RateGapevery home loan rate lenders publish, compared
If you owe less than 80% of what your home is worth, ask for a cheaper rate
Most lenders have one for you. Almost none will move you onto it unless you ask. I checked every Australian lender that publishes its home loan rates. Check your own loan
Justin Wong, first published 17 August 2026. The figures are read again every morning.
Lenders sort home loans into price bands. Which band you are in depends on how much you still owe compared with what your place is worth. Get under 80% and the typical lender charges 0.30 percentage points less. On a $500,000 loan, that is about $1,500 a year.
Here is the catch. You move into a cheaper band on your own: you pay the loan down, and your place may be worth more than when you bought it. But your rate does not follow, because nothing on your statement changes. You stay in the band you started in.
What to do: work out roughly what your place is worth today. If you owe less than 80% of that, ring your lender and ask what rate they now charge for your band. You are asking about the loan you already have, not applying for a new one. They can say no.
What I found
I looked at 259 mainstream loans from 54 brands. Between a lender's dearest band (above 80%) and its lowest, the typical gap is 0.40 percentage points. But the lowest band is a long way down: for 53% of these loans you would need to get under 60% to reach it.
Most of the saving is at the 80% mark. Of the 239 loans that also publish a rate at 80%, getting under 80% is worth 0.30 points. Paying down further, to 70% or less, only adds another 0.10. So for the typical loan, 75% of the whole saving comes from that first step.
| Gap between dearest and lowest band | Loans | |
|---|---|---|
| under 0.25 points | 54 | |
| 0.25 – 0.49 points | 90 | |
| 0.50 – 0.74 points | 68 | |
| 0.75 – 0.99 points | 19 | |
| 1.00 or more points | 28 |
| Biggest gaps, in points | Lender | Loan | What for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.12 | Gateway Bank | Low Rate Essentials Int Only | to live in |
| 1.29 | Maitland Mutual Limited | Budget Home Loan | to live in |
| 1.25 | Pepper Money | Prime Home Loan - Prime Full Doc | to rent out |
| 1.25 | Aussie Activate | Prime Home Loan - Prime Full Doc | to rent out |
| 1.25 | Mortgage Choice Ignite | Prime Home Loan - Ignite Prime Full Doc | to rent out |
| 1.12 | Gateway Bank | Premium Package I/O | to live in |
| 1.10 | Mortgage Ezy | Propel Lo Doc | to rent out |
| 1.05 | ORDE Financial | Residential Full Doc Prime | to rent out |
Some of these rows are the same rate card wearing different names. This morning Australian Mutual Bank LTD, Firefighters Mutual Bank, Health Professionals Bank, Teachers Mutual Bank and UniBank publish identical bands at identical rates, line for line. Across everything I looked at, 51% of loans share their rates with another brand. So the number of brands is not the number of lenders.
How I worked this out, and what it does not tell you
How I worked it out
Every Australian bank and lender has to publish its rates openly, by law. That is the Consumer Data Right, and it is where these numbers come from. I do not scrape anything, I am not paid by any lender, and I have no relationship with one. The figures are today's, so they change as lenders change their rates.
- Variable rates only. A fixed rate is really two rates — the fixed one, then whatever it rolls onto at the end — so it cannot be compared the same way.
- I compare like with like: same lender, same loan, same purpose, same repayment type. The only difference is the LVR band.
- For each one, I take the lowest rate above 80% and the lowest at 70% or below. I only count loans that publish both.
- Specialist and non-conforming loans are counted separately: 155 loans this morning, typical gap 1.00 points. Those lenders use LVR to price the risk of lending to you, not just how much equity you hold. Putting them in would roughly double the headline number.
- I report the middle of the pack, and it holds up. Weighting by brand, by loan, by neighbouring bands or by loan size all give the same answer.
What this does not tell you
- It is not money you are owed. This is the price on the rate card. Whether you actually get it depends on a valuation and on what your lender decides. Neither of those is in this data.
- It is not the "loyalty tax". The Reserve Bank publishes the gap between the average variable rate on new loans and the average on existing ones. The Reserve Bank’s May 2026 Bulletin put the gap at 4 basis points. That is an average of what people across two whole portfolios actually pay. Mine is a difference between two advertised prices facing one borrower. They are not the same thing, and I do not compare them.
- Nor is it missing from the Reserve Bank's figure. Someone left in an expensive band pays more than a new borrower would, and that rate already sits inside the Reserve Bank's average. What the average cannot do is show that LVR is the reason, because neither side of it is adjusted for LVR.
- It is not every lender. At most of them you have to ask. That is each lender's own practice rather than a rule they all follow. Athena advertises a feature called AcceleRATES that cuts your rate automatically each time your LVR crosses a band. I have not audited what each lender does.
- It is not the whole market. Only 414 variable loans publish enough bands either side of 80% to be measured at all. Loans that do not use bands are left out, not counted as zero.
- Loans advertising two rates in one band are left out. I take the lowest rate above 80% and the lowest at 70% or below, which assumes both belong to the same advertised deal. Sometimes they do not. This morning the widest such pair is ME Bank - ME Go's ME Bank CompleteME Home Loan: 6.49% and 9.26% in one investment band at or under 70%. Loans like that are dropped. Dropping them does not move the numbers above, but it does keep overstated rows out of the table.
- It is not 54 separate lenders. 211 of the 414 loans I measured (51%) carry rates identical to another brand's. White-label lenders republish one rate card under several names.
- It is pricing for new customers. The Consumer Data Right only covers what is offered to new customers. What a lender quietly offers an existing customer to keep them is published nowhere.
- A valuation can go against you. If your place is worth less than you think, your LVR is higher rather than lower, and none of this applies.
Check my work if you like. What is above is all of it.
I have also measured the rate a fixed loan rolls onto . The data behind both is free to download.
This is not financial advice or credit assistance, and is not a recommendation to take, keep or change any loan. I am not paid a commission by any lender.