About Star Ratings

What are Star Ratings

Canstar’s Star Ratings are unique. We evaluate literally thousands of products from hundreds of financial institutions. Our expert researchers analyse every product by comparing price and features to determine what represents value.

How do value-based ratings work?

The way value based ratings work means that an expensive product that is fully featured could attract five stars but so could a cheaper product with fewer features.

Which product is right for you is a matter of individual choice. You may for example want a fully featured health insurance policy and don’t mind paying a bit more for it, or you may be looking for the cheapest loan with fewer bells and whistles.

Value-based ratings, based on profiles

We’re all individuals with different needs. A product may be rated five stars for one type of customer but perhaps just 2 or 3 stars for a different type of customer. Credit cards are a great example. A platinum credit card with a high interest rate might have lots of features that make it five star value for someone who spends heaps and never carries a debt (and therefore never pays interest). For someone juggling a hefty debt though, that same card might be only two star value.

How we calculate Star Ratings?

When calculating star ratings, CANSTAR takes into account a huge number of details in relation to each product. For full details on how we calculate star ratings, click on the relevant “Methodology” at the bottom of this page.

What do the stars mean

Five and four star products should be on your shopping list. As a consumer, this represents a high-value product. According to our ratings, these are the top 10% of products in their field.

Four star products also still have a good mix of price and features and shouldn’t be struck of your shopping list, especially if the product and brand really appeal to you.

Three stars means satisfactory value – and sometimes you may be satisfied with that – but our ratings suggest that you could be doing better.

Two and one star products are unlikely to be great value for you.

Rising star – If you see a star that looks like this , it means that we haven’t yet rated this product (perhaps it’s new to the market) but we think the product shows potential to score highly in the near future.