Searching for a mortgage can be overwhelming, but our new mortgage survey can help you cut through the noise.
We’ve asked over 5,000 members of the general public about their satisfaction with their mortgage provider and combined this with mortgage data analysis to help borrowers shop with confidence.
Read on to find out how customer satisfaction differs between banks and housing associations, which lenders are the most competitive with our rates, and what? Recommended mortgage provider this year.
Banks vs building societies: what do customers think of the service?
Our latest customer satisfaction survey of over 5,000 mortgage customers found that building societies have the happiest customers.
Nationwide Building Society, Principality Building Society and Skipton Building Society all topped the table with an impressive 80 per cent customer score.
Among the big banks, Barclays was a standout performer. It ranked fifth in our table with a customer score of 75%.
In general, we found that borrowers are satisfied with their mortgage provider; the lowest customer score is 67% for Bank of Ireland UK, which is still a respectable result.
- Read more: to see the full leaderboard, go to our guide at the best mortgage lenders.
Which lenders offer the most competitive interest rates?
We know that the most important factor for mortgage borrowers is the interest rate.
That’s why we not only use customer points when thinking about the service provider we recommend, but also check which lenders offer good deals.
To do this, we analyzed thousands of mortgages using Moneyfacts data over an eight-week period from August to September 2025 across 13 mortgage types. We compiled the top 10 cheapest offer tables based on various lending scenarios and counted the number of times each lender appeared in the table to identify lenders who consistently offer competitive offers.
While we found that building societies dominated the top of our customer satisfaction survey, our interest rate survey revealed that the big banks have been leading the charge in recent times, with 8 banks in the top ten.
HSBC topped our analysis, consistently offering a wide range of competitive mortgages. However, Nationwide – one of only two housing companies in the top ten – came second.
Table notes: Analysis of 13 mortgage types over eight weeks between August and September 2025. Data collected weekly from Moneyfacts. The average number of table appearances was 5.
- Read more: If you want to find the best mortgage deals today, check out our guide the best mortgage rates. We update the tables daily using Moneyfacts data to reveal the lowest rates for first-time buyers, movers and re-borrowers.
Lenders to look out for when shopping
Here are the lenders that most consistently offered competitive rates to first-time home buyers, movers and borrowers during our survey:
Notes to the table: Interest rate analysis done over eight weeks in August-September 2025. Data is collected weekly from Moneyfacts.
Which? Recommended mortgage provider 2025
This year, only one lender met our threshold for customer satisfaction and competitive rates: Nationwide Building Society.
Whether you’re a first-time buyer, a mover or a mortgage borrower, we’ve found that Nationwide Building Society consistently offers competitive mortgage rates, especially for first-time buyers.
Nationwide also offers a Helping Hand mortgage to help first-time buyers. With this mortgage, the lender offers up to 33% more loans than standard products to help buyers cope with high home prices.
Currently, Nationwide does not offer low interest mortgages for homes with a high EPC rating (A or B) but does offer a 0% top up loan for green home improvements. Please note that the 0% interest rate is only valid for the duration of your fixed rate term.
- Read more: National mortgage review and interest rates – use our review to find out what customers told us about Nationwide and explore its range of mortgage rates
How we analyze mortgage lenders
What? is completely independent and our research is not influenced by lenders.
Our customer points and star ratings are based on our customer satisfaction survey conducted in August-September 2025, in which 5,016 members of the general public participated.
Each customer score indicates how satisfied customers are with their service provider and how likely they are to recommend it.
Our rate analysis covers 13 different mortgage scenarios and uses eight weeks of Moneyfacts data, so we can be confident in telling you which lenders consistently offer competitive rates.
Lenders must receive at least 40 responses to be included in our results. Sample sizes of customer points: Nationwide Building Society (642), Principality Building Society (44), Skipton Building Society (53), Accord Mortgages (86), Barclays Mortgage (880), Clydesdale Bank (45), Lloyds Bank (327), TSB (94), Virgin Money (68), First Yorkshire Building Society (51), Yorkshire Building Society (51), Coventry Building Society (91) (454), NatWest (529), Santander (429), Atom Bank (48), Halifax (744), The Co-Operative (Platform) (49), Leeds Building Society (69), Royal Bank of Scotland (87) and Bank of Ireland (54).