The Terms of Credit Card Plans (TCCP) survey is run by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Bureau is required by law (the Truth in Lending Act) to collect credit-card price and availability information from a sample of issuers and report it to Congress and the public. It’s released twice a year, with a data dictionary.
Who’s in it
| Group | Count | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| 25 largest issuers | 25 | Chase, Capital One, Citi, Bank of America, Amex, Synchrony, Navy Federal |
| Additional issuers | 125+ | regional banks and credit unions, distributed geographically |
| Total | 150+ | banks and credit unions of all sizes |
The latest release we parsed contains 663 card products across 195 institutions — 171 of which reported a usable purchase APR.
What it collects
For each card product the survey records the purchase APR (overall and by credit tier), introductory/promo APR, balance-transfer and cash-advance APRs, a long list of fees, rewards, whether it’s a secured card, and where it’s available. Our data dictionary explainer breaks down what each term means.
Why it’s a uniquely good source
Most “best card” sites show you marketing offers. The TCCP survey shows the regulator-collected terms — the same numbers, but standardized and comparable across 150+ issuers, including the small banks and credit unions that comparison sites usually ignore. That’s how the CFPB was able to document the 8-to-10-point gap between large and small issuers.
How CardTerms uses it
We download the official survey file, parse it into committed data, and aggregate it to one page per issuer, plus hubs for average APR and APR by credit score. Full details are on our methodology page. These are surveyed terms, not offers.
Sources
CFPB Terms of Credit Card Plans survey (US public domain). National average APR context from the Federal Reserve G.19.