We may get paid. The rankings don't know.
Required by the FTC, and worth explaining properly rather than burying in a footer.
The plain version
As of today, no link on this site pays us anything. The file that would hold affiliate links (affiliates.json) contains no live agreements — every card page's "check the current offer" link goes to this page, not to an issuer. There is no commission and, for now, no conflict of interest to manage.
Everything below describes how it will work on the day that changes. Credit Upside may then receive compensation when you open a credit card through certain links. Not every card will pay, the amounts will differ between them, and some of the cards we recommend most often will pay us nothing at all.
That is a genuine conflict of interest. Every site in this category has it. What differs is what's done about it — and we built the safeguards before the first agreement rather than after.
The other way the site may earn money is Credit Upside Pro, an optional paid plan. It adds a few extras and removes nothing: everything free stays free, and paying never changes a recommendation — the same scoring engine runs for everyone, and it never reads whether you pay.
How the conflict is handled
Saying "our rankings are independent" is easy and unverifiable. So independence is enforced structurally instead:
- Card terms live in one file. Affiliate relationships live in a separate file.
- The function that ranks cards receives only the first file. It has no reference to the second — not ignored, unavailable.
- Rankings are computed from your spending: earn-rate uplift, plus credits you'd realistically use, plus a signup bonus only if your spending clears the requirement, minus the annual fee. Commission is not a term in that calculation because it isn't in scope.
- Any card that pays us will be marked wherever it appears, including at the top of a list. Today that mark appears nowhere, because no card pays us.
This is checkable. The scoring engine is app-src/01-state.js through 04-recurring-offers-calendar.js — open any of them and confirm the words “affiliate”, “commission” and “payout” never appear. The affiliate file is read only by the rendering layer, app-src/05-views.js. An automated test (worker/test/affiliate-wall.test.mjs) fails the build if that ever stops being true. We'd rather be auditable than trusted.
What we won't do
- Rank a worse card above a better one because it pays more.
- Hide a card because it pays nothing. The database includes plenty that don't.
- Inflate a card's value using credits you'd have to spend $250,000 to unlock. Those are excluded from every total on the site.
Editorial independence
No issuer reviews, approves, or has any input into what appears here. Card terms are researched from public sources with a verified date attached, and where sources conflict we take the more conservative reading — even when the generous one would make a paying card look better.
Not financial advice
Credit Upside is an analysis tool. It doesn't know your income, your credit profile, or your plans, and it isn't a licensed financial adviser. Opening credit cards affects your credit and carries real risk if balances aren't paid in full. Verify current terms with the issuer before applying — they change often, and no third-party database is perfectly current.