Broadband Find is an independent UK broadband comparison site. We are not owned by a provider, and no provider can pay us to rank higher, score better, or be featured. This page explains how we gather information, how we rate providers, where our data comes from, and how we make money — so you can judge our work for yourself.

Our starting principle

Broadband is a genuinely difficult thing to shop for. Headline speeds are averages, prices change part-way through a contract, and the best deal for one household is a poor fit for the next. Our job is to lay out what is actually true about each provider and each plan, in plain language, and let you decide.

That means we would rather tell you a well-known provider has a weak record on complaints than quietly leave it out. If we do not know something, we say so rather than filling the gap with guesswork.

How we rate providers

Every provider we cover gets an overall score out of ten, alongside a set of star ratings for individual categories. The two work together: the star ratings show you where a provider is strong or weak, and the overall score summarises the picture.

The categories we rate are:

  • Value for money — what you actually pay across the whole contract, not just the first few months
  • Speed range — the spread of speeds available and whether the advertised figures hold up
  • Reliability — connection stability, setup experience, and how often things go wrong
  • Customer support — how easy it is to reach a human, and how well problems get resolved
  • Flexibility — contract lengths, exit terms, and how much room you have to change your mind

Ratings are set by our editorial team against a consistent rubric, so a four-star reliability rating means the same thing for a small regional network as it does for a household name. They are reviewed and updated as the market moves — a provider that fixes a long-standing support problem should see that reflected, and one that lets standards slip should too.

What we base our ratings on

Our assessments draw on several sources rather than any single one:

  • Published industry data. Regulator-published complaints figures and performance reporting give us a comparable, independent measure across providers.
  • Plan and pricing data. We maintain our own records of each provider's plans — speeds, monthly costs, promotional periods, setup fees, contract lengths and mid-contract price rise terms — so we can compare like with like.
  • Real speed test results. Visitors run speed tests through our own testing network, which gives us a picture of what people on each provider are actually getting, area by area.
  • Customer reviews. Reviews submitted by readers, which give us the texture that statistics miss — what it is like to be a customer day to day.
  • Editorial research. Provider announcements, network rollout information, terms and conditions, and the small print that tends not to make it into advertising.

Customer reviews

Anyone can leave a review of a provider on Broadband Find. We do not require an account, and we do not filter reviews by whether they are positive or negative.

Every review is read by a human before it appears. Moderation exists to catch spam, abuse, and content that identifies individuals — not to remove criticism. A provider cannot request the removal of a review simply because it is unflattering, and providers have no access to moderate their own pages.

Reviews inform our editorial ratings, but they do not mechanically set them. A handful of very angry or very enthusiastic reviews is not on its own a reliable signal, so we weigh them alongside the harder data rather than letting them drive the score.

Speed test data

We run our own speed test, served from multiple test locations around the UK so results reflect a realistic connection rather than a single distant server. When you run a test you can optionally tell us your provider and rough location, which lets us build up an area-level picture of typical real-world speeds.

This data is aggregated. We report averages and comparisons for a provider or a district — never individual results tied to a person or an address.

Plans, prices and how current they are

Prices and plan details are held in our own database and updated as providers change their offers. Broadband pricing moves quickly, and promotional deals in particular can appear and disappear within days.

We work to keep listings accurate, but the provider's own site is always the final word on price and availability. If you spot something out of date, we would genuinely like to know — you can tell us here.

Defunct provider archive

Alongside current providers, we maintain an archive of UK broadband providers that have closed, been acquired, or been folded into another brand. These pages are written as a factual record — what the provider did, when it operated, what happened to it, and where its customers ended up.

They exist because that history is otherwise scattered and disappearing, and because understanding how today's big providers were assembled tells you something useful about the market as it stands.

How we make money

Broadband Find is free to use. We earn money in two ways: affiliate commission, and display advertising.

Affiliate commission means that if you click through to a provider from our site and go on to sign up, we may receive a payment from that provider. This never costs you anything extra, and it does not change the price you are offered.

The important part is what commission does not do:

  • It does not affect a provider's score or star ratings.
  • It does not affect where a provider appears in our comparisons or listings.
  • It does not stop us covering providers we earn nothing from — including ones with no affiliate arrangement at all.
  • It does not buy a provider the right to review, approve, or influence what we write about them.

Any page carrying affiliate links says so. We would rather be upfront about how the site is funded than have you wonder.

Corrections

We get things wrong sometimes — a price that has moved, a plan that has been withdrawn, a detail about a provider's history that turns out to be mistaken. When that happens we want to fix it quickly.

If you have spotted an error, or you work for a provider and believe we have described something inaccurately, get in touch. Corrections are made on the evidence, not on who is asking.

What we are not

We are a comparison and information site, not a broadband provider and not a broker. We cannot access your account, arrange your switch, chase an engineer, or resolve a billing dispute — for anything to do with an existing service you will need to speak to your provider directly.

Nor is anything on this site financial advice. We can tell you what a plan costs over its full term and how it compares to the alternatives; whether it is the right call for your household is your decision to make.