How we sort and rank products

We compare products from multiple providers and order them so the results are useful. This page explains how that ordering works, when a commercial arrangement can affect it, and the limits of any comparison, so you’re never misled about what a ranking means.

How tables are ordered by default RG 234.190

Unless a table says otherwise, products are ordered on an objective product attribute, typically the interest rate or comparison rate, using the data sourced from each provider’s Consumer Data Right (CDR) feed. Most tables let you re-sort by other columns, and some curated tables use an editorial order chosen by our team to suit the table’s topic.

Products appear in a table because they are relevant to that table’s topic and to the filters applied to it. They are not suggestions or recommendations, and the order they appear in is not a ranking of how suitable they are for you. It is simply what is in the market at the moment, ordered on the attribute named at the top of the column. Changing the filters will surface further relevant products.

For clarity, where we have used the terms “lowest” or “best”, these relate solely to the rates of interest offered by the provider and not to any other factor. The application of these terms to a particular product is subject to change without notice if the provider changes their rates.

What a default order doesn’t tell you RG 234.190, 234.192

Where a table is ordered on a rate, the default is the lowest rate first, or the highest rate first where a higher rate is the better outcome for you, such as a savings account or a term deposit. Where a table is ordered on an estimated cost or repayment, it is the lowest first, calculated on the figures shown at the top of that page.

Where a table is put together by an editor rather than ordered automatically, the page says so, and the basis for that selection and order is set out in the methodology for that product type below.

When payment affects order RG 234.191–193

Some providers pay us to promote a product, or pay a fee for a click through to their site. A paid placement can affect where a product appears. For example, a product in a sponsored placement may sit above the default order. Wherever this happens we mark it with a “Sponsored Placement” tag so a paid position is never presented as if it were an unpaid result. Superannuation works differently: payment never changes the order on our superannuation hubs. See the superannuation methodology below.

See our advertiser & sponsored content disclosure and how we make money.

Two things every comparison leaves out RG 234.192, 234.194

Methodology by product type

The rules above apply everywhere on the site. What changes between product types is where the data comes from, what the table is sorted on before you touch it, and what is left out. Each comparison page links to its own section below.

Home Loans

Where the data comes from. Rates, fees and features come from each lender’s own Consumer Data Right Product Reference Data feed, covering both the banks and the non-bank lenders that publish under the CDR non-bank lending sector. We re-check every feed daily. Comparison rates are not calculated by us: they arrive already computed in the lender’s feed, against the standard example stated in the disclosure under each table.

What the default order is. Estimated monthly repayment, lowest first, calculated on the loan amount and term set at the top of the page. Repayment rather than rate, because a rate on its own does not tell you what a loan costs to hold, and every figure in that column responds to the amount and term you actually enter. Every column can be re-sorted, and the sort in force is shown in the header. Repayments are calculated on each loan’s advertised interest rate, with its comparison rate shown beside it as the guide to cost.

What we exclude. A product with no published rate cannot be ranked alongside one that has a rate, so it does not appear in the ordered list. A loan rate is not advertised without its comparison rate, so a loan whose lender publishes no comparison rate for its advertised rate is not shown until the lender publishes one, unless we choose to list it, with “Comparison rate not published” beside its rate. Where a loan is published at several rate types, this applies to each one separately. When a lender stops publishing a product in its feed we stop showing it, and we keep the record rather than deleting it. We also exclude products an editor has marked as withdrawn or not consumer facing.

On the main Home Loans page, the default view shows loans available to the whole market. Loans open only to members of a particular organisation or to a particular employer’s staff, and business and SMSF lending, are hidden from that view rather than removed: the page says how many are hidden, and the “Who can get this” filter or the “Show them” link brings them back.

How curated tables differ. A curated table is a subset chosen by an editor for a stated topic, in an order the editor set, and it can include a product that our filters would not have surfaced. It is still built from the same daily data, and any paid placement in it is labelled.

Personal Loans and Car Loans

Where the data comes from. The same CDR feeds as home loans. Car loans are not a separate feed: lenders publish them within their personal lending data, so our car loan comparison is the subset of those products the lender identifies as vehicle finance.

What the default order is. Estimated monthly repayment, lowest first, on the amount and term set at the top of the page, for the same reason as home loans. Many lenders price by risk and publish a range of rates rather than one rate. Where the rates a lender publishes for a loan are more than 0.5 percentage points apart, the table shows that range, sorts on the lowest rate in it and estimates the repayment at that lowest rate, and says so beside the estimate: the rate you are offered depends on your circumstances and may be higher. A loan published with both fixed and variable rates is listed once for each rate type, each on its own rates.

What we exclude. Products with no published rate, and products a lender has withdrawn from its feed. Some lenders quote a rate only after assessing an application, and a product with no published rate at all cannot be placed in a ranked table. As for home loans, a loan whose lender publishes no comparison rate for its advertised rate is not shown until it does, for each rate type separately, unless we choose to list it, with “Comparison rate not published” beside its rate. On the main Personal Loans and Car Loans pages, the default view shows loans available to the whole market. Loans open only to members of a particular organisation or to a particular employer’s staff, and business and commercial lending, are hidden from that view rather than removed: the page says how many are hidden, and the “Who can get this” filter or the “Show them” link brings them back.

One thing to know about the secured filter. Lenders do not publish a machine-readable secured or unsecured flag, so we read it from the product name as the lender publishes it. It is reliable for the great majority of products and it is not a substitute for the lender’s own terms.

How curated tables differ. As for home loans: an editor-chosen subset for a stated topic, in an editor-set order, built from the same daily data.

Credit Cards

Where the data comes from. Each issuer’s CDR Product Reference Data feed, re-checked daily. Cards do not carry a comparison rate, so none is shown.

What the default order is. Purchase rate, lowest first. Rate rather than fee, because the purchase rate is the figure that applies to a balance carried month to month, which is where a card actually costs money. Annual fee, interest free days and any rewards detail are their own columns and can be sorted on directly.

What we exclude. Cards an issuer has withdrawn from its feed. On the main Credit Cards page, the default view shows cards available to the whole market. Cards open only to members of a particular organisation or to a particular employer’s staff, and business and commercial cards, are hidden from that view rather than removed: the page says how many are hidden, and the “Who can get this” filter or the “Show them” link brings them back. Where an issuer publishes no annual fee row at all we show $0, which is what the absence of that row means in the standard, rather than leaving the column blank.

How curated tables differ. As above. Rewards and points comparisons in particular are editorial selections: the value of a points program depends on assumptions that no feed publishes, so those tables are chosen and ordered by an editor and say so.

Savings Accounts and Term Deposits

Where the data comes from. Each bank’s CDR Product Reference Data feed, re-checked daily. These are financial products rather than credit, so the standing information on each table is worded accordingly.

What the default order is. Highest rate first, which is the opposite of the credit tables for the obvious reason. For a savings account that is the maximum rate the bank publishes, and the conditions that rate depends on, such as a minimum monthly deposit or a no withdrawal month, are shown on the row rather than in the fine print, because a headline rate you cannot meet the conditions for is not the rate you would receive. For a term deposit it is the rate for the term and interest payment frequency you have selected, since a bank’s rate varies by both.

What we exclude. Accounts a bank has withdrawn from its feed. Retirement Savings Accounts are excluded on licensing grounds. On the main Savings Accounts and Term Deposits pages, the default view shows accounts available to the whole market. Accounts open only to members of a particular organisation or to a particular employer’s staff are hidden from that view rather than removed, alongside business, SMSF and trust accounts: the page says how many are hidden, and the “Who can get this” filter or the “Show them” link brings them back. Accounts limited by age, such as kids’ or seniors’ accounts, stay in the list and carry a badge saying who can get them.

How curated tables differ. An editor-chosen subset for a stated topic, in an editor-set order, built from the same daily data. A curated table can include an account that the hub’s own filters exclude.

Superannuation

Where the data comes from. Superannuation is the one vertical that is not built on a daily feed. Fees and returns are the figures APRA publishes in its annual product performance package, expressed against a $50,000 account balance, and they update when APRA republishes rather than daily. Every super table says so.

What the default order is. Total annual fees on a $50,000 balance, lowest first. Deliberately not past return: ordering on a historical return would put a figure that says nothing about the future in the position readers reasonably read as the answer. Returns are shown, and can be sorted on, but they are never the default.

What we exclude, and what we keep apart. MySuper and Choice products are never mixed in one table: they are different things and their figures are not comparable like for like. Nor do we mix net investment return with return net of fees and tax, because the two are calculated differently and putting them in one column would rank funds on a difference in definition.

Sponsored placement. A fund can pay for a sponsored placement, and any product in one is marked “Sponsored Placement” wherever it appears. Payment never decides which products we show, and it never changes the fees, returns or annual performance test results we display, which come from APRA. Our superannuation hubs order products only by the figure you sort on, so payment never changes the order there.

How curated tables differ. A curated super table is a set an editor chose for a stated topic, in an order the editor set, with the same MySuper and Choice separation. Any product in a sponsored placement is marked “Sponsored Placement”.

Energy

Where the data comes from. Energy plans come from the Product Reference Data the Australian Energy Regulator hosts for retailers, not from the banking CDR feeds. Once you enter a postcode, plans are narrowed to the distribution zone it falls in, because the same retailer charges differently by zone.

What the default order is. For electricity, the estimated annual cost, lowest first, calculated on the usage figure shown on the page. That estimate is an example built from a stated assumption about how much energy you use, not a quote, and changing the usage figure changes the order. For gas, the usage rate, lowest first.

What we exclude. Retailers who publish no plan for the zone you entered. Energy is not a financial product, and nothing on our energy pages is financial or energy advice.

How curated tables differ. An editor-chosen subset for a stated topic, on the same underlying data and the same usage assumption.

Topic pages and curated tables

Alongside each main comparison page we publish topic pages, such as low rate credit cards or 12 month term deposits, each built around a table. Using the data available to us, we have tried to show products that meet the title of each page, to help you find products that may suit your needs.

For credit products in particular, the only purpose of a topic page is to help you research credit products, by making the banking data lenders publish under the Consumer Data Right available in one place. We do not suggest that you apply for any particular credit product and we do not help you apply.

Product scores, and how they are weighted

Scores are shown on the main comparison pages for Savings Accounts and Term Deposits only, as a score out of 5 beside a product. These credit products carry no score: Home Loans, Credit Cards, Personal Loans and Car Loans. This section sets out exactly what that number is, how it is calculated, and why the other product types carry none. The weights below are read directly from the code that calculates the scores, so what you see here is what was applied.

What the number is

A score is a weighted average of a handful of components, each of which is a single figure the provider itself publishes. Each component is scored by comparing that figure against the same figure on every other product in the table you are looking at, not against a fixed benchmark. Scores run from 1 to 5 and describe a position in the table you are looking at: 5 sits at the top of that table on that measure and 1 at the bottom. Filter the table differently and the scores move, because the products being compared have changed.

We rank rather than curve. A product’s component score reflects how many products in the table it sits ahead of on that measure, with tied figures sharing a score, so one unusually priced product cannot squash everything else down the scale. Scores are calculated fresh every time a page is built, from the data in the feed at that moment. Nothing is stored, so a score can never be older than the rates shown beside it.

Curated tables carry no score. A curated table is a short list an editor picked for a stated topic, and a position inside a hand-picked handful says nothing about where a product sits in the market. Scores appear only on the main comparison page for a scored product type, where the table is every product we list, narrowed by the filters you choose.

What happens when a provider publishes less

A field a provider does not publish is never scored as a zero. A bank that does not publish a fee has not published a fee of nothing, and treating silence as a figure would invent data. Instead the component is dropped for that product and its weight is shared across the components that remain, in proportion, so a product is always scored on what its provider does publish and never marked down for the gap. The product’s own info panel lists every component it could not be scored on and why.

Three rules stop a score being asserted on evidence too thin to carry it.

• A table with fewer than 5 products carries no scores at all. A comparison-based rating over three products is a ranking of three products.
• A component is used only where at least 5 products in the table publish it. Below that it is dropped for the whole table rather than ranking a handful of products against each other.
• A product is scored only where at least 60% of the rubric’s weight survives for it. Below that the product simply carries no score, and nothing is shown. We never show a low score in place of a missing one.

The weights

Weights differ by product type, because what makes a term deposit comparable is not what makes a savings account comparable. Each set below adds to 100%.

Where we publish no score

The product types below carry no score, each for the reason given beside it. Where the reason is the data, it is that what is published will not support a score honestly, and a number we cannot defend is worth less to you than no number at all.

Home Loans, Personal Loans and Car Loans. We do not score home loans, personal loans or car loans while we do not hold an Australian credit licence. They are compared on the figures each lender publishes: the advertised rate, the comparison rate, the repayment estimate and the fees, each of which you can sort on or read in the product info panel.

Credit Cards. What a credit card costs depends almost entirely on something no feed publishes: whether you clear the balance every month. For someone who does, the purchase rate is irrelevant and the annual fee is the whole cost; for someone who does not, the rate dominates and the fee is a rounding error. Loans resolve that tension with the comparison rate, a regulated single figure. Cards have no equivalent, so any weighting we picked between rate and fee would be us choosing which kind of cardholder you are, and presenting that choice as arithmetic. Every card column we hold, the purchase rate, the annual fee, the interest-free days and the cash advance rate, is shown on the card and can be sorted on directly.

Superannuation. Scoring a super product would mean weighting past investment returns, and a return that has already happened says nothing reliable about the one ahead. That is why returns are never the default sort on a super table either. Lifecycle products make it worse: their fees and returns differ by stage, so they publish ranges rather than single figures, and there is no honest way to collapse a range into a position in a ranking. APRA’s own performance test result is shown on the product instead, which is a published pass or fail rather than a number we invented.

Energy. The only honest comparison between two energy plans is an estimated annual bill, and that depends on a usage assumption rather than on the plan alone, which is exactly what the energy pages already calculate and state. A score built on unit prices instead would have to rank single-rate plans against time-of-use plans, electricity priced per kilowatt hour against gas priced per megajoule, and plans whose discounts the feed does not price. Each of those is a different thing being compared, and averaging them into one figure would hide that rather than show it.

A score is also never a reason a product appears in a table, and it never changes the order one is shown in. Tables are ordered on the attribute named at the top of the column, as set out above. Payment never affects a score: the components are read from each provider’s own published data and there is no field an editor or an advertiser can set.

This is not personal advice

CompareThat is a comparison service only. The ordering and information on this site are general in nature, don’t take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs, and are not personal advice or credit advice. We are not a credit provider, a broker or the holder of an Australian Credit Licence, and we don’t process applications.