Rho vs Novo: Which Fits Your Business?

Rho vs Novo at a Glance

Rho and Novo both offer business checking accounts with no monthly fees, but they're built for different businesses at different stages. Here's how the core features line up.

Rho's cashback, fee, and FDIC figures above trace to CONFIRMED rows in Rho Claims.md. Novo's figures come from novo.co's own checking, credit card, and invoicing pages.

Which One Is Actually Built for You? (Stage, Not a Scorecard)

Before getting into the details, it's worth naming the actual question here. This isn't "which bank is better." It's "which bank matches where your business is right now."

Novo is built for the earliest stage: a freelancer, a solo founder, or a sole proprietor who wants a checking account that works on day one with no complexity. It serves that stage well, including businesses that haven't incorporated at all.

Rho is built for what comes after. Once a business is incorporated and its checking, cards, bill pay, and savings need to work together as spend and balances grow, that's the problem Rho is solving for.

Neither framing makes the other product wrong. It just means the right answer depends on where your business actually is, not on a single winner.

Fees and Pricing: Zero-Fee Checking on Both Sides

Here's the good news for anyone comparing the two: neither charges you just to have an account open.

Rho charges $0 in monthly fees, per-user fees, or minimum-balance fees, and $0 for domestic ACH, wire, and check transactions. There's no subscription fee, no annual card fee, and no per-card fee either.

Novo Business Checking also carries no monthly fees, no minimum balance requirement, and no transaction limits, according to novo.co. Novo also automatically reimburses third-party ATM fees at the end of each month, up to $7.

So on pure account fees, both platforms land in the same place: free checking with no minimum balance to maintain. The differences show up elsewhere, in what each account is built to do once money is moving through it.

Business Credit Cards: Rewards, Eligibility, and Requirements

Both companies offer a business credit card with no annual fee, but the path to earning cashback works differently on each.

Rho Platinum cardholders earn up to 2% Cashback Rewards (terms apply) on up to $1 million in eligible annual card spend. Rho Platinum is a status, not a separate paid plan, with no fee and no separate application to reach it.

Above the $1M cap, cashback continues to accrue at the standard rate. Rho also doesn't require a personal guarantee, a consumer credit report, or a personal credit score pull to get a Rho Corporate Card.

The Novo Business Credit Card, per novo.co, offers up to 2% cash back on purchases for accounts with a $5,000 or higher checking balance, and 1% for balances under that.

It has no annual fee and is available to existing Novo checking customers. Eligibility is determined after account opening based on account activity and financial profile, rather than granted automatically to every applicant.

What that means in practice: Rho's cashback rate isn't tied to your checking balance, and its cap is measured in spend, not in what you keep sitting in the account. Novo's card rewards a higher balance directly, which can suit a business that's building up cash reserves early on.

FDIC Coverage and Where Your Deposits Sit

This is one of the clearer structural differences between the two, and it matters more as a business's cash balance grows.

Novo's banking services are provided by Middlesex Federal Savings, F.A., a single FDIC-member bank, with deposits insured up to $250,000, the standard FDIC limit for one bank.

Rho Business Savings works differently. It sweeps deposits across a network of over 400 FDIC- and NCUA-insured institutions, providing capacity for up to $75,000,000 in FDIC coverage per entity.

No single bank in the network holds more than $250,000 of any one customer's funds.

Here's the catch worth understanding: that $75 million figure is sweep capacity, not a contractually guaranteed limit. It reflects the network's current capacity to spread deposits across many banks, not a fixed number Rho promises in writing.

FDIC insurance coverage is only available to protect you against the failure of an FDIC-insured bank that holds your deposit. It does not protect you against the failure of the company managing that relationship, whether that's Rho, Novo, or any other fintech.

What that means for your business: for a balance well under $250,000 at any given time, this distinction matters less. For one holding significantly more, it's a real structural difference between the two.

Invoicing, Bill Pay, and Software Built Into the Account

Novo has built out its checking account with software most early-stage businesses would otherwise pay for separately.

Novo Invoices comes free with a Novo checking account: no monthly fee, no cap on the number of invoices sent, and no per-invoice charge.

Novo also offers native integrations with QuickBooks Online, Xero, Stripe, Shopify, and Square, so it plugs directly into tools a lot of small businesses and e-commerce sellers already use.

Novo Reserves is another built-in feature: it lets a business create up to 20 "buckets" inside its checking account, for taxes, payroll, or anything else, with automatic rules to route a percentage of incoming funds into each one.

Rho's answer to built-in software is Bill Pay, which is free to Rho customers with no software cost. It's a different piece of the workflow, paying vendors rather than sending invoices or splitting incoming cash, so the two aren't a direct swap for each other.

Which one matters more to you depends on whether your business is mostly sending invoices and organizing incoming cash, or mostly paying bills and managing outgoing spend.

Who Novo Serves That Rho Doesn't (Sole Proprietors and Solo Founders)

This is worth stating plainly because it's the single biggest eligibility difference between the two.

Rho requires a business to be incorporated. Sole proprietorships aren't served at all, no exceptions.

Novo serves sole proprietors outright. A sole proprietor without employees can open a Novo business checking account using an SSN instead of an EIN, according to novo.co's own account requirements page.

That makes Novo a real option for freelancers, consultants, and solo operators who haven't incorporated yet and may not need to.

It's a genuinely strong fit for that stage: fee-free checking, free invoicing, and integrations that just work, without the overhead of forming an entity first.

How to Decide Between Rho and Novo

Here's a practical way to think about it, based on where your business actually stands today.

Novo is likely the better starting point if:

• You're a sole proprietor or haven't incorporated yet

• You're a solo founder or freelancer who mainly needs simple checking plus invoicing

• You already use QuickBooks, Xero, Stripe, Shopify, or Square and want native integrations

• Your checking balance and card spend are both still modest

Rho is likely the better fit if:

• Your business is already incorporated

• You need checking, cards, bill pay, and savings working together as one system

• Your card spend is growing toward, or past, six figures a year

• You're holding, or expect to hold, more cash than a single bank's $250,000 FDIC limit comfortably covers

Some businesses will genuinely start on Novo and move to Rho later, once they incorporate and their banking needs get more complex. That's not a failure of either product.

It's just the two platforms doing what they're each built to do, for the business that's in front of them at that moment.