UK Mortgage Rates & Affordability — 2026/27

PlainMortgage is a free, independent UK mortgage rate comparator and affordability calculator built on the Bank of England base rate, HM Land Registry House Price Index, and FCA mortgage-lending statistics. Enter price, deposit, term, and product type — the calculator shows monthly payment, total interest paid over the term, and the breakeven point between fixing for two years versus five years versus tracking the base rate. The affordability engine takes household income, monthly debt, and deposit and projects a realistic maximum borrowing using current lender stress-test rules (typically base rate plus 1 percentage point at the offer date).

The Bank of England base rate is 4.50% as of May 2026. This is the rate at which the Bank lends to commercial banks, and it is the single biggest input to UK mortgage pricing. When the base rate moves, tracker mortgages move within days, standard variable rates (SVR) follow within weeks, and new fixed-rate deals reprice within months as lender swap-rate funding costs adjust. Existing fixed deals stay at their contracted rate until the fix expires.

The rates shown are averages of headline (best-buy) products by loan-to-value band and fix period, refreshed from public lender comparison data. They are accurate as an indicator of what the market is offering, but a real offer depends on your specific credit profile, deposit size, property type, employment status, and the lender's affordability assessment. For a binding rate, get a Decision in Principle from a regulated broker or directly from a lender; for the underlying maths use the calculator on this site.

Yes. All calculators, comparisons, and editorial pages on PlainMortgage are free to use, with no signup, no email gate, and no third-party tracking pixels. We do not sell mortgage products and we are not regulated as a broker. The data sources (Bank of England, HM Land Registry, FCA) publish under the Open Government Licence, and our methodology page documents every transformation we apply.

No. PlainMortgage is an information service, not a regulated financial adviser. The calculators and comparisons here are tools to help you understand the maths of UK mortgages — the actual decision to take out a mortgage should involve a qualified, FCA-regulated adviser who can assess your full circumstances. A mortgage is the largest financial commitment most households ever make; the £150-£500 cost of independent advice typically pays back many times over in product selection and avoided pitfalls.

The Bank of England base rate is updated within hours of each Monetary Policy Committee decision. Average mortgage rates by LTV band are refreshed weekly from public best-buy tables. The HM Land Registry House Price Index is updated monthly with a roughly 6-week reporting lag. The data vintage stamp shown on every page is the date of the most recent refresh; the methodology page documents the refresh cadence in full.

No. The calculators run entirely in your browser; nothing you enter is sent to a server. We collect aggregate, anonymous page-view metrics via cookieless analytics, but no personal identifiers, no email addresses, and no third-party advertising pixels track you across sites. The privacy page documents this in full.