Consumers shopping online for financial products may not get the best deal if they rely on a single price comparison website, a consumer group warns today.

Consumers shopping online for financial products may not get the best deal if they rely on a single price comparison website, a consumer group warns today.

Which? Money checked three of the largest comparison websites for the cost of insurance, loans and credit cards and found that the best price offered by the sites was different in most cases.

It added that people could sometimes also get a better deal by going directly to the product provider.

The group looked at the cost of home insurance for contents worth £40,000 in a property in a medium-risk area where the customer had a five-year no claims discount on Gocompare.com, Confused.com and Moneysupermarket.com. It found the cheapest quotes ranged from £51 on Gocompare.com to £71 on Confused.com.

There was a similar variation for standard credit card rates, with Moneysupermarket.com offering the cheapest deal of 6.8% APR, while Gocompare.com offered a best rate of 12.9% APR.

The research found that in the case of a Bradford & Bingley home contents policy, the cover could be bought for £68 on the group's own website, while it cost £72 through Moneysupermarket.com, £83 on Confused.com and £100 on Gocompare.com.

The group also found that it was difficult to make a true comparison as different websites asked different questions and showed different product features.

Martyn Hocking, editor of Which? Money, said: "With such an array of financial products to choose from, it can be tempting to turn to a price comparison site to do the legwork for you.

"But you might be very confused to find that different sites can give you vastly different quotes and often don't give enough information for you to make an informed choice. You need to use two or three comparison sites and check directly with providers to get the best quote."