Methodology
How We Are Funded
PenCompare is free to use and carries no subscription. The site is funded by affiliate commission: when a reader follows one of our links to a provider and goes on to buy, that provider may pay us a share of the sale.
You never pay more for having come through us. The commission is paid by the provider out of a price it has already set and published, so the figure shown in our table is the figure you pay. We would rather explain the arrangement plainly than bury it in a footer.
Where the money comes from
Two revenue streams, and a short list of things we will not sell. Each is described here in the same terms we would use if you asked us directly.
Primary source
Affiliate commission
Most outbound links to providers are affiliate links. If you click one and complete a purchase, we may receive a small commission from that provider at no additional cost to you. Commission rates vary between providers, which is precisely why they are excluded from the ranking calculation.
Secondary source
Sponsored placements
A provider can pay for visibility in a separate, clearly labelled area outside the comparison table. It buys position in that area and nothing else. The full policy is set out on our ranking page.
Not for sale
What we do not sell
We do not sell ranking positions. We do not accept payment to include a provider in the tables, or to leave one out. We do not sell reader data to providers or to anyone else, and we do not charge readers for access.
Independence
Commercial relationships never touch the comparison
The ranking rule has no field for commission, contract status, or how much a provider is worth to us. It is computed from the calculated total, the time each price was last checked, and the provider name, and no other value is available to it. Commercial terms are negotiated by people who do not set those rules.
There is no manual override. Nobody here can promote a provider, suppress one, or adjust a calculated total by hand, and no provider is offered that option at any price. A provider that pays us nothing keeps whatever position the data gives it; a provider that pays us more does not gain one.
You can check this rather than take it on trust. Every total is broken down into the components that produced it, every position follows the rule published on our ranking page, and any figure you believe is wrong can be reported for correction. If our output ever stops matching the rules set out here, treat that as a fault to report, not as an undisclosed policy.