Affiliate disclosure

What an affiliate link is

An affiliate link is a tracked URL that earns the publisher (Comparia) a commission when the destination (a retailer or provider) records a sale or sign-up referred by that link. Amazon's Associates programme, Shopify's partner programme and Stripe's partner network are examples. The price you pay is the same whether you arrive via an affiliate link or a regular one.

Where Comparia uses them

On some comparison pages, the outbound buttons and links to a retailer or provider carry an affiliate tag. This is disclosed inline on every comparison page in the "How Comparia works" footer, and again here. Not every outbound link is an affiliate link — many links to vendor documentation, features or pricing pages carry no tag at all.

What it does NOT change

• The ranking. Affiliate commissions have no bearing on which option wins a comparison. Scores are produced by the methodology published on the methodology page and applied the same way regardless of whether a retailer is in an affiliate programme.
• The criteria. The criteria we score against are chosen because they genuinely differentiate options in that domain, not because they favour a specific provider.
• The inclusion. A product or provider doesn't need to be in an affiliate programme to be compared. Some winners don't pay affiliate commissions at all. We still recommend them when they're the right answer.
• The price you pay. You pay the same price whether you click an affiliate link or a clean one.

What we don't do

• We don't accept payment from vendors for placement, ranking or inclusion.
• We don't run sponsored comparisons. If that ever changes it will be labelled as such — clearly, on the page itself, not buried in a disclaimer.
• We don't weight the "winner" toward products with higher commission rates. We have the data to do this; we deliberately don't look at it when scoring.
• We don't drop products from comparisons because they're not in a programme.

Programmes we participate in

Comparia is a participant in the Amazon Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.co.uk. We also participate in a number of other retailer and provider affiliate networks. The specific programme behind a given outbound link is not always surfaced on the page because it would clutter the reading experience, but the presence of affiliate links is disclosed universally (here and on every comparison page's methodology footer).

Why we use affiliate links at all

Affiliate commissions are a modest, opt-in way for readers who decide to buy to contribute to the cost of running the site. The alternatives are worse: pay-for-play rankings (common on comparison sites, ruins trust), banner advertising (ugly, slow, privacy-invasive) or hard paywalls (excludes most readers). Affiliate links let us stay free to read, independent of vendor influence, and honest about where our commercial relationships begin and end.

Your data

Affiliate links typically set a cookie in your browser that tracks whether you complete a purchase on the destination site, so the retailer can attribute the sale. This is first-party to the retailer, not to us. Comparia does not receive or store your purchase information or personal data from these programmes. For our own data handling, see our privacy policy.