How we're paid

Right now: nobody pays us. UseTheseCards has no affiliate relationships, no sponsorships, no advertising, no paid placements, and no premium tier. No card issuer, bank, network or comparison network has given us a cent. This is a free tool built by one person, and the hosting bill is a few dollars a month.

Last updated July 31, 2026.

About those card links. Card links go through usethesecards.com/go/ and today redirect straight to the issuer — we earn nothing and count nothing. The redirect exists so that if we are ever accepted into an affiliate program, the destination changes in one committed data file instead of in a hundred pages, and you can see the change in that file’s own commit history. There is no affiliate network in the middle of that redirect today, no tracking id is appended, and it records nothing — not a click, not a count, not an IP.

Why we're telling you this

Nearly every "best credit cards" page you have ever read is paid for by the cards it ranks. That is legal and normal, and it is also why those lists rarely tell you to keep the card you have or apply for nothing. We would rather say the awkward part first: today we earn nothing, so the ranking you see is the ranking our math produced.

If that changes — the pledge

We may add affiliate links later. That is the plan we would use to pay for card-data upkeep, and we would rather do it in the open than pretend otherwise. When it happens, all of the following are binding on us:

• The math never sees the money. Rankings are computed from card terms — rate, cap, fee, activation, point value — and the ranking code has no access to payout data. A card that pays us nothing outranks a card that pays us $250 whenever the numbers say so.
• Paid links are labelled where they sit. Every compensated link carries rel="sponsored" and a visible marker on the row itself, not just in fine print at the bottom.
• Unpaid cards stay in. Cards with no affiliate program remain in the rankings at their honest position. We will not quietly drop a card because it earns us nothing.
• "Don't apply" stays a legal answer. If your wallet is already optimal, or the card only wins for someone who carries no balance and you carry one, we say so — even on a page full of links.
• This page names names. When money starts, this page lists who pays us and roughly how, dated. The data files record the day it changed.

What we do not do, ever

• We do not sell your data. We do not have your data — see Privacy.
• We do not take payment to move a card up, add a card, or remove a competitor's card.
• We do not write "reviews" bought by an issuer.