Short-Term or Long-Term Deposit? September 2026 Reveals a Surprising Pattern
Assuming the standard deposit term on the Polish market is 12 months? We checked the current bank offers in the BankSorter database as of September 22, 2026, and the result might surprise you: not a single available deposit today has a 12-month term. The real terms on the market are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 36 months. This matters if you're saving toward a specific goal - instead of hunting for a “classic” 12-month deposit that doesn't currently exist, it's worth looking directly at the terms actually on offer.
Why there's no “classic” 12-month deposit right now
Banks in Poland are increasingly moving away from a single, universal 12-month term in favour of short welcome offers (1-2 months) and several mid-term variants (3-6 months), which are easier to adjust to the current interest-rate environment. For savers, this means the old plan of “deposit for a year and forget about it” needs to be replaced with a more deliberate choice among the terms actually available - and the rate differences between them can be substantial.
Short deposits (1-2 months): fast access to your money, but not always the top rate
Short deposits work well when you want to park cash without locking it up for long - say, while waiting for an investment opportunity or a planned large expense. In this group:
- Crédit Agricole Lokata Powitalna - 5.5% for 1 month, PLN 1,000-100,000
- VeloBank Lokata na Nowe Środki - 3.0% for 2 months, PLN 1,000-190,000
- VeloBank Lokata Mobilna na Start - 3.0% for 2 months, PLN 1,000-30,000
- Inbank Lokata standardowa - 2.6% for 1 month, PLN 5,000-50,000
Note that the 5.5% rate from Crédit Agricole is a welcome offer - it typically applies only to new funds and only for that short initial period. It's a very strong result against the whole database, but after one month the capital is back in your hands and you have to decide again what to do with it.
Mid-term deposits (3-6 months): where the best rates actually are today
This is the most interesting group in the whole line-up - and contrary to the intuition that “longer means more,” it's here, not on the longest available term, that you'll find the highest rates:
- Nest Bank Nest Lokata Witaj - 6.1% for 6 months, PLN 1,000-25,000
- VeloBank VeloLokata dla Aktywnych - 6.0% for 6 months, PLN 1,000-50,000
- Erste Bank Lokata na Powitanie - 4.5% for 3 months, PLN 1,000-50,000
- Inbank Lokata na Start - 4.5% for 6 months, PLN 1,000-50,000
- Santander Consumer Lokata Online Nowe Środki - 3.4% for 4 months, PLN 1,000-400,000
- UniCredit Lokata terminowa - 2.9% for 3 months, virtually no upper amount limit
Two 6-month offers - from Nest Bank (6.1%) and VeloBank (6.0%) - are today the highest rates in the entire BankSorter database, even higher than the best short-term offer. That's a clear signal banks are currently competing hardest for customers in the six-month bracket, not at the shortest or longest end.
The only long-term option: Raiffeisen Digital Bank, 36 months
If you're after a longer deposit, the database has exactly one such product: Raiffeisen Digital Bank Lokata dla Ciebie - 3.7% for 36 months, on deposits from PLN 100 to 1,000,000. That's a wide amount range and, in practice, the only choice if you want to lock funds away for longer than six months.
Here's the honest part: 3.7% annually over 36 months is clearly lower than the 6.0-6.1% offered today by the best 6-month deposits. In other words, in the current market offer, locking your money up for longer isn't being rewarded with a higher rate. Quite the opposite: choosing the 36-month Raiffeisen deposit instead of, say, renewing a 6-month Nest Bank deposit twice would cost you several percentage points of interest each year - on top of losing free access to your funds for three years without a rate premium to compensate.
Why “longer” doesn't always mean “more”
Banks generally set their highest rates where they want to pull in fresh capital quickly - hence the attractive promotions on short and medium terms. A 36-month deposit is a different kind of product: the bank uses it to fund longer-term operations and doesn't need to compete on rate, since the customer already knows there's only one offer in that segment to choose from. For you, that means a real risk: you tie up your liquidity for three years and get a lower rate in return than a deposit you could renew every six months, checking each time whether a better offer has appeared on the market.
What you should do
Before picking a deposit term, ask yourself: can I really go without touching this money for 36 months, or would I rather have a higher rate and the flexibility to renew every six months? For most savers, the answer today is a 6-month deposit - that's currently the bracket with the best rates on the market. Our full, up-to-date best deposits ranking lets you quickly compare rates, minimum amounts and terms for every offer listed above. If you'd rather browse every deposit product in one place, check the full deposits list in the BankSorter database.
Product data verified: September 22, 2026, source: BankSorter offer database.