Finding someone to be you loan backer and support your application is a key part of the process; the best place to start is with close family and friends, someone who knows and trusts you.

As this is such an important part of the process please see our page Being a Guarantor for further information.

Neither you or your backer need to own your own home, though the lowest rates are only available to those whose guarantors do.

For further information on the implications of either being a homeowner or tenant, please see our dedicated page on Non Homeowner Guarantor Loans.

Please note that this DOES NOT mean that the loan will be secured against you guarantor’s home, all our lenders loans are unsecured.

Our lenders offer some of the lowest interest rates available for bad credit loans from £500 to £15,000; though APR’s still do vary between 39.9% - 54.9%.

The best way for you to find the cheapest loan is to look at our compare loans table, this will give you the rates of different loans and lenders.

For further reading on getting the very best loan deal, see our page Low APR Loans.

The quickest way for you to find the best loan for your own personal circumstances is to use our Best for You Loan Selector. Simply fill in your criteria and using our clever technology we will find the best loan for you.

Or go to our compare loans table, and sort the different loans according to size, length, customer rating etc.

Unfortunately, a success loan application cannot be guaranteed.

Every lender has its own criteria, and whether they decide to lend to you will wholly depend on the status of you, and your guarantor and the lenders specific criteria at the time you apply.

For more information, see our page Guaranteed loans?

Not really, payday loans are small loans typically up to £2,000 maximum, have very high interest rates up to 1,500% Representative APR, and are intended for short loan period of up to 4 weeks.

Whereas Guarantor Loans are typically from 6 months to 5 years with much lower Representative APR’s.

To see the differences between payday and guarantor loans see our article "A more affordable payday loan alternative".

If you are thinking about Bankruptcy, then you need to make sure you get some good information and advice.

Our Alternative to Bankruptcy page lists some high quality information and advice resources.

We also explain the limited circumstances where a guarantor loan could be an alternative to bankruptcy.

To get further details about the criteria you and your guarantor need to meet, and lots more, please see our guarantor loan page.

For further reading please see the following related articles:

• Wikipedia’s unsecured guarantor loan description
• This is Money’s article Can't get a loan because of bad credit score? The best and worst places to get 'alternative credit'