The short answerBeefy is the practical choice for auto-compounding outside Ethereum: a fee of roughly 4.5% of harvested yield, vaults across more than twenty chains, and a per-vault safety score with published reasoning. Vault quality varies enormously across the long tail.
Best forAuto-compounding across many chains
Strategy disclosureweight 25%
8.0avg 8.0
Contract securityweight 25%
7.5avg 7.5
Net yieldweight 20%
8.0avg 7.4
Risk controlsweight 15%
7.5avg 7.5
Feesweight 15%
9.0avg 7.4
this service category average across 15Score = Σ mark × weight. Recommendable to most readers, with stated caveats. Methodology.
| Criterion | Mark | What we found | Source | Checked |
|---|
| Strategy disclosure | 8.0 | not sourced yet | not sourced yet | — |
| Contract security | 7.5 | not sourced yet | not sourced yet | — |
| Net yield | 8.0 | not sourced yet | not sourced yet | — |
| Risk controls | 7.5 | not sourced yet | not sourced yet | — |
| Fees | 9.0 | not sourced yet | not sourced yet | — |
What we liked, and what fell short
Liked- Low fee of around 4.5% on harvests
- Vaults on more chains than any competitor
- Publishes a per-vault safety score with its reasoning
Fell short- Vault quality varies enormously across the long tail
- Strategies on obscure chains get less scrutiny than the flagship ones
Why the marks landed where they did
Auto-compounding is mechanically simple and expensive to do yourself: harvesting rewards and reinvesting costs gas every time, which makes frequent compounding uneconomic for small positions. Beefy socialises that cost across all depositors in a vault and charges around 4.5% of the harvest for it.
The safety score
Each vault carries a rating covering the underlying protocol's audit status, the complexity of the strategy, whether the platform is battle-tested and how the asset is exposed. It is an honest attempt to grade its own products and it does distinguish genuinely: a stablecoin vault on Aave is not scored like a farm on an unaudited protocol on a small chain. Read it before depositing — it is the most useful thing on the page.
The long-tail problem
With hundreds of vaults across twenty-plus chains, many farm protocols nobody has audited seriously. Beefy's own contracts have held up, but a vault is only as safe as the protocol it farms, and depositors regularly ignore that distinction because the interface looks identical for both.
Fees and returns
Around 4.5% of yield harvested, among the lowest in the category, with no management fee. Displayed APYs include emissions, so check the composition — the base yield after emissions end is what persists.
Who should use it
Anyone farming on cheap chains who wants compounding without gas overhead. Stick to vaults with high safety scores on established protocols, and treat the exotic ones as speculation rather than yield.
FAQ
What does Beefy charge?+
Around 4.5% of harvested yield with no management fee, among the cheapest in the category.
Are Beefy vaults safe?+
Beefy's own contracts have a clean record, but each vault inherits the risk of whatever protocol it farms. The published safety score per vault is the right place to start.
Which chains does Beefy support?+
More than twenty, including BNB Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism and many smaller networks.
Why is the advertised APY different from what I earn?+
Displayed rates typically annualise recent performance including token emissions valued at harvest. Realised returns after selling those tokens are usually lower.
