Affiliate Disclosure

The short version

Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you click one and buy something, we may earn a commission. It costs you nothing extra.

Commissions never determine our ratings, rankings, or recommendations. We say so here, and below we explain the specific rules that make it true rather than just asserting it.

Where the disclosure appears

Federal Trade Commission guidance requires disclosures to be clear, conspicuous, and close to the recommendation — not buried in a footer or a policy page you have to go looking for.

So on any page that contains affiliate links, you'll find a disclosure:

• Near the top of the page, before the first recommendation
• Adjacent to comparison tables and verdict boxes
• In plain language, not legal boilerplate

This page is the detailed version, not the disclosure itself.

The rules we hold ourselves to

1. We test before we rate. No product gets a rating on this site without a real account and hands-on use. Our screenshots are our own. If we haven't used it, we don't rate it.

2. Commission rates are invisible during evaluation. Ratings are set against a published rubric. We do not sort, rank, or order by payout.

3. We rate products we earn nothing from. Many tools we recommend have no affiliate program at all. When the best option pays us nothing, it still wins — and we'll say explicitly that it pays us nothing.

4. Negative findings stay in. If a product we earn from has a real weakness, it's in the review. A "cons" section that reads like a humblebrag is a sign of a compromised review, and we'd rather lose the commission.

5. No paid placement, ever. A company cannot buy a position, a rating, a review, or inclusion in a roundup. If we ever run sponsored content, it will be labeled as sponsored and it will not appear inside editorial rankings.

6. Pricing is verified, not copied. We check pricing directly and date it. Where pricing has changed since our last check, the Last Verified date tells you how stale it might be.

Other ways we make money

Affiliate commissions are one of several revenue streams. The complete picture — including digital products, courses, and sponsorships — is on How We Make Money.

We publish that page because you should be able to see our incentives and judge our content against them.

If you'd rather not use our links

That's completely fine. You can always go directly to any company's website. The content here is free either way, and nothing on this site is gated behind an affiliate click.

Questions

If you think a specific recommendation on this site looks influenced by commission, tell us. Contact us with the page and what looks wrong. We'd rather hear it.