Is the rate you were quoted actually good?
Paste the number your lender gave you. We'll show you exactly where it sits against live offers from 3,700+ US lenders, then pair competitive rates with credit unions that report a branch near your ZIP. Ranked on APR plus points plus fees, with no lender able to pay for a better position.
Free, no signup, no credit check, nothing stored. We take zero affiliate or referral revenue, so the ranking has nothing to sell you.
01 What to do when your rate is above market
A percentile is an argument. Here is how borrowers actually use one.
Get the number in writing
Ask for the APR, not just the note rate, plus an itemized fee sheet. Rate and APR diverge exactly when fees are doing work — that gap is where cost hides.
Find a specific, named alternative
"I saw better online" moves nobody. A named lender quoting a specific APR for your product and state is a different conversation. The check above lists them for you, with the gap in basis points.
Confirm you can actually borrow there
A better rate you are not eligible for is not leverage, which is why each alternative is tagged with whether you can join. Many credit unions are open to anyone through a local or associational route.
Ask your lender to match
Lenders price to the market and would generally rather re-price than lose the loan. Ask directly whether they can match the competing APR, and let the number carry it.
02 Why the order can't be bought
Most places that compare rates for you are paid by the lenders being compared — through clicks, leads, or featured placement. That funding model has one predictable effect: it rewards lenders who can afford to advertise, and hides the ones who can't.
We take none of it. No affiliate revenue, no referral fees, no sponsored slots, no inclusion fees. Lenders can pay us to see where they rank; no one can pay to change where they rank. That is the whole reason a credit union with a genuinely good rate shows up here — it has no advertising budget, so on an ad-funded surface it is invisible.
Every rate we serve traces back to the lender page it came from, carries an as-of date, and is re-verified daily. You can read the ranking methodology or the transparency report and check the work.
03 The same check, as an API
This page is one endpoint. If you're building a product that tells people whether their offer is fair, it's the same call — and it's available to your AI agent as the rate_sanity_check tool over MCP.
curl -X POST "https://api.rateapi.dev/v1/rate-sanity-check" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "product_type": "mortgage", "state": "OH", "zip": "43215", "rate": 6.9, "include_better_offers": true, "include_nearby_offers": true }' # {# "percentile": 71,# "classification": "overpriced",# "market": { "min": 5.99, "median": 6.45, "max": 8.10, "count": 412 },# "better_offers": [# {# "credit_union_name": "…",# "apr": 6.25,# "apr_delta_bps": 65,# "estimated_monthly_savings": 118,# "can_you_join": "yes"# }# ]# }Checking whether your rate is fair
Yes. Enter a five-digit ZIP code and Rate Check pairs current rates for the product you selected with the closest NCUA-reported credit union branches. Results are ordered by estimated straight-line miles from the center of your ZIP area, not driving distance, and each result links to the credit union profile so you can review membership, services, and other rates before deciding.
Compare the APR you were quoted against the live distribution of offers for the same product in your state, not against a national average. A rate is good when it sits near the bottom of that distribution. RateAPI Rate Check returns the exact percentile of your quote among live offers from the lenders we track, plus the market minimum, median, and maximum, so you can see whether your quote is genuinely competitive or merely typical.
An adjustable-rate mortgage has to be compared against other ARMs, not against fixed-rate mortgages. ARM intro rates sit structurally below fixed rates, so an ARM checked against the 30-year fixed market will almost always look market-leading even when it is ordinary — the mistake flatters the quote, which is the worst direction for an error to point. Select "Adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM)" and Rate Check scores the quote against live ARM offers in your state instead. One caveat the percentile cannot capture: that intro rate resets, and what it resets to depends on the index, margin, and rate caps written into your note. A strong percentile today is not a statement about what you will pay after the first adjustment.
There is no single threshold, but a quote priced above roughly 90% of live offers for the same product and state is above market — you are paying more than nearly everyone else in your area for the same product. Rate Check flags that case as "above market." The other pattern worth catching is a rate that looks unusually low: quotes below the normal price floor for a product are typically teaser rates, promotional terms with conditions, or quotes that exclude fees.
Often, yes — particularly when you can show a specific, verifiable alternative. Lenders price to the market, and a documented better offer for the same product, term, and geography is the strongest lever a borrower has. The practical sequence is: establish where your quote sits in the market, identify named lenders quoting lower, confirm you are eligible to borrow from them, and then ask your lender to match. Credit unions are frequently the lower quote, and membership is often open through a local or associational path.
No. RateAPI takes no affiliate, referral, or placement revenue from any lender, so no lender can buy a better position in these results. Offers are ranked on true cost — APR plus points plus fees — which means the order reflects what a loan actually costs you. This is a structural commitment, not a policy preference: the ranking has no revenue mechanism attached to it.
Not yet. The comparison is by product and state, covering every live offer we track in that segment. It does not currently segment by credit score, loan-to-value, term, or discount points, and quoted fees are not folded into the APR comparison. Read the result as the shape of the market you are negotiating inside, rather than a personalized underwriting decision. Advertised rates generally assume strong credit, so a borrower with a thinner profile should expect to sit higher in the distribution.
Published rates collected directly from lender websites and rate sheets, re-verified daily, with every rate traceable to the page it came from. Each result carries an as-of date. RateAPI tracks over 100,000 live rates from more than 3,700 US lenders, most of them credit unions that do not appear on advertising-funded comparison sites at all.