Go Compare Alternative: Why People Look Elsewhere for Broadband

Go Compare opened in 2006 to compare insurance, and insurance is still what the high notes are for. Car cover, home cover, life cover, pet cover, travel cover, you punch in your details and a list comes back with a few quid shaved off. Future plc bought the parent group in 2021 and folds it into a wider media and comparison stable, with insurance kept firmly at the front of the stage.

Broadband is in there. It is one tab in a long row of them, somewhere off to the side while the spotlight stays on car premiums. The tenor is not coming on to sing about your monthly fibre bill. He is coming on to sing about your no-claims discount, and the broadband sits quietly in the wings, waiting for a verse that never arrives.

Here is the bit most sites leave out. We take a cut when you switch through us, the same as Go Compare takes a cut when you buy through it. Commission is not the dividing line, because everyone in this trade lives on it. The dividing line is whether that money is ever allowed near the order of the results, and on our side it is not.

Pull back the velvet and there is a real broadband comparison back there. It asks for your postcode and returns deals from BT, Sky, Virgin Media and a decent spread of smaller networks. So this is not a case of the site faking it. The tool works. The question is only how wide it reaches and who has checked it.

Go Compare compares broadband from around 32 providers, which sounds generous until you count how many networks are now live in Britain. It carries the big names and a handful of altnets, but it is a partner panel, not every line wired to your postcode. Some of the cheapest providers in the country sell only through their own sites and turn up on no panel at all, no matter how loudly anyone sings.

Then there is the audit. Ofcom runs a voluntary accreditation scheme for comparison sites, checking that a site is "accessible, accurate, transparent, comprehensive and up to date". As of October 2025 the broadband names that have passed are {link:post:broadband-genie-alternative|Broadband Genie}, {link:post:broadbandchoices-alternative|broadbandchoices}, broadbanddeals.co.uk and {link:post:moneysupermarket-alternative|MoneySuperMarket}. Go Compare is not on it. Neither are we, and we will say so plainly. The man has fifteen years and a regional theatre's worth of lung power, and not one second of it counts as an Ofcom stamp for broadband.

At a great many UK addresses the cheapest option is a local full-fibre network charging a few pounds less than the household names month after month. Community Fibre, for instance, sits at roughly £14 a month with no mid-contract rise built in, the kind of price that almost never crowns a national table. Whether one reaches you at all comes down to which networks have dug up your particular road, and that is precisely the detail a panel of national partners tends to skip.

There is also the number you end up actually paying. You sort by price, then every April the figure creeps up, because most broadband contracts bury a mid-contract rise clause in the terms. Roughly four in five do. If that clause is not sat right next to the headline figure, the price you are comparing has a use-by date of April. This is why your bill went up while nothing about the service changed, and a short list of providers skip the April rise entirely.

There are situations where Go Compare is the sensible choice, no caveats buried in the small print.

The first is insurance, which is the whole reason the man owns a top hat. Car, home, life, travel and pet cover under one login is what Go Compare was built for, and it is genuinely good at it. If broadband is one line on a longer list of household admin, doing it all in one sitting has real value.

The second is when you only want the mainstream names. If you would never sign with a network you had not heard of, the missing altnets cost you nothing, and the big brands are all present and singing.

The third is when you have used it for years and trust it. Familiarity has a value and changing tools has a small cost. We are not going to pretend otherwise to win an argument. Let him hit the note. Just know it is an insurance note with broadband humming along underneath.

You do not need the man in the top hat to change a broadband line. You need a postcode and about ten quiet minutes.

Open one tab and check what is actually at your address, your specific postcode and not the national average. Full-fibre networks get laid one road at a time, so a neighbour fifty yards away can be on a line that has never reached you. Sort by first-year cost, then read the mid-contract clause, because a cheaper headline with a built-in April rise can end up dearer than a slightly pricier deal that holds its price all term. The headline beats the fixed one only until the rise lands, and whether it stays ahead after that depends on how big the gap was to start with. If the bill already looks steep, a minute settles whether you are over the odds.

Open the second tab to switch, and that is the last tab you need. Since 12 September 2024 One Touch Switch lets you contact only the new provider, who then runs the whole handover. Your old line stays live until the new one is ready, so there is no dead patch and no exit call to endure. The full shape of switching once your contract is up is shorter than most people expect. Two tabs, no aria.

Both of us earn commission, and neither of us is Ofcom-accredited for broadband. We are newer and smaller. The difference that matters is what the tool is for. Go Compare is an insurance site that sings about insurance and does broadband on the side. We are a broadband site that does nothing else, and rank by what the line costs you at your address in year one. Fifteen years of singing, and never once the word "broadband". Sorry, Gio.

Does Go Compare actually compare broadband? Yes. It runs a real broadband comparison, asks for your postcode and lists deals from around 32 providers including BT, Sky, Virgin Media and several altnets. It is just not the main event. The business was built for insurance, and broadband is one product among many.

Who owns Go Compare? Future plc, the media and comparison group, which bought the parent company in 2021. It earns commission when you buy a product through the site. Go Compare says it does not accept advertising or sponsored listings and that what you pay is not affected by what providers pay it.

Is Go Compare Ofcom-accredited for broadband? No. Ofcom's accredited broadband list, as of October 2025, is Broadband Genie, broadbandchoices, broadbanddeals.co.uk and MoneySuperMarket. The scheme is voluntary, so the absence means Go Compare has not sat the audit, not that it failed it.

How does FindBroadband make money, then? Commission, like every comparison site going. The money lands when you switch through us. Where it gets nowhere near is the running order of the results, which is decided by first-year cost at your address and by that figure alone. Would we love to be the kind of saintly outfit that takes no commission at all. We are not, and we would rather you knew it than be sold a halo.

Will switching cut me off? No. One Touch Switch puts the new provider in charge of the whole handover, and your existing line keeps running until the new one goes live, so there is no gap. You also skip the goodbye call where Dave from Retention reels off the four better offers he could have handed you any time these past two years.

Reach for Go Compare when the insurance is the real task and a broadband glance is a bonus on the way past. For broadband on its own, use the tool that surfaces the cheapest line at your precise address, names the local networks and shows you the April rise before your signature is anywhere near the page. Then hand the switch to your new provider and let the man in the top hat sing to somebody else.