I’ve been using Sprive for a while now, and the honest version is that it does what it says — it makes overpaying your mortgage easier to actually do, which sounds small but in practice makes a real difference.
Most of us know we should overpay. The maths is obvious: every extra pound you put on the mortgage reduces the interest you pay over the life of the loan, often by much more than you’d expect. The problem is that it feels complicated, easy to forget, and hard to know how much is actually safe to put in without leaving yourself short.
Sprive solves the “I keep meaning to but never get round to it” problem. Here’s how it actually works.
What is Sprive?
Sprive is a free UK app that connects to your bank account, analyses what you can afford to spare each month, and makes it simple to transfer that money to your mortgage lender as an overpayment.
It was founded by Jinesh Vohra, formerly of Goldman Sachs, and is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Your money is held in a safeguarded account rather than a current account, and you can withdraw it back to your bank at any time — it’s not locked in.
It’s free to use. Sprive makes money if you remortgage through their service (they get a broker commission), but using the overpayment and cashback features costs you nothing.
How does Sprive work?
When you set up Sprive, you connect your bank account using Open Banking. The app reads your spending patterns and income to work out how much you could comfortably set aside each month without it affecting your day-to-day finances.
You then either let Sprive auto-save that amount each month, or set your own fixed overpayment amount — your choice. The money sits in your Sprive account until you decide to send it to your mortgage lender, which you do with one tap.
It works with most major UK lenders: Nationwide, HSBC, Lloyds, Barclays, Santander, Halifax, Natwest, RBS, Virgin Money, Yorkshire Building Society, Coventry Building Society, First Direct, and TSB. If your lender isn’t on the list, you can still use Sprive to save, but you’ll need to manually transfer to the lender yourself.
Sprive also monitors mortgage rates daily across more than 90 lenders, and will flag if there’s a better deal available than what you’re on. That’s genuinely useful — most people don’t actively check this.
Setting up the app
It takes about 10 minutes. You create an account with your email address, connect your bank account through Open Banking, and enter your mortgage details (lender, outstanding balance, monthly payment, interest rate).
From there Sprive shows you your mortgage freedom goal — how long it’ll take to pay off at your current rate, and how much earlier you’d be done if you overpaid by different amounts. That visualisation is one of the more motivating parts of the app. Seeing “pay off 4 years earlier and save £18,000 in interest” by overpaying £150 a month is the kind of thing that makes you actually do it.
You set your overpayment amount or let the auto-save run, and that’s it. It checks your spending and tops up your Sprive account throughout the month, then you tap to pay when you’re ready.
The cashback feature
Sprive has a built-in cashback section where you can earn money back by buying gift cards for selected retailers through the app. The cashback goes directly towards your mortgage overpayments, which is a nice framing — it makes grocery shopping feel vaguely productive.
Current retailers include: John Lewis, Primark, Morrisons, M&S, Waitrose, Uber, WHSmith, Halfords, IKEA, Deliveroo, and Just Eat.
Worth being honest: the cashback rates here aren’t always as competitive as dedicated cashback apps like TopCashback or Quidco. If you’re buying gift cards purely for the cashback, compare rates first. But if you’re already buying these things and want the cashback to go towards your mortgage automatically, it’s a convenient option.
Is Sprive safe?
Yes. Sprive is FCA regulated, uses bank-level security, and funds are safeguarded — meaning if something happened to Sprive as a company, your money would be protected. Open Banking connections are read-only by default (the app can see your spending but can’t move money without your instruction). Payments to your mortgage lender require your explicit approval each time.
What I actually think of it
The best thing about Sprive is that it removes friction. Left to my own devices, overpaying the mortgage is one of those things that stays on my to-do list — I know it makes financial sense but it competes with everything else for attention. Having it sat in a separate account, ready to go when I tap the button, means I actually do it.
The amount it calculates you can afford is conservative, which is probably right — it’s better to auto-save £80 and actually send it than to auto-save £200 and keep pulling it back.
The mortgage rate monitoring is genuinely useful, especially if you’re coming up to the end of a fixed term and haven’t been actively comparing.
It’s not going to replace talking to a mortgage broker if your situation is complicated, and the cashback rates aren’t always the best available. But as a habit-forming tool for overpaying — which is the whole point — it works.
Who is it for?
Sprive works well if you have a mortgage with one of the supported lenders, want to overpay but find it hard to build the habit, and would benefit from seeing the long-term impact of overpaying laid out clearly.
It’s less useful if your lender isn’t supported (you can still save but the direct payment integration doesn’t work), or if you’re comfortable setting up your own standing order to overpay each month.
Related posts: