How we rank rates

Rates and product terms come from authoritative Australian lender sources, refreshed daily. Each ranked product carries a timestamp showing when its data was last verified, and historical snapshots stay in the index so price changes are auditable after the fact.

For every product we record headline rate, comparison rate, maximum LVR, repayment type, loan purpose, fixed-term length (where applicable), and feature flags (offset, redraw, extra repayments, cashback). That feeds the filters and the comparison tables across the site.

Rates that look broken get filtered out before they reach a results page. Examples: a published comparison rate lower than the headline rate (impossible by definition), or a product missing both LVR and comparison rate. These are typical signals of a stale or malformed source row; they would mislead users, not the broker.

When the index disagrees with a lender’s own current product page by more than 15 basis points (0.15%), the row opens for internal review. Discrepancies of 50bps or more are held for manual verification before re-publishing. The exclusion logic lives in committed source code and is auditable by the editorial team on demand.

Every ranked list on the site is a deterministic sort— same inputs, same order, every time. The default sort key for “cheapest” pages is the comparison rate ascending, the statutory true-cost metric that includes most fees. For purpose-specific pages we filter first (owner-occupier vs investor, P&I vs interest-only, fixed term, max LVR) and then apply the same sort.

No commercial filtering.No lender pays to be higher in the sort. No lender is excluded from the index because they don’t advertise. If a product has a comparison rate that beats the alternatives at the configured filter, it appears at the top.

• Rate snapshots— refreshed daily. Each lender’s full home-loan catalogue is re-checked and any change becomes a new snapshot row, with the previous version timestamped as superseded.
• Cashback offers— curated registry refreshed manually when the broker confirms a change against the lender’s own T&Cs page; expiry-based hide is automatic.
• News & RBA coverage — daily editorial review of Australian mortgage and Reserve Bank developments, published as articles on the site.

Like every Australian comparison site, Ratesniffers is commercially funded — principally through advertising and through introduction fees paid by lenders when a referred enquiry settles a loan. That’s the standard market model. To keep those commercial relationships from corrupting the rankings:

• The sort logic is published (this page) and lives in committed source code that the editorial team can audit on demand.
• The promoted advertisement at the top of the rate-list pages is the only paid slot on the page and is always labelled “Advertisement” per ASIC RG 234. Its presence is independent of the sort — it doesn’t displace any organic ranking row.
• Editorial badges (e.g. “Editor’s pick”) are flagged separately and never reorder the underlying sort.
• Cashback amounts are shown only when verified against the lender’s own published T&Cs — not when an upstream source carries a number we can’t corroborate. As of this writing, only one major lender (ME Bank) has an active refi cashback; everyone else has pulled their offers, and the registry reflects that.

Spot a stale or incorrect rate? Email hello@ratesniffers.com.auwith the lender, the product name, and the rate as it appears on the lender’s own page (with a screenshot or URL). We re-verify and either close the discrepancy or refresh the snapshot manually.

• No paid placement. Lenders cannot pay to be ranked higher.
• No fake reviews.No AggregateRating schema until we have a first-party review system that meets Google’s structured-data guidelines.
• No fabricated rates. Every published rate maps back to a timestamped snapshot in our index; news articles citing rate moves link to the underlying lender announcement.