With hundreds, if not thousands, of companies competing for your hard-earned cash, it can sometimes be difficult to know where to turn.
This is where comparison sites come in. They can show you a huge selection of offers all in one place, letting you filter out the rubbish and find the best deal for you.
We’ve put together a list of the very best comparison sites and split them up based on whether you’re looking to compare bills and other financial products, or just find deals for your shopping. And make sure to read on for our tips on how to use these websites – it really does pay to use them all!
Top 5 best comparison sites
Compare the Market
Probably best known for its collection of meerkat mascots, Aleksandr, Sergei, Oleg and co., Compare the Market is one of the biggest and best comparison sites out there.
The website lets you compare deals across all the major products, including energy bills, credit cards and pretty much every type of insurance you could ever wish for.
To tempt you into choosing them over their rivals, Compare the Market also runs two promotional offers for its customers: Meerkat Movies and Meerkat Meals, which get you a year of two-for-one on cinema tickets and restaurant meals respectively.
All you need to do is make a qualifying purchase through Compare the Market (the full list of eligible products is on their site, but the majority are included) and then claim the reward in your account.
2. Confused.com
Despite a strong focus on motoring – be that car insurance, car finance or whatever else – Confused.com’s comparison tools extend to all of the usual bills and financial products that you’d expect to find on a site like this.
In a crowded marketplace, Confused.com’s cherry on top is its rewards scheme. It’s only available to customers who buy car, home or van insurance through the site (we told you they had a focus on motoring!), but if you do, the offers are worth a look.
They change from time to time but, at the time of writing, Confused.com Rewards was offering eligible customers perks including a £20 Lidl Plus coupon, £20 Halfords reward, 12 free car washes and a free HelloFresh recipe box.
Of course, you shouldn’t let this influence your choice of site too much. Use our tips for using comparison websites, and if the best deal happens to be via Confused.com, it’s a nice little bonus.
3. Go.Compare
Where Compare the Market has meerkats, Go.Compare has its own semi-annoying mascot: Gio Compario the opera singer.
Again, this comparison site covers all the bases – and as one of the major players, it’s certainly worth checking out their offers when you’re scouring the market.
While the perks offered by Go.Compare aren’t quite as exciting as those offered by its competitors, they may well be among the most generous.
At the time of writing, customers who buy a home or car insurance policy through Go.Compare will get £250 of excess cover for free, on them. This means that if you need to make a claim on your policy, Go.Compare will pay the first £250 of your excess (the amount you have to pay before your insurance covers the rest – read our student car insurance guide for more info).
It may not be a free HelloFresh box or cheap cinema tickets, but it could be worth much, much more if disaster strikes.
4. MoneySuperMarket
MoneySuperMarket is another jack of all trades, allowing you to compare prices across all of the typical areas.
While they don’t have any ongoing special offers (unlike, say, Meerkat Movies and Meerkat Meals), MoneySuperMarket regularly has shorter-term incentives that are just as enticing.
At the time of writing, you could get an Amazon gift card worth up to £200 for taking out life insurance through the site. Or, if you find a cheaper home or car insurance elsewhere, MoneySuperMarket will price match and give you a £20 gift card.
As we said, these offers are subject to change, but if their replacements are anywhere near as good, they’ll definitely be worth your consideration.
5. Quotezone
You may not have heard of Quotezone before, but that’s no reason not to give them a try – especially given our tips on how to use comparison sites.
Quotezone focuses on insurance – specifically car insurance – but again, they do offer a comparison on pretty much everything you’d expect.
And, unlike most of its competitors, Quotezone’s rewards scheme isn’t limited to those who actually buy a policy. Instead, it’s available to anyone who simply uses their service to get an insurance quote (car, home, van, bike, pet, travel, breakdown or bicycle).
However, Quotezone Rewards is essentially just a cashback scheme that gets you discounts on your online shopping. With that in mind, it’s worth looking at the other top cashback sites before committing to shopping through Quotezone Rewards to see if better deals are available elsewhere.
Even if you gain access to Quotezone Rewards+ (available to users who actually buy one of the insurance policies mentioned earlier), we’d still advise you to do the same. Although this unlocks more offers and higher rates of cashback, other cashback sites could still represent a better option.
