Best Egg Review

Best Egg is an online lending platform that arranges fixed-rate personal loans of $2,000 to $50,000 over 36 to 60 months, at APRs of 6.99% to 35.99% as of September 2026. The loans are made by Cross River Bank or Column N.A., both FDIC-insured banks, and arranged and serviced by Marlette Funding. For a borrower who qualifies, it costs a fraction of the payday and high-cost installment loans reviewed elsewhere on this site. The trade-offs are an origination fee of up to 9.99%, a $2,000 minimum, and no service in four places: Iowa, Vermont, West Virginia, and DC.

Best Egg is a brand name, not a ranking: it is one of several mid-market lenders we review, and whether it is the right fit depends on your credit and how much you need. If you need a few hundred dollars by Friday, the $2,000 minimum rules it out; payday loan alternatives covers smaller options.

How Best Egg works

Best Egg is run by Marlette Funding, LLC (NMLS ID 1849194). Marlette arranges the loans, and the lender of record is Cross River Bank, a New Jersey chartered bank operating from its Wilmington, Delaware branch, or Column N.A. Both are Members FDIC. Marlette Servicing, LLC (NMLS ID 1849345) services the loans after they close.

The standard loan is unsecured, with a fixed rate, a fixed monthly payment, and a set payoff date. Best Egg also offers a secured loan with a homeowner discount: you pledge a lien on fixtures permanently attached to your home, such as built-in cabinets, light fixtures, and bathroom vanities. Best Egg says the house itself is not collateral and that the secured loan averages a 20% APR discount against its unsecured loan. If you default, the lien on those fixtures is what the lender can pursue, so read the security terms before you choose it.

If you already have a Best Egg loan, you can apply for a second one, but your total Best Egg balances cannot exceed $100,000.

Rates, fees, and what a loan really costs

Best Egg’s published range is 6.99% to 35.99% APR. The fees, from its personal loan disclosures:

Fee	Amount
Origination	0.99% to 9.99% of the loan amount, deducted from your proceeds; at least 4.99% on 4+ years
Returned payment	$15 if a payment does not process
Late payment	Not published; check your loan agreement
Prepayment	None; you can pay the loan off at any time without penalty

The origination fee is the cost to plan around, and the term changes it. A five-year loan carries a fee of at least 4.99%, so on a $10,000 loan over 60 months you receive at most $9,501 and repay the full $10,000 plus interest. Best Egg’s own examples: a 5-year $10,000 loan at 9.99% APR has 60 monthly payments of $201.81, and a 3-year $5,000 loan at 6.99% APR has 36 monthly payments of $152.83.

Here is what $10,000 costs at three interest rates, before the origination fee:

Interest rate	36 months: payment / total	60 months: payment / total
10%	About $323 / $11,616	About $212 / $12,748
20%	About $372 / $13,379	About $265 / $15,896
30%	About $425 / $15,283	About $324 / $19,412

These are our own amortization figures, not a quote. The longer term lowers the payment but costs more in total, and on Best Egg it also sets a higher fee floor. A 10% interest rate with a 4.99% fee over 60 months works out to about a 12.2% APR; the same rate with a 9.99% fee over 36 months is about 17.4%. Compare offers by APR, which includes the fee. How installment loan interest works explains why paying early saves money when there is no prepayment penalty.

Who qualifies

Best Egg does not publish a minimum credit score, minimum income, or minimum age. It says the term, amount, and APR it offers depend on your credit score, income, debt payment obligations, loan amount, credit history, and other factors, and that a longer term can carry a higher APR than its starting rate. Federal law requires it to collect your name, address, and date of birth, and it may ask for a driver’s license or other identity documents.

Checking your rate does not affect your credit score, so you can compare Best Egg’s offer with others before you accept one.

Applying and getting funded

You check your rate online, choose an offer, and complete verification. Best Egg says about half of its customers get their money the next day, and that after successful verification the money can be deposited within 1 to 3 business days, depending on your bank. For debt consolidation, Best Egg advertises a Direct Pay feature for paying off the debts you consolidate; if you use it, keep paying those accounts until each payoff posts.

Where Best Egg is available

Best Egg is not available in Iowa, Vermont, West Virginia, the District of Columbia, or US territories. Everywhere else, the minimum loan is $2,000, except in Massachusetts ($6,500), Ohio ($5,001), and Georgia ($3,001).

How Best Egg compares

Best Egg competes most directly with LendingClub, Upgrade, Upstart, and Avant. All five cap their APR in the mid-30s and charge an origination fee. Best Egg’s distinctive features are the fixture-secured homeowner loan and its fee floor on longer terms; LendingClub and Upgrade go longer, to 84 months, and LendingClub lends up to $75,000. Against branch lenders such as OneMain Financial and high-cost installment lenders such as OppLoans or NetCredit, Best Egg costs far less for anyone who qualifies. Bad-credit installment loans covers the options if you are declined.

Is Best Egg legit? Complaints and reputation

Yes, it is legitimate: a lending platform run by a licensed company, Marlette Funding, LLC, with loans made by two FDIC-insured banks and a published rate and fee range. We found no Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enforcement action against Best Egg or Marlette Funding. In a 2022 comment letter to California’s financial regulator, Marlette said it had helped banks deliver more than $18 billion of loans since March 2014. As with any lender, the details that matter are on your offer: the origination fee, the APR, and the late fee in your loan agreement.

What the CFPB complaint database shows

We pulled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s public complaint database for Marlette Funding, LLC, the company that answers complaints about the brand, on October 7, 2026. The CFPB publishes every complaint it forwards to a company, along with the issue the consumer selected and how the company responded, so the figures are a record of consumer-filed complaints, not findings of wrongdoing.

• 359 complaints in the twelve months ending September 30, 2026, up 6% from 338 the year before. Among the 17 online lenders we track, only LendingPoint (+2%) and RISE (down 18%) moved less, in a year when most of the group rose by a third or more.
• Credit reporting was the largest category at 134 (up from 130), led by “incorrect information on your report” (106) and “problem with a company’s investigation into an existing problem” (29).
• Personal loan complaints held steady at 102 (from 98). The issues were “charged fees or interest you didn’t expect” (27), “struggling to pay your loan” (18), “problem when making payments” (13), “problem with the payoff process at the end of the loan” (10), and “getting the loan” (9). The fee complaint lines up with the origination fee, which comes out of the loan proceeds before you see them.
• Debt collection rose from 62 to 79, led by “attempts to collect debt not owed” (26) and “took or threatened to take negative or legal action” (22). Complaints filed under the CFPB’s credit card category numbered 33, down from 46, and under vehicle loans 6, so the total covers more than personal loans.
• Relief was unusually common. 73 complaints closed with non-monetary relief and 11 with monetary relief, 84 in all or about 23% of the total, up from about 20% the year before. That share is second only to LendingPoint’s 39% among the 17 lenders, and well above the shares of about 1% or less that most of the group posts. 272 closed with explanation, meaning the company replied without offering relief, and 3 were still in progress. Among loan complaints alone, 17 of 102 closed with relief.
• 356 of 359 were answered on time.
• By state, California led with 47, then Florida with 40 and Texas with 34.

One caveat: Marlette Funding, LLC is the entity that answers complaints, but a borrower may have filed under Cross River Bank or Column N.A., the lender of record, so treat the count as a floor. If a problem is not resolved directly, you can file with the CFPB.

For how Best Egg’s record compares with 16 other online lenders over the same twelve months, see our CFPB complaints by lender report.

Bottom line

Best Egg is a legitimate, bank-funded personal loan for borrowers with fair to good credit who need $2,000 or more. The rate range is competitive and the secured homeowner option is unusual. The cost to watch is the origination fee, especially on a five-year term, where it is never less than 4.99%. Check your rate, then compare the APR and total of payments against at least one other lender before you accept.