Today’s best 5-year tracker rates, five years of variable-rate exposure.

Five-year tracker mortgages are an outlier in the UK market. At any one time there is typically only one lender actively pricing this product — and sometimes none. That thin availability is not a data gap; it reflects a straightforward commercial reality. A lender pricing a 5-year tracker is committing to charge base rate plus a fixed margin for sixty months, through whatever rate cycle follows. Most lenders find that exposure difficult to fund or hedge and simply don’t offer it. When a 5-year tracker does appear, it is almost always because a specific lender has a strategic reason to price one.

The product sits in an awkward position for most borrowers: it combines the payment variability of a tracker with the long commitment of a 5-year fix, without the certainty of either. A borrower taking a 5-year tracker accepts that their payment could move materially at any Bank of England meeting over sixty months — in either direction. For that exposure to make sense, you need budget headroom equivalent to at least 1.5% of additional base rate on top of your starting payment, and a genuine preference for variable-rate exposure over that full term. Most borrowers who want a tracker choose 2 years; most who want five years of certainty choose a fixed rate.