have to pay your own ATM fees. So pay close attention—you don’t want to get stuck with a deal that isn’t the best. Barring this caveat, though, CheckingFinder could be a great way to see what smaller banks are able to offer.

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