An AI agent shopped for credit cards at 25 issuers. Here is what each site delivered.

Find the purchase APR, compare two cards, retrieve the full rates and fees disclosure, find the current welcome offer, and read the application page. Every run used public pages, logged out, reading exactly what each institution delivers.

Run 6 August 2026 · 25 institutions · 125 tasks · independent second pass on every score under 30

65Field average out of 100

82Highest score · Bilt Rewards

18/25Deliver complete rates and fees

20Average score on the application page

Summary

Card economics are openly published. APR ranges, annual fees and rewards terms reach an automated reader as text at most issuers.
Complete rates and fees disclosures are widely available, split evenly between plain text and public documents.
Welcome offers are stated clearly where they exist, and a third of the field states plainly that a card carries no consumer bonus.
Application pages are the one place the field converges, and two issuers already show what an open version looks like.

Credit Cards leaderboard

Every institution in the credit cards study, ranked by mean score across the five tasks. Select any institution for its full scorecard.

	Institution	APR	Compare	Terms	Offer	Apply	Mystery Agent score
1	Bilt RewardsFintech	90	90	88	90	50	82
2	SynchronyIssuer	92	88	88	78	55	80
3	Barclays USIssuer	90	88	92	90	18	76
4	ChaseIssuer	92	88	92	90	15	75
5	Wells FargoIssuer	92	90	90	90	15	75
6	Navy Federal Credit UnionCredit union	92	90	88	90	15	75
7	SchoolsFirst Federal Credit UnionCredit union	90	88	88	85	22	75
8	DiscoverIssuer	92	88	87	86	15	74
9	SoFiFintech	90	88	90	78	25	74
10	State Employees' Credit UnionCredit union	92	90	88	78	20	74
11	CitiIssuer	82	90	85	92	15	73
12	RobinhoodFintech	90	88	92	78	15	73
13	U.S. BankIssuer	82	88	91	85	15	72
14	UpgradeFintech	90	85	80	88	15	72
15	PetalFintech	90	90	88	78	15	72
16	PayPalFintech	90	60	90	80	20	68
17	Capital OneIssuer	90	90	50	92	15	67
18	American ExpressIssuer	70	88	87	25	18	58
19	Bank of AmericaIssuer	70	58	86	48	15	55
20	Apple CardFintech	90	65	25	78	15	55
21	ChimeFintech	88	87	45	25	15	52
22	AvantFintech	90	45	25	78	15	51
23	USAACredit union	58	45	62	20	34	44
24	Mission LaneFintech	15	85	12	22	15	30
25	PenFed Credit UnionCredit union	12	10	10	10	24	13

Where the field publishes

The same 25 institutions, read across the five tasks. Darker cells carry higher scores, so the vertical bands show which tasks the whole field publishes openly and which ones arrive after scripts run.

Score by task, every institution in the credit cards study

Ranked by overall score. Hover any cell for the detail.

Lower scoreHigher score

Average score by task

Mean across all 25 institutions in the credit cards study.

Average score by category

Mean of the institution scores within each category.

What the pattern shows

18 of 25Issuers state the purchase APR range as plain text on the card page itself.

18 of 25Issuers deliver the complete rates and fees disclosure, as text or as a public document.

2 of 25Application pages carry readable content before any script runs.

Card economics are the most openly published content in either study. APR ranges, annual fees and rewards terms are widely available as plain text.

Welcome offers follow the same pattern, and roughly a third of the field states clearly that a card carries no consumer bonus.

Application pages are the one place the card field converges. Most serve a page that assembles itself in the browser.

Read the report · Download the PDF · How the study works · Mystery Agent hub