Methodology

Every figure on this site comes from a source we can point to:

• Lenders’ open data feeds. Australian lenders publish their product and rate data through public, standardised open data feeds under the Consumer Data Right. We pull those feeds directly, every day, for every lender we track, so the figures on the board are the lenders’ own published numbers rather than estimates.
• The Reserve Bank’s own tables. The cash rate series on the rate history page comes from the RBA’s published statistical tables, not from news reports about them.

Product names, features and links come from each lender’s own published material. Where something is not published, we show a dash. We never invent a number to fill a gap.

Rows are ranked by advertised rate, lowest first. The advertised rate is the headline interest rate a lender publishes for the loan, and the figure the board shows and sorts on.

Every row also carries a comparison rate, which folds the loan’s known fees into a single number so two loans can be compared like for like. It is there on every row to check, but the advertised rate is what sets the order. When we say a product is the cheapest we track, we mean it has the lowest advertised rate on the board.

We currently track 194 owner-occupier home loan products from 31 lenders. We say “the lenders we track” rather than “every Australian lender”: the board covers the lenders whose published data we can read and verify, and it grows as we add more.

• Advertised and comparison rates are the lenders’ own published figures.
• Where a field is not published (a maximum LVR, for example), it shows as a dash rather than a guess.

The data is synced daily, and each figure carries the date we last read it. The board reflects the most recent successful sync, so if something looks stale, the date will tell you.

If a number looks wrong, tell us at hello@ratesboard.com.au. We will check it against the source and fix it.