Affiliate Disclosure, Referral Transparency & Commercial Firewall
Some outbound links on AiRecMark are trackable affiliate or referral tokens. This page states, in plain language, exactly how those links work — and the immutable rule that compensation never influences benchmark scores, leaderboard placement, or latency rankings.
Rankings are not for sale
Score algorithm has no commercial input
noreferrer noopener on outbound links
Every affiliate placement is marked
Scope & Plain-Language Summary
AiRecMark is an independent evaluation platform. To keep our benchmark compute and editorial work funded, some links that point to third-party AI tools are affiliate or referral links: if you click through and purchase a subscription, AiRecMark may receive a commission at no additional cost to you.
Three commitments govern every such link, and they are stated here so you never have to guess:
- Disclosure first: monetized placements are marked and this page is linked from the site footer of every page.
- No score influence: commissions cannot change a tool's score, rank, or category placement.
- No identifier leakage: your identity, email, or benchmark history is never passed to partners.
How Affiliate & Referral Links Work
Affiliate tokens are administered either through established partner platforms (for example PartnerStack) or through direct programs operated by the vendor. Technically, a monetized outbound link:
Outbound links carry rel="nofollow sponsored noopener" and suppress the HTTP Referer header.
No email, account ID, enterprise domain, or benchmark history is encoded into referral parameters.
Attribution is limited to anonymous session-level click identifiers used solely to credit a referral — never to profile a reader.
Commercial Firewall: Compensation Never Moves a Score
This is the core rule of the platform, and it mirrors the binding language in our Terms of Service (§ 06.1 Neutrality Firewall):
Commercial sponsorships, affiliate referral integrations, and enterprise data-feed subscriptions shall never influence, alter, reweight, or inflate any tool's benchmark score, Elo-style rating, or comparative ranking position.
Scores are produced by the deterministic five-dimension model documented in the Evaluation Methodology. The scoring pipeline has no field, parameter, or override for commercial relationships, and partners are contractually barred from requesting one.
Where Monetized Links Appear
The following placements may contain affiliate or referral links. Every one of them is marked as monetized; placements without a link are editorial only.
| Placement | Monetized? | Disclosure Method |
|---|---|---|
| Tool detail "Visit official site" CTA | POSSIBLE | rel="sponsored" + this disclosure page |
| Deals & credits directory | POSSIBLE | Inline FTC transparency notice on the page |
| Comparison & alternatives pages | POSSIBLE | rel="sponsored" + footer disclosure link |
| Benchmark scores, rankings, category order | NEVER | Editorial output — not a placement |
| Editorial articles & verdicts | NEVER | Independent editorial output |
How Affiliate Revenue Is Used
Referral revenue is reinvested into the operational cost of independent evaluation:
- Benchmark compute, sandboxed test environments, and repeated re-runs for statistical stability.
- Tool audits, data sourcing, and freshness checks that keep pricing and capability records current.
- Editorial and engineering work on the public methodology and data schema.
There is no "pay to be listed", no "pay to pass" an audit, and no paid tier that changes how a tool is scored or displayed.
Editorial Independence & Enforcement
Independence is enforced, not merely promised:
- Partners do not receive advance sight of scores and cannot approve, edit, or delay a verdict.
- Tools that fail our dark-pattern and transparency audit are barred from commercial inclusion regardless of the size of any offered bounty or commission.
- If a partner requests score influence, the request is refused and the relationship is terminated.
Where a tool has both an editorial record and a monetized link, the editorial record is written independently of the commercial relationship.
Questions, Verification & Contact
Readers, vendors, and regulators may ask us to verify any link's status or to review a disclosure decision.
Regulatory Basis & Jurisdiction
This disclosure is maintained to satisfy endorsement and advertising-transparency rules, including the U.S. FTC Endorsement Guides (16 CFR Part 255), the EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (2005/29/EC), and the Swiss Unfair Competition Act (UWG Art. 3(1)(b)) on undisclosed advertising.
This page is governed by the same jurisdictional framework as our Privacy & Data Rights Charter and Terms of Service. Material changes to our affiliate practices will be reflected in the revision number above and noted in the site changelog.