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Abstract The Oleander project, a program to monitor upper ocean currents between Bermuda and New Jersey, started in fall 1992, at about the same time modern satellite altimetry began. This study has two purposes. First, it revisits earlier work that compared Oleander estimates of sea level with altimetry. They agree well with respect to mean surface transport, but the Oleander velocity data exhibit significant temporal variability principally due to a varying Ekman layer. Second, we compare Oleander and altimetry‐derived transport estimates with a set of oceanographic products (OSCAR, GLORYS12, GREPV2, ARMOR3D) as well as with transport estimates from hydrography. All agree with respect to surface transport reflecting the dominant influence of altimetry. Upper ocean (0–1,000 m) transports agree poorly except for acoustic Doppler current profiler estimates, and dynamic height. The analysis products give completely different results with respect to total (surface to bottom) transport.