How We Source Our Rates
RallyRates is a rate publisher, not a lender or a broker. Everything on the board comes from data that's already public, gathered the polite way and presented straight. Here's exactly how — because a benchmark you can't audit isn't worth much.
Where the numbers come from
- Market benchmarks (the backbone). Public data: the Optimal Blue Mortgage Market Indices (OBMMI) — daily rates built from actual locked loans — plus Freddie Mac's PMMS survey and U.S. Treasury yields, all via the Federal Reserve's FRED. These are the same series the industry quotes.
- Named lenders. Polite, roughly once-a-day reads of lenders' own public rate pages. If a page is blocked, or hides its rate behind your personal details, we skip it — a block is a "no." We're a monitor, not a scraper.
What we don't do
- No lead generation. There are no application links, no "get matched," no selling your information — because we don't collect it. No name, no email, no phone required to see a rate.
- No pay-for-placement. No lender pays to appear or to rank. The board sorts by lowest APR, period. That neutrality is the entire point.
- No point-inflated headline. Our Index excludes rates that were bought down with points, so the benchmark reflects the true par market, not a number flattered by upfront fees.
Honest limits
Not all lenders or offers are shown, and coverage grows over time — thinness shows up as absence, never as filler. Every figure is stamped with its source and date; rates are informational benchmarks "as of" that timestamp, not live quotes, and they change constantly. Confirm any rate with the lender before you rely on it. Full terms are on the Terms and License pages.
By L.W. Martin, Founder — 20 years in the mortgage business, including 15 running his own brokerage. About → · Updated August 2026.