How we make money

We take no commissions. You pay us, so we answer to you.

Every other comparison site has a reason to steer you. We only have a reason to save you money — because that’s the only thing you pay us for.

The conflict you can’t see on “free” sites

Comparison feels free because you don’t hand over a card. But the free commercial sites — Compare the Market, Finder, iSelect and the rest — are paid a commission by the retailer every time you sign up through them. That has two consequences most people never realise:

• They only show plans from retailers that pay them. The genuinely cheapest plan for your home may simply never appear, because that retailer isn’t on their commercial panel.
• They’re built to convert, not to advise. When the site earns more from Plan A than Plan B, “recommended for you” stops meaning what you think it means.

This isn’t a hypothetical. In 2021 the Federal Court penalised iSelect $8.5 million after the ACCC found it had misled consumers into believing it compared a broad range of plans, when its results were shaped by which retailers paid it and how much. The model itself is the problem — and it’s the model we deliberately don’t use.

Where the free government tool fits

The one genuinely neutral free option is Energy Made Easy, run by the AER. It’s whole-of-market and takes no commissions — we think everyone should use it, and we’re glad it exists. But it’s a one-shot lookup: it can’t read your real time-of-day usage from your bill, can’t prove a saving against what you actually pay, doesn’t track your bills over time, and never tells you when your plan quietly creeps up in price. That ongoing, evidence-based analysis is the job we do — and the reason we charge for it rather than taking a kickback.