Updated October 15, 2026
If you want to separate tax money, payroll, and operating cash without opening a stack of legal bank accounts, a handful of business banking platforms built exactly that. It's called a sub-account, sometimes a reserve or an envelope, and it lives inside one main account.
Which business bank accounts offer sub-accounts for budgeting?
Rho, Bluevine, Novo and Found offer sub-accounts, while Relay, Mercury and Baselane give you more full accounts instead. Rho lets you add checking sub-accounts for payroll, taxes and other uses, each with its own account number, with no limit on how many.
Best for: startups that want unlimited sub-accounts with their own account numbers, plus cards and bill pay on one banking platform.
Which structure is better depends on what you are separating and why.
Best for, by what you need:
What you need | Best fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
Unlimited sub-accounts, plus banking and cards in one platform for an incorporated startup | Add checking sub-accounts for payroll, taxes and other uses, each with its own account number, with no limit on how many. No monthly, per-user or minimum-balance fees, and $0 for domestic ACH and wires. Corporate cards earn up to 1.25% Cashback on the Rho Corporate Card with Daily Terms (terms apply). Rho is a banking platform built for US-incorporated businesses. | |
Budgeting buckets that stay free | Novo | Reserves are sub-balances inside your checking account, with a $0 monthly fee and no minimum balance. |
A dedicated account number per bucket | Bluevine | Each sub-account gets its own account number. Standard allows up to 5, Plus up to 10, Premier up to 50. |
Named buckets you can pay from directly | Found | Found describes its sub-accounts as a way to manage cash flow and pay directly from them, with no monthly account maintenance fees. |
Fully separate accounts, each with its own account number | Relay and Mercury | Relay lets you open 20 checking accounts on Starter and Grow and 50 on Scale. Mercury lets you open up to 100 checking and 100 savings accounts. |
Landlords tracking cash by property | Baselane | Unlimited property-specific accounts, with no monthly account maintenance fees or minimums. |
Every provider above builds one of three things. The next section shows how to pick.
Internal buckets, separate account numbers or multiple accounts: how to choose
Ask what needs to happen to the money: just be tracked, be paid into directly, or be held apart completely?
Internal buckets inside one account. You label money "taxes" or "payroll" and the dashboard tracks each balance. There is one account number, so nobody can pay into a bucket directly. Best when you want a visual split and nothing more. Novo Reserves works this way. The cost is the lowest of the three: one account, one statement.
Sub-accounts with their own account numbers. The bucket can receive payments on its own. Best when a client, tenant or vendor should pay into a specific bucket. Rho and Bluevine sub-accounts work this way. The cost is more account numbers to keep track of.
Multiple full accounts. Separate checking accounts, each with its own account number. Best when you want hard separation and are fine managing more accounts. Relay, Mercury and Baselane work this way. The cost is more statements and more reconciliation at tax time.
A few situations change the answer:
A startup with one entity. You likely need fewer buckets than you think. Start with the fees, cards and who can access what, then add structure when a real need shows up. For the wider field, see best business banks for small businesses.
More than one legal entity. Separate legal entities usually keep separate accounts, so buckets inside one account will not cover them.
Tax money you do not want to touch. Any bucket or separate account works. The point is that it is out of sight, not which feature name the provider uses.
Agencies, ecommerce sellers and nonprofits. Each tends to track money by client, channel or fund. Rho's guides to business bank accounts for agencies, business bank accounts for ecommerce and bank accounts for nonprofits cover each case.
Can a business have multiple bank accounts?
Yes. A business can hold more than one bank account, at one bank or several. Providers like Relay and Mercury are built around opening more full accounts, one per purpose.
Best business bank accounts for Profit First
Any of the three structures can hold Profit First. The method splits every deposit across accounts for income, profit, owner's pay, taxes and operating expenses, so pick by how many account numbers you want to manage.
What is a sub-account, actually?
A sub-account is a sub-division of cash inside your business checking account, built for budgeting rather than for legal separation.
You move money into buckets labeled "taxes" or "payroll" or "Q4 marketing." The bank's dashboard tracks the balance in each one separately from your main spending balance.
The money never leaves your bank. It's not a new legal account with its own tax ID or ownership structure.
It's an accounting layer the bank built on top of one account, so you can see at a glance how much cash is actually free to spend versus how much is already earmarked.
This is the same idea behind "envelope budgeting," a personal-finance method that predates business banking by decades. Novo, Bluevine and Found offer a digital version of the envelope system.
Relay, Mercury and Baselane take the other route. They let you open more full accounts and use each one as its own envelope.
Sub-account vs. multiple checking accounts: what's actually different
Here's the distinction that actually matters, and it's mostly about account numbers.
A true sub-account, like Novo's Reserves, shares the parent account's routing and account number. It's not a separately addressable account.
Money inside it is still, from the bank's perspective, sitting in one account with internal labels on top.
Opening multiple full checking accounts, which is Relay's and Mercury's model, gives you a separate account number for each one. Each shows up separately on a bank statement.
Rho and Bluevine sit in between. Each sub-account gets its own account number but shares the parent account's routing number.
That's useful if you want to hand a vendor a specific account number for invoice payments, without opening a fully separate account.
None of this changes what the money can do. It changes how visible and how separately trackable each bucket is.
At-a-glance comparison
Provider | Sub-accounts or accounts allowed | Cost | Structure | What they call it | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Rho | Unlimited checking sub-accounts | No monthly, per-user or minimum-balance fees on business checking | One primary checking account plus checking sub-accounts, each with its own account number and a shared routing number | Checking sub-accounts | Startups that want unlimited sub-accounts with their own account numbers, plus cards and bill pay on one platform |
Novo | Multiple Reserves inside one checking account | $0 monthly fee and no minimum balance | Buckets inside one account, sharing the parent account's routing and account number | Reserves | Budgeting inside one account, no per-bucket account numbers needed |
Bluevine | Standard: 5. Plus: 10. Premier: 50 | Standard $0/month. Plus $30/month. Premier $95/month | Sub-accounts, each with its own account number and the same routing number | Sub-accounts | A dedicated account number per bucket, for routing specific payments |
Found | Sub-accounts | No monthly account maintenance fees | Sub-accounts you can pay directly from | Sub-accounts | Named buckets you can pay from directly |
Relay | 20 checking accounts on Starter and Grow, 50 on Scale | Starter $0/month. Grow $30/month | Separate checking accounts, each with its own account number | Individual checking accounts | Fully separate accounts rather than internal buckets |
Mercury | Up to 100 checking and 100 savings accounts | No additional cost to open extra accounts | Separate accounts, each with its own unique account number | Additional checking and savings accounts | Fully separate accounts, each with its own account number |
Baselane | Unlimited property-specific accounts | No monthly account maintenance fees or minimums | Separate property-specific accounts | Property-specific accounts | Landlords and real estate investors tracking cash per property |
Now that you know the mechanics, here's how each provider actually builds it.
The providers, one at a time
Rho checking sub-accounts
Rho gives you one primary checking account, and you can add checking sub-accounts alongside it. Use one for payroll, one for taxes and one for a project, and each gets its own account number.
Key features:
Add checking sub-accounts for payroll, taxes and other uses, with no limit on how many.
Each sub-account has its own account number and can receive incoming payments directly.
Create one in the Rho app.
Corporate cards, expense management and free bill pay run on the same platform as your checking.
Pricing: No monthly, per-user or minimum-balance fees on business checking, and $0 for domestic ACH and wires.
Who it's for: US-incorporated startups that want as many sub-accounts as they need, each with its own account number, with cards and bill pay on one banking platform.
Novo Reserves
Novo built its sub-account feature, called Reserves, directly into its business checking account. It's the simplest version of the feature covered here: Reserves are sub-balances inside your checking account, with rules for routing a share of each deposit into them.
Key features:
Reserves are sub-balances inside your checking account, not separate accounts.
Reserves share the parent account's routing and account number.
Rules can route a share of each deposit into a Reserve.
Pricing: $0 monthly fee and no minimum balance.
Pros:
Free: $0 monthly fee and no minimum balance.
Cons:
No dedicated account number per Reserve, so you can't hand one out for someone to pay into directly.
Who it's for: Solo founders and small teams who want a clean visual split between spendable cash and money already earmarked, without needing separate account numbers for any of it.
Bluevine sub-accounts
Bluevine's sub-accounts scale with its checking plan tiers, and each one gets its own account number even though they all share the same routing number. That makes them usable for more than internal labeling.
Key features:
Standard plan: up to 5 sub-accounts. Plus: up to 10. Premier: up to 50.
Each sub-account has its own account number, so you can route a specific payment, like rent from a specific client, straight into the right bucket.
Debit cards per sub-account with spend limits, plus automatic transfer rules.
Pricing: Standard $0/month. Plus $30/month. Premier $95/month.
Pros:
The free Standard plan still gets 5 sub-accounts, more than most businesses need to start.
Dedicated account numbers per bucket, useful for directing specific incoming payments.
Cons:
Needing more than 10 sub-accounts means moving to Premier at $95/month.
Shared routing number means these aren't fully independent accounts if you need that level of separation.
Who it's for: Businesses that want more buckets than Novo offers, with real account numbers attached, and that are fine scaling into a paid tier as the number of buckets grows.
Found
Found offers sub-accounts, which it calls Pockets, as part of its small business banking platform. Its page describes them as sub-accounts for easy cash flow management.
Key features:
Sub-accounts for easy cash flow management.
Pay directly from your sub-accounts.
Banking services provided by Lead Bank, Member FDIC.
Pricing: No monthly account maintenance fees.
Who it's for: Small business owners who want named buckets they can pay from directly, with no monthly account maintenance fees.
Relay
Relay doesn't brand this feature as sub-accounts. Its approach is simpler to describe: open more full checking accounts, each with its own account number.
Key features:
20 checking accounts per business on Starter and Grow, 50 on Scale.
Each account has its own account number and can send and receive money directly.
Pricing: Starter $0/month. Grow $30/month.
Pros:
Full account independence: each account has its own account number, so a client or vendor can pay into the right one.
No separate bucket tier to climb: Starter and Grow both allow 20 accounts.
Cons:
Managing 20 separate account numbers and statements is more operational overhead than a single dashboard with internal buckets.
Who it's for: Agencies and teams who want real account-level separation, not just visual budgeting labels, and don't mind the extra accounts showing up as separate lines everywhere.
Mercury
Mercury's route to the same goal is more full accounts: open as many checking and savings accounts as you need, and use each one as a budgeting category.
Key features:
Up to 100 checking accounts and 100 savings accounts, each with its own unique account number.
No additional cost to open extra accounts.
Pricing: No additional cost to open extra accounts.
Pros:
The account cap (100 of each type) is high enough that almost no business would hit it.
Every account is a full, independent account, useful if you want hard separation rather than internal labels.
Cons:
More accounts means more statements and more reconciliation work at tax time.
Who it's for: Businesses that are already comfortable managing multiple full bank accounts.
Baselane
Baselane built its accounts specifically for landlords and real estate investors tracking income and expenses property by property, which is a different use case from the general small-business budgeting the other providers target.
Key features:
Unlimited property-specific accounts for all your entities.
Built for multi-property owners, with a separate account for each property.
Pricing: No monthly account maintenance fees or minimums. Banking services provided by Thread Bank.
Pros:
No limit on how many properties or buckets you can track, which matters once a portfolio grows past a handful of units.
No monthly account maintenance fees or minimums.
Cons:
The feature is built around the property use case specifically; a business with no real estate to track gets less out of the property-level framing.
Who it's for: Landlords and real estate investors who need per-property cash tracking, not general small-business budgeting.
Which one fits your business
Rho: US-incorporated startups that want unlimited checking sub-accounts, each with its own account number, plus no monthly, per-user or minimum-balance fees and cards in one platform.
Novo: the simplest version of this, with no dedicated account numbers per bucket needed. Reserves are free.
Bluevine: more buckets with real account numbers attached. Sub-accounts scale from free up through Premier as your needs grow.
Found: named buckets you can pay from directly, with no monthly account maintenance fees.
Relay: fully independent accounts, each with its own account number. 20 checking accounts on Starter and Grow, 50 on Scale.
Mercury: several fully separate accounts. Up to 100 checking and 100 savings accounts.
Baselane: built for tracking rental properties specifically. Unlimited property-specific accounts, not general business budgeting.
Still comparing? See business bank accounts that offer sub-accounts and more or compare business bank accounts.
If you are an incorporated startup and want no monthly, per-user or minimum-balance fees with cards in one place, see how Rho business banking works. Rho serves US-incorporated businesses, so have your entity documents and EIN ready.
FAQs
Rho, Bluevine, Novo and Found offer sub-accounts, and Relay, Mercury and Baselane give you more full accounts instead. Rho and Bluevine give each sub-account its own account number, Novo's Reserves share the parent account's routing and account number, and Relay lets you open 20 checking accounts on Starter and Grow and 50 on Scale.
Rho has no limit on checking sub-accounts and charges no monthly, per-user or minimum-balance fees on business checking, with cards in the same platform.
Yes. Rho gives you one primary checking account, and you can add checking sub-accounts for payroll, taxes and other uses, each with its own account number, with no limit on how many. You can create one in the Rho app.
No. Rho charges no monthly, per-user or minimum-balance fees on business checking, and $0 for domestic ACH and wires. Foreign-currency transfers carry a 1% fee.
US-incorporated businesses. Rho does not serve sole proprietors.
A business checking account from a provider that builds buckets or extra accounts into the product. Rho, Bluevine, Novo and Found offer sub-accounts. Relay, Mercury and Baselane let you open more full accounts instead.
A sub-account is a division of cash inside your main business checking account, used to earmark money for a specific purpose like taxes, payroll, or a project, without opening a new legal bank account. Novo (Reserves), Bluevine and Found all offer this. The money stays inside your existing account; the bank's dashboard just tracks each labeled portion separately from the rest.
A sub-account typically shares your main account's routing number, and sometimes its account number too, as with Novo's Reserves. Opening multiple full checking accounts, which is Relay's and Mercury's approach, gives each one its own account number and behaves like an independent account.
Rho and Bluevine split the difference: each sub-account gets its own account number but shares the parent's routing number.
Yes. A single LLC can hold more than one business bank account, at one bank or across several. That's the route Relay and Mercury take: rather than building an internal bucket, they let you open more full accounts under the same business.
Usually not. Separate legal entities usually keep separate accounts, so a bucket inside one account will not cover a second entity.
Yes, for most businesses. A dedicated account for recurring bills means you can see at a glance whether the money is already committed. A bucket inside one account does the same job, as long as you do not spend from it.
Only if the bucket has its own account number. Buckets inside one account, like Novo's Reserves, share the parent account's routing and account number, so money has to land in the main account first. Sub-accounts with their own numbers, like Rho's and Bluevine's, and separate full accounts, like Relay's or Mercury's, can receive payments directly.
Often, yes. Novo's Reserves come with a $0 monthly fee and no minimum balance. Found has no monthly account maintenance fees. Bluevine's Standard plan is $0/month, Plus is $30/month and Premier is $95/month. Relay's Starter plan is $0/month and Grow is $30/month. Baselane has no monthly account maintenance fees or minimums.
It depends on the provider. Rho gives each checking sub-account its own account number, and all of them share the primary account's routing number. Novo's Reserves share the parent account's routing and account number entirely. Bluevine's sub-accounts each get their own account number but share one routing number. Relay and Mercury give each account its own account number.
Rho has no limit on checking sub-accounts. Bluevine allows 5 on Standard, 10 on Plus and 50 on Premier. Relay allows 20 checking accounts on Starter and Grow and 50 on Scale. Mercury allows up to 100 checking and 100 savings accounts. Baselane allows unlimited property-specific accounts.