Show HN: I built a dashboard to compare mortgage rates across 120 credit unions
12 comments
·December 3, 2025bluGill
My credit union gives me better rates if I'm "active", which means some number of transactions per month. Thus you really need to pick a credit union and start using them a few months before if you want the best rates. (maybe, depending on how that credit union works)
mhashemi
Yeah, there's a somewhat wide variance in CUs, in terms of rates, quality of service, etc. I called a few just to spot check and these public rates are supposedly about as good as they can do. From what I gather, even the large CUs (like Transportation FCU) just don't have that sophisticated of an operating model.
latortuga
It's always fun to open the front page of HN and see a familiar face. I went to college with this guy! Congrats on shipping Mahmoud!
mhashemi
Haha, my uncreative username betrays me once again. Small world! Congrats on founding to you, too!
aliljet
This is absolutely fantastic. I wish this included commercial loans like DSCRs...
mhashemi
Thanks! Re: DSCRs, point me to the data!
ambicapter
"Rates" dropdown doesn't seem to work. I'm using uBlock Origin.
mhashemi
Pushing a fix to this now. Assuming we're seeing the same thing: clicking the checkbox doesn't work, but clicking the label should. Should be right as rain shortly. Thanks!
msuniverse2026
God I wish we had 30 year fixed mortgages here in Australia. Imagine getting one of those during covid when rates were below 3%. Incredible.
denimnerd42
just makes the prices higher... you qualify for a house based on ratio of income to payment. so the demand is heavily influenced by the type of financing available..
Other than natural demand, Australia has a high real estate market due to the tax and a superannuation/pension distortions. Should try to fix those first. (probably impossible)
mhashemi
Haha, wait until you hear about our fancy 50-year mortgages we'll be getting any day now!
But seriously, my favorite discovery when researching CU mortgages is the prevalence of the 15/15 ARM. It's fixed for 15 years, and then adjusts once. Most people refinance within 7 years, or move within 12. So it's like a 30Y fixed, but comes in at 20 basis points cheaper (0.2% lower APR).
xnx
> No signup, no ads, no referral fees.
Nice
When I bought my home, the big bank I'd been using for years quoted me 7% APR. A local credit union was offering 5.5% for the exact same mortgage.
I was surprised until I learned that mortgages are basically standardized products – the government buys almost all of them (see Bits About Money: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/mortgages-are-a-manuf...). So what's the price difference paying for? A recent Bloomberg Odd Lots episode makes the case that it's largely advertising and marketing (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2025-11-28/odd-lots-thi...). Credit unions are non-profits without big marketing budgets, so they can pass those savings on, but a lot of people don't know about them.
I built this dashboard to make it easier to shop around. I pull public rates from 120+ credit union websites and compares against the weekly FRED national benchmark.
Features:
- Filter by loan type (30Y/15Y/etc.), eligibility (the hardest part tbh), and rate type - Payment calculator with refi mode (CUs can be a bit slower than big lenders, but that makes them great for refi) - Links to each CU's rates page and eligibility requirements - Toggle to show/hide statistical outliers
At the time of writing, the average CU rate is 5.91% vs. 6.23% national average. about $37k difference in total interest on a $500k loan. I actually used seaborn to visualize the rate spread against the four big banks: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1pcj9t7/oc...
Stack: Python for the data/backend, Svelte/SvelteKit for the frontend. No signup, no ads, no referral fees.
Happy to answer questions about the methodology or add CUs people suggest.