Mortgage rates have fluctuated in recent months amid uncertainty in the Middle East. So which lenders are consistently offering the best deals?
Our unique monthly rates analysis can help you narrow down your search. We crunch the numbers on 28 mortgage scenarios, based on typical loan amounts, term lengths and mortgage products, to reveal the lenders to watch out for.
In August, First Direct narrowly beat the competition, topping our table for the second month in a row. For a typical borrower, it was £137 a year cheaper than the next best providers.
We've also looked at which lenders offer the cheapest deals for different types of borrowers, including first-time buyers, remortgagers and home movers. Read on to find the lenders to look into based on your circumstances.
Trusted reviews
The links in our tables take you to the Which? review of the mortgage lender, where you can find out more about how it performed in our customer satisfaction survey and the latest mortgage rates the provider offers (updated daily).
Cheapest lenders for first-time buyers
In August, two very different lenders topped our first-time buyer table: Beverley Building Society and First Direct.
Beverley Building Society is a smaller provider that often features among the cheapest lenders for first-time buyers. However, its deals are only available to applicants within a 50-mile radius of the Yorkshire town of Beverley.
There was competition just behind the top two, with seven lenders achieving the second-best score. These including some of the biggest names in the market such as Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Bank and NatWest, alongside the smaller West Brom Building Society.
These results highlight the importance of shopping around for the best deal when buying your first home. You could find that a lender you hadn't heard of offers the cheapest deal.
Table notes: First-time buyer score based on Which? analysis of August 2026 Moneyfacts mortgage data. Table ordered by first-time buyer score, which may have been rounded to the nearest whole number. Customer scores are based on a survey of 5,016 members of the public in August-September 2025 and combine overall satisfaction with likelihood to recommend the provider. Sample size in brackets. The average customer score is 74%. n/a means a lender did not receive enough responses to generate a customer score or it was not included in our research due to having a small market share. To become a Which? Recommended Provider, a lender must get a top customer score, consistently offer competitive deals and be fully covered by the Financial Conduct Authority banking standards regime.
Cheapest lender for home movers
First Direct also offered the typical home mover the best deals in August.
For the typical mover, it was on average £152 a year cheaper than the next best lenders Barclays and Lloyds.
Our research continues to show that the largest lenders often offer the cheapest deals for the typical home mover.
Table notes: Home mover score based on Which? analysis of August 2026 Moneyfacts mortgage data. Table ordered by home mover score, which may have been rounded to the nearest whole number. Customer scores are based on a survey of 5,016 members of the public in August-September 2025 and combine overall satisfaction with likelihood to recommend the provider. Sample size in brackets. The average customer score is 74%. To become a Which? Recommended Provider, a lender must get a top customer score, consistently offer competitive deals and be fully covered by the Financial Conduct Authority banking standards regime.
Cheapest lenders for remortgaging
The big banks dominated the best deals for those remortgaging in August.
First Direct tops this table too, with Barclays, HSBC, Halifax and Santander close behind.
On average, our analysis found that First Direct was £134 a year cheaper than the providers with the next best score.
Table notes: Remortgage score based on Which? analysis of August 2026 Moneyfacts mortgage data. Table ordered by remortgage score, which may have been rounded to the nearest whole number. Customer scores are based on a survey of 5,016 members of the public in August-September 2025 and combine overall satisfaction with likelihood to recommend the provider. Sample size in brackets. The average customer score is 74%. To become a Which? Recommended Provider, a lender must get a top customer score, consistently offer competitive deals and be fully covered by the Financial Conduct Authority banking standards regime.
Which lender should you choose?
With so many lenders to choose from, shopping around for a mortgage deal can be overwhelming. Our research can help you narrow your search and find providers likely to offer competitive deals for your situation.
You can find out how each of the 60 lenders scored overall for competitive mortgage deals – as well as more specifically for first-time-buyer, home mover and remortgage deals – using our table.
A score of 100% represents a market-leading mortgage deal based on our typical borrower scenarios. A one-point difference in the overall score equates to a saving of around £137 a year for the typical borrower.
Table notes: Overall score, first-time buyer score, home mover score and remortgage score based on Which? analysis of August 2026 Moneyfacts mortgage data. Table ordered by overall score, which may have been rounded to the nearest whole number. Customer scores are based on a survey of 5,016 members of the public in August-September 2025 and combine overall satisfaction with likelihood to recommend the provider. Sample size in brackets. The average customer score is 74%. To become a Which? Recommended Provider, a lender must get a top customer score, consistently offer competitive deals and be fully covered by the Financial Conduct Authority banking standards regime. n/a means a lender did not receive enough responses to generate a customer score or it was not included in our research due to having a small market share.
About our research
In our analysis, we use Moneyfacts mortgage data collected weekly on each Monday of the month.
To determine the cheapest lender of the month, we combine results across all three borrower types: first-time buyers, home movers and remortgagers. A lender can only be named overall cheapest if it offers at least one of the most popular mortgage products across all three borrower types.
We've used market data to identify the most popular mortgage types and include them in our research. Lenders are not penalised for not offering a particular type of mortgage.
To score providers, we create a typical borrowing scenario using market data, including loan amounts and term lengths. We factor in the interest rate and any initial fees to calculate the monthly cost. Each lender’s best deal is then compared with the cheapest product available for that scenario.
