Show the working.
A calculator is only as trustworthy as the numbers underneath it. Here is where ours come from and how they're worked out.
- 1Read
Each source is read where it publishes: nightly for banks and energy retailers, monthly for health policies, on release day for the ABS.
- 2Check
Figures a product can't have, like a bank rate over 100%, are left out and logged, so a bad feed can't top a ranking.
- 3Compare
Products sit side by side, sorted by the published number you choose, never by who pays.
- 4Calculate
The calculators run the same formulas lenders and the ATO use, with every assumption on the page.
Every figure traces to a primary source
The assumptions behind the tools and the figures on every page come from official Australian sources, not third-hand summaries.
Consumer Data Right
Every product Australian banks, non-bank lenders and energy retailers publish, read in full each night through the ACCC register and the AER's Energy Made Easy service.
Reserve Bank
The cash rate and the rate environment that flows from it.
ATO
Income tax brackets, thresholds, offsets and superannuation rules.
APRA
The serviceability buffer lenders have to apply; every MySuper product's fees, returns and performance test result for the super fund rankings; and the institutions the Financial Claims Scheme covers, for the government guarantee.
ABS
Monthly CPI, wages, lending and unemployment, read from the ABS Data API on release day for the inflation tracker and the calculators' inflation defaults.
Department of Social Services
The rates of the Age Pension, JobSeeker Payment and six more payments, their history, and the pension income, assets and deeming limits, from the Social Security Guide, for the Centrelink payment rates and the means test the Age Pension calculators run on.
Fair Work Commission
The minimum pay, penalty and overtime rates and allowances in every modern award, from its Modern Awards Pay Database, for the award pay rates.
Private Health Insurance Ombudsman
Every health insurance policy's premiums, cover and excess from the monthly PrivateHealth.gov.au extract, for the health insurance comparison.
Clean Energy Regulator
Solar and battery installations by postcode, and the certificate schedules behind the solar and battery rebates.
State revenue offices
Stamp duty schedules and first-home concessions, which differ in every state and territory.
Deterministic maths, not guesswork
Each calculator uses the standard formula a bank or the ATO uses: amortisation, compound growth, marginal tax, loan-to-value ratio and so on. The same inputs always give the same result, and every step can be checked.
The AI explains. It doesn't compute
An optional AI co-pilot puts a result into plain English for your situation. It doesn't do the arithmetic; the numbers come from the formulas above. It's a language model and it can be wrong, so treat what it says as a starting point to check, not a verdict to act on.
Refreshed when the official numbers change
Rates, brackets and medians move. Market assumptions are updated from official releases, and each tool shows the date it last changed, so you're never guessing how current it is.
Every published rate change, logged nightly
Each night the product read compares every published rate with the night before and logs any that moved, with the old and new value. A product a lender re-issues under a new identifier keeps its history. The rate tracker counts those moves after each RBA decision, on products anyone can apply for. A move of more than 2 percentage points in one night is treated as a lender correcting its data and left out. The full log is free to download as CSV.
Energy price changes, logged the same way
Energy Made Easy gives a plan a new identifier each time a retailer publishes a new version of it, so a price change usually arrives as one plan replacing another. Each night we pair a withdrawn plan with the one plan that carries on from it (same name, network and tariff structure, starting later) and log any change to its usage rate, supply charge or solar feed-in. Where more than one plan could be the replacement, we leave it out rather than guess. The energy price tracker shows every change, and the log is free to download as CSV.
These are estimates, so check before you act
The tools use simplified models. They can't capture every detail of your circumstances, and lender or government policy can change without notice. Confirm the specifics with the lender, the ATO or a licensed adviser before you decide anything.
Found a number that looks wrong?
Accuracy is the whole point. Say which page or tool and what you expected, and it'll be fixed quickly. Past fixes are listed on the corrections page.
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