The typical ranges
Australian residential lenders pay brokers two commissions through their aggregator: an upfront at settlement and a trail every month the loan remains. In 2026 the upfront on most residential products sits between 0.55% and 0.70% of the settled amount, calculated net of offset balances since the post-royal-commission reforms. Trail sits between 0.15% and 0.20% per year of the outstanding balance, paid monthly. Both are quoted ex-GST, and GST is added on the RCTI.
Those ranges are narrow because the major aggregators negotiate on behalf of thousands of brokers and the lenders compete for the same distribution. The differences that remain are in the details: which balance the rate is applied to, whether trail steps up or down after a set number of years, how arrears are treated, and above all the clawback schedule that sits behind the upfront.
Why rates differ
A lender's rates reflect what it wants from brokers. Lenders chasing volume push the upfront to the top of the range. Lenders that want loans to stay push trail up, sometimes stepping it higher after year three or five, and some pay a modest trail on loans that were originally written by another broker and later refinanced in. Non-bank lenders competing for specialist or self-employed borrowers often pair a higher upfront with a shorter or waived clawback.
Product matters as much as lender. Commercial, SMSF and asset-finance products carry different schedules, often with higher upfronts and shorter trail. Within residential lending, some lenders pay a lower rate on fixed loans than on variable, and some pay nothing on the fixed portion during the fixed period.
Finally, the aggregator split. Two brokers on the same lender receive different net trail because their agreements differ. A 70% split and a 90% split on the same 0.15% trail are 0.105% and 0.135% respectively, which over a $48m book is $14,400 a year.
Try it: Trail commission calculator
Enter a balance, a trail rate and your aggregator share to see what actually lands in your account each month.
Rates by lender
We do not publish a lender-by-lender rate table, and we would be wary of any site that does. Commission schedules are set in each aggregator's agreement with each lender, change with notice, and apply by settlement date, so a single public number for a lender is usually wrong for at least some of the loans on your book. The reliable pattern is the one above: the majors cluster tightly in the middle of the range and compete on clawback terms rather than rate; non-banks and specialist lenders sit higher on upfront and vary more on trail; commercial and asset products run on separate schedules altogether.
What you can compare is the shape of each lender's schedule for your product mix: whether trail steps up or down after a set year, whether it is calculated net of offset, how arrears are treated, and how long the clawback window runs. Those four terms move your net trail more over a decade than a couple of basis points of headline rate.
Reading your own rate
The rate that applies to your loans is the one on your aggregator's commission schedule for that lender and product, on the settlement date. Market tables are a guide to the range, not a substitute. To check what a lender is actually paying you, take a trail line from your RCTI, divide it by the loan balance on the same line, and multiply by twelve. If the answer is not the scheduled rate, the reasons are usually one of: the loan has moved into a stepped period, the lender calculates on a net-of-offset balance, the loan was in arrears for part of the month, or the lender has made an error. The last one is more common than brokers expect and is recoverable if it is raised promptly.
What a rate difference is worth
Small differences in trail compound. On a $700,000 loan held for ten years and paid down steadily, the difference between 0.15% and 0.20% trail is roughly $3,000 over the life of the loan. Across a book of 190 loans that is the difference between a $72,000 trail line and a $96,000 one, and a trail book multiple applied to each. Conversely, a 0.10% difference in the clawback-adjusted upfront on a $650,000 settlement is $650 once.
That asymmetry is the argument for weighting lender selection toward trail and retention terms where the client's interests allow, and for treating the trail rate on every existing loan as something to verify against the statement each month rather than assume.
A worked comparison makes the point. Take two lenders paying the same 0.65% upfront on a $650,000 settlement, one at 0.15% trail with a 24-month two-step clawback, the other at 0.18% trail with an 18-month window. Year one is identical on the upfront, $4,225 each. From there the second lender pays roughly $195 more trail a year on the opening balance, and its clawback exposure ends six months earlier, so a refinance at month 20 costs nothing rather than half the upfront. Over a ten-year hold the trail difference alone approaches $1,700 on that one loan, before anything the shorter window saves. Multiply that across a book of 190 loans and the choice between two near-identical headline schedules is worth tens of thousands of dollars of trail, which is the number that ends up in a valuation.