Our editorial policy

How we research, check and correct everything on BroadbandSwitch.uk, and what we will never do to your search results.

Written by Adrian James, Broadband Editor. Reviewed by Dr Alex J. Martin-Smith, Head of Editorial. Last reviewed . About 7 minutes.

We are a small British team helping people stop overpaying for broadband. We make money when somebody switches through us, and we are going to be straightforward with you about exactly how that works and what it does not touch.

This page is the short version of how we operate. If anything here turns out not to be true, tell us and we will fix it and say so publicly.

Six things we will never do

These are the commitments we would be most embarrassed to break, so they go first.

  1. We will never rank a deal higher because it pays us more. The people who set the rankings do not see what any provider pays.
  2. We will never hide a catch. If a deal has a setup fee, a price rise or a short-lived introductory rate, it is shown next to the price, not in a footnote.
  3. We will never leave a provider out because they do not pay us. Plenty of the providers we list earn us nothing at all.
  4. We will never pretend the small networks do not exist. The altnet on your street is often faster and cheaper than the household name, and it will be in your results.
  5. We will never recommend a deal that is wrong for you because it happens to be lucrative. If you need 60 Mbps we will tell you so, even though gigabit pays better.
  6. We will never quietly change a ranking to chase a short-term commission. Changes to how we rank are published on the ranking page with the date.

How we make money, and what it does not touch

BroadbandSwitch.uk is free to use. Some providers pay us a commission when somebody switches to them through our links. That is the whole business model and there is nothing else going on.

Here is the part that matters:

  • Commission rates are kept away from the editorial side. The person deciding what order deals appear in does not know what any provider pays. That is not a promise about our good intentions. It is how the process is set up, so that good intentions are not required.
  • It never changes what you pay. The price you get is the provider's price. Coming through us does not add anything.
  • We earn nothing on social tariffs, the discounted packages for households on Universal Credit, Pension Credit and similar benefits. We list every one we can verify anyway, because more than six million UK households qualify and fewer than one in ten have one.

The detail, including which providers pay us: our affiliate disclosure.

Why we sort cheapest first

Results are sorted by cost per month, low to high. The previous diagram showed a higher monthly deal ranked above a cheaper one because it used Total Contract Value as a sort order. The widget does not sort that way, so the illustration has been pulled pending a redraw as a calculator example.

Total Contract Value remains the number we recommend you compare on. It is not the default sort.

Most comparison sites do not sort cheapest first. Broadband Genie sorts by "most popular" out of the box. Uswitch sorts by something it calls "Uswitch rated", built partly from popularity.

Results are sorted by cost per month, low to high. You can re-sort by speed, contract length or provider whenever you like, and the sort you choose is the sort you get.

Ofcom stopped requiring this in April 2021. Comparison sites are free to default to whatever they want, as long as they offer price sorting somewhere and explain how their ranking works. We have kept cheapest-first because it is the honest default, not because anyone makes us.

The twelve things that feed a ranking, and how they are weighted: how we rank deals.

Where our facts come from

Every figure on this site should be traceable to somebody who is not us. In order of preference:

  1. The regulator. Ofcom for coverage, speeds, switching rules, complaints and compensation. The CMA for pricing and advertising rules.
  2. The provider. Prices, contract lengths and fees taken from the provider's own current terms.
  3. Established consumer bodies. Citizens Advice and similar, for things the regulator does not publish.

Where a source is old enough to matter, we say when it was published. Where we are uncertain, we say that too, which is rarer on comparison sites than it should be.

The documents we lean on most:

Who writes this, and who checks it

Four stage editorial workflow. One, Adrian James researches and writes, tracing every figure to Ofcom, the CMA or the provider. Two, Dr Alex J. Martin-Smith reviews for accuracy, fairness and plain English and can send it back. Three, the page is published with the author, reviewer and last checked date all named. Four, readers report errors and corrections are made in two to five working days and logged publicly. At every stage the editorial team never sees commission rates.
Every substantive page passes through both of us before it is published, and the date it was last checked is printed on it.
Adrian James, Broadband Editor at BroadbandSwitch.uk, smiling in a navy polo shirt

Adrian James

Broadband Editor

Researches and writes. Checks every price, speed and fee against the provider's own terms before it goes anywhere near the site.

Dr Alex J. Martin-Smith, Head of Editorial and founder of BroadbandSwitch.uk, wearing a black crew-neck shirt

Dr Alex J. Martin-Smith

Head of Editorial, and the person who founded this

Reviews everything before publication for accuracy, fairness and whether a normal person could actually follow it. Sends plenty of it back.

Two people is not a large team. It does mean that when something is wrong, you know exactly who got it wrong, and there is nobody to hide behind.

When we get it wrong

We will. Broadband prices change constantly and we are two people. What we can promise is what happens next.

  • You can tell us. editorial@broadbandswitch.uk, or use the contact page. You do not need to be polite about it.
  • Adrian looks at factual corrections first. Anything that challenges how we rank goes to Alex.
  • Substantive corrections are made within two to five working days. Straightforward price errors are usually same day.
  • Corrections are as prominent as the mistake was. If we got something wrong in a headline, the correction goes in the headline, not the small print at the bottom.
  • They are logged in public. Every substantive correction appears in the corrections log, with the date and what changed. You can read our mistakes.

Most comparison sites publish no corrections log at all. We think being able to see what a site got wrong tells you more than any promise about accuracy.

How current this is

  • Deal prices are refreshed every day. That is the number that actually matters to you, and it is the one on the homepage.
  • Provider packages are checked monthly for changes to speeds, contract lengths and fees.
  • Any price we are showing that is more than 90 days old is flagged for re-checking before it stays up.
  • Regulatory pages are reviewed when the rules change, and at least once a year regardless. April is the big one, when mid-contract rises land.
  • This policy is reviewed twice a year, and whenever something in it stops being true.

We used to promise a review of this page every 90 days and then miss it, which is worse than not promising. Twice a year is a commitment we can actually keep.

How we use AI, and how we do not

We use AI tools the way most small teams now do: for first drafts, for spotting inconsistencies across pages, and for tidying up clumsy sentences. Being cagey about that would be silly.

Three things it is not allowed to do:

  • It does not verify a source. Tools that summarise documents introduce errors, so a human opens the Ofcom report and reads the actual paragraph.
  • It does not check a fact. Every price, speed and date is confirmed against the provider or the regulator by a person.
  • It does not decide anything. What we recommend, how we rank and what we warn you about are editorial judgements made by the two people named above.

This mirrors the transparency clause in the IMPRESS Standards Code, which requires AI-generated content to be clearly identified and kept under human editorial oversight. We are not regulated by IMPRESS. We think the standard is the right one anyway.

More detail: our AI disclosure.

Independence, plainly

  • BroadbandSwitch.uk is operated by Upleashed Limited, an Isle of Man company, and is part of SearchSwitchSave, our group of comparison brands. No broadband provider owns any part of it.
  • No provider has ever been given a say in what we write, how we rank, or whether they appear.
  • Nobody can buy a place in our results. There are no sponsored slots and no paid placements.
  • If we ever introduce anything paid, it will be labelled as such at the point you see it, not disclosed on a page you have to go looking for.