What Is a Good Dividend Yield, and Which Stocks Pay Most?

The short answer. As of 27 July 2026, the highest-yielding companies we rate above 45/100 and above $2bn in market value are led by FSK at 21.32%. A yield is a ratio, not an income guarantee: it rises when the price falls, so the top of any yield table is partly a list of companies the market has marked down.

What counts as a good dividend yield?

There is no single number, but there are useful bands. Below 2% is a growth company that happens to pay something. Two to 4% is the range most established, profitable businesses sit in. Four to 6% usually means either a structurally high-payout sector — utilities, tobacco, REITs, some telecoms — or a company whose price has fallen. Above 8%, the market is usually saying it does not believe the dividend will survive, and it is right more often than not.

Which stocks pay the highest dividends right now?

Why a high yield is often a warning

Yield is dividend divided by price. A company can move up this table without changing its dividend by a penny, simply by having a bad year. That is why the screen above requires a quality rating: the unfiltered top of a yield table is mostly companies about to cut.

The test worth applying is whether the payout is covered — by earnings, and ideally by free cash flow. A dividend paid out of borrowing is a share buyback in reverse, and it ends the way you would expect.

What this cannot tell you

• Whether the dividend is safe. Coverage, debt maturities and the board's intentions decide that, and none of them are in a yield figure.
• What you will actually receive. Withholding tax on foreign dividends, and your own tax position, can take a substantial bite.
• Total return. A 6% yield on a share that falls 10% is a loss.

Educational information, not financial advice. Every figure on this page is read from the source filings when the page loads rather than written into the article, so what you are reading is today's data and not a snapshot of the day it was published.