Advertiser Disclosure — RateRankings

Last updated: October 26, 2026

Short version: RateRankings is free to use because advertising and partner payments support it. That money never changes the rankings. Every table on this site is ranked by rate — full stop.

How this site makes money

1. Display advertising. Ads appear on the site, clearly separated from our rate tables. No advertisement is placed inside a ranked table, and no ad is allowed to look like a ranking result.
2. Affiliate / click-out payments. Some links from RateRankings to a lender, card issuer, or other financial company are paid links. If you click one and later apply or open an account, the company may pay us a fee (often called a CPA or referral fee). It costs you nothing extra — the lender's price to you is the same whether you arrive from us or go there directly.
3. Sponsored placements. Occasionally a placement on the site or in an alert email is paid for by a sponsor. Sponsored placements are always labeled "Sponsored" or "Ad," are never mixed into a ranked table, and never appear next to one in a way that could confuse the two.

What compensation does — and does not — do

• Rank order is by rate only. A lender's position in any table is determined by its advertised rate and the rules on our How We Rank page. Payment — its existence, size, or absence — is not a ranking input, ever.
• Coverage is neutral. We list lenders because they publicly advertise rates in a category we cover, whether or not they have any business relationship with us. Many listed lenders pay us nothing. A lender cannot pay to be included, and cannot pay to have a competitor removed or moved down.
• No pay, no penalty. A lender that pays us nothing is ranked by exactly the same rules as one that does. If a lender's rate is the lowest verified figure we have, it sits at the top of the table.
• We never present paid results as ranked results. Anything ordered by payment would be labeled advertising — and in our ranked tables, nothing is ordered by payment.

How paid links are labeled

Where an individual page contains paid links, a plain-language notice appears with the table itself, not just in a footer — for example: "Some outbound links on this page are paid links. Rankings are by rate, not by pay." This page is the full version of that disclosure, and it is linked from every page of the site.

What we don't do

• We don't sell your personal information (see the Privacy Policy).
• We don't accept payment to publish a rate we can't verify, to keep a stale rate up, or to soften how a product's terms are described.
• We don't describe any lender as a "partner" or "official" anything unless an actual agreement makes that true.

If you ever see a placement on this site that isn't labeled, or a ranking that looks bought, tell us: contact@raterankings.com. That is the exact thing this business exists not to do.