How we work

Advertising and Sponsored Content Policy

The current position

This publication carries no advertising. It runs no affiliate programme. It accepts no payment from any provider it covers, in any form — commission, flat fee, revenue share, free service, equity or common ownership.

Outbound links to providers carry a rel="nofollow" attribute and campaign parameters that identify traffic origin. Campaign tagging is ordinary publisher analytics; it transfers no value and creates no commercial relationship. If a paid relationship ever existed, those links would carry rel="sponsored" instead, and the relationship would be disclosed.

What we would do if that changed

Three things simultaneously, before any money was accepted:

1. Disclose it at the top of every page where it could matter — not in a footer, not on a separate policy page a reader has to find.
2. Change the link attribution to rel="sponsored" across the site.
3. Remove that provider from every ranked comparison on this site. A paying provider does not get scored by us, because a score from a publisher taking their money is not a score.

The third commitment is the one that matters. Disclosure alone lets a publisher keep ranking the company paying it and simply say so in small print.

What we will not do, regardless of payment

• Publish sponsored content, advertorial, or anything a provider drafted, reviewed or approved.
• Allow a provider to see a review before it publishes.
• Allow a provider representative to research, score, review, approve or edit any evaluation.
• Give any provider a scoring bonus, a default position, or preselection in any comparison.
• Remove or soften an accurate finding at a provider's request.

How to hold us to this

Our scoring rubric is published with its arithmetic. Our pricing dataset is downloadable with capture dates in the records. Our evidence ledger is public. If a ranking ever appears that the published rules do not produce, the inputs are there for you to check it against.

Tell us if you find one.

Provider right to respond

Any provider named here can contest a fact, a figure or a score. We publish a correction where the evidence supports it and publish the dispute where it does not. What a provider cannot do is approve, edit or preview our conclusions.

Questions readers actually ask