Affiliate disclosure

Last reviewed: April 30, 2026.

What this page covers

This page describes how affiliate links will be disclosed on The Frequent Flier and how editorial decisions are kept separate from commission rates.

Today, the site does not contain any affiliate links. The only money The Frequent Flier currently earns comes from Google AdSense display advertising. Display ads are served by an ad network based on impressions and clicks, not by The Frequent Flier choosing what's on the page. They are labeled "Advertisements" wherever they appear, and our privacy policy explains what data Google collects in that flow. AdSense placements are governed by Google's labelling rules and our privacy policy, not by the Federal Trade Commission's affiliate-disclosure rules.

When affiliate content launches — most likely starting with credit card affiliate links to issuer application pages — the rest of this page describes the policies that will apply. Both the FTC's endorsement guides at 16 CFR Part 255 and our own editorial standards require affiliate disclosures to be clear, conspicuous, and in plain language.

What an affiliate link will be

When affiliate content begins, our affiliate links will start out almost entirely as credit card affiliate links. We will work with credit card affiliate networks — for example, CardRatings, FlexOffers, and individual issuer programs — that pay us a commission when a reader applies for and is approved for a card after clicking through one of our links. Commissions vary by issuer, by card, and over time.

We may add other categories later, including hotels, flights, travel insurance, and luggage. When we add any of them, this page will be updated to reflect the actual relationships in place, and each affiliate link will be marked as such.

How we will choose what to recommend

Our coverage will be editorial. Commission rates will not determine which cards we recommend, what we say about them, or how we rank them. We will sometimes link to cards from issuers we have no commercial relationship with, when those are the right cards to mention. We will sometimes decline to add a card to a list even when its affiliate payout is high.

Our evaluation framework — what factors we weigh, how we weight them, how we update — will be published separately. If you want to understand exactly why a card is or isn't on a list, email hello@thefrequentflier.com.

What we won't promise

When we begin recommending cards and other products, a few things we want to be clear about up front:

• We will not guarantee approval for any card or product. Approval decisions are made by the issuer based on your individual profile.
• We will not set the terms. APRs, annual fees, foreign-transaction fees, sign-up bonuses, points-earning rates, redemption values, transfer partners, and benefits are all set by the issuer or program. They change frequently — sometimes daily — and we are not always informed before they change.
• We will try to keep information current, but we cannot warrant that any specific number or term on this site is correct at the moment you read it. Always verify the live terms on the issuer's application page before applying. The issuer's terms control.

For broader caveats about the data and tools we publish, see our terms of use.

Where you'll see disclosures

Once affiliate links are live on the site, you will see two layers of disclosure:

1. This sitewide page, linked in the site footer.
2. An inline disclosure on every page that contains affiliate links, near the top of the page or immediately adjacent to the first affiliate link, in plain language and in standard prose — not buried in a footnote or hidden behind an info icon.

This sitewide disclosure does not replace the per-page disclosure. The FTC has been clear that a single sitewide disclosure is not sufficient on its own; both layers will always be present once affiliate content is live.

Privacy when you click

Once affiliate links are live, they will typically set tracking cookies in your browser so that the issuer and the affiliate network can attribute a successful application back to The Frequent Flier. Once you leave our site, the destination's privacy policy will control what data they collect and how they use it. See our privacy policy for what we set on our side.

Questions about a specific recommendation

Once recommendations are live, if you want to know whether a particular card recommendation is an affiliate relationship, what the methodology weighed in including it, or anything else about how a piece of editorial coverage came together, ask. We'd rather answer.

Contact

Email hello@thefrequentflier.com.