Deposits · August 2026
Betterment builds a strong llms.txt but keeps routing numbers behind login
An AI agent ran five ordinary deposits tasks on the public pages of Betterment and scored what each page delivered.
Run 6 August 2026 · five tasks · public pages, logged out · Fintech
62/100
Mystery Agent score
Deposits · rank 9 of 25
Savings rate
92Served as text
Checking comparison
78Partly served
Fee schedule
82Served as PDF
Routing number
22Arrives after scripts
Application page
35Partly served
Summary
- Betterment's llms.txt sorts content by individual, employer, and advisor audience and points agents straight to its key pages.
- An agent read a dated Cash Reserve rate of 3.25% APY as of 12/12/2025, confirmed again in a formal legal disclosure.
- Checking fee terms agree across the marketing page, the help center, and the legal PDF, all showing no account or overdraft fees.
- Publishing the static ABA routing number on the existing help article would let agents answer this question without an account.
Task by task
Each task is scored out of 100 on completion, answer quality and how directly the answer was reached. Each note describes what the page delivered, with a link to the page the answer was found on.
Task 01Savings rateServed as text92 out of 100
The Cash Reserve page states a variable rate of 3.25% as of 12/12/2025, plus a 0.75% boost on balances up to $1M for new clients, stating the same base rate in a formal legal disclosure.
Task 02Checking comparisonPartly served78 out of 100
Betterment maps its single Checking product against Cash Reserve, its other deposit account, with both carrying no monthly fee or minimum, while Checking offers worldwide ATM fee reimbursement and Cash Reserve offers FDIC coverage up to $8M joint.
Task 03Fee scheduleServed as PDF82 out of 100
An 8-page legal PDF states in Section 5 that neither Betterment nor its bank partner nbkc will impose account fees, overdraft fees, or minimum balance requirements, a claim the help center page corroborates in plain HTML.
Task 04Routing numberArrives after scripts22 out of 100
A help article titled about checking account and routing numbers answers by directing the customer to log in and view the numbers inside the account, on a web browser or the mobile app.
Task 05Application pagePartly served35 out of 100
The getstarted page serves 12,609 visible characters describing an account-type menu, listing High-yield cash, Automated investing, Checking, and IRA options, though the page itself carries zero input fields at this step.
Betterment's llms.txt sorts content by individual, employer, and advisor audience, a real investment in the machine-readable page.
The application page
What the account opening page states to a reader that runs no scripts.
320,238Bytes delivered
12,609Characters of visible text
0Form fields in the first response
After scripts runWhat an applicant needs
Strengths and opportunities
What is working
- Betterment publishes a clear, dated APY figure as plain text on its Cash Reserve page and repeats it in a formal legal disclosure, giving an agent a reliable rate with no script dependency and a visible as-of date.
- Betterment's llms.txt file is genuinely well built. It sorts content by individual, employer, and advisor audience and links straight to the pages an agent needs, which is a real investment in the machine readable content.
- Checking account fee terms are stated consistently and plainly across three separate pages (marketing page, help center article, and legal PDF), all agreeing that there are no account fees, no overdraft fees, and full ATM and foreign transaction fee reimbursement.
Opportunities
- Checking and Cash Reserve routing numbers stay behind login. Publishing the static ABA routing number for Betterment Checking, issued by nbkc bank, on the existing help article would let agents answer this common question without an account.
- A single page or PDF labeled 'Fee Schedule' or 'Schedule of Fees,' separate from the full Terms and Conditions document, would let an agent confirm the complete fee list in one hop instead of reading a legal agreement end to end.
- The account-opening application page at /getstarted is a menu with no visible fields yet. A short, plain line describing what applicants will need next, such as identity verification, a funding source, or a minimum age, would set expectations before the multi-step flow begins.
- Because Betterment sells a single checking tier, a short published note or comparison chart against Cash Reserve, its nearest deposit-account relative, would remove ambiguity for any agent job written expecting two checking tiers.
Access
Every page the agent requested was delivered on the first attempt. An llms.txt file is published, which gives agent traffic a documented entry point.
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