Disclosures
Affiliate & FTC disclosure
Some “Apply” links in Finstracker — including those surfaced by the onboarding wizard and the “best card” recommendations — may be affiliate links. When they are, we earn a commission from the card issuer if you’re approved, at no extra cost to you. Affiliate programs are pending issuer approval as of this writing; today most outbound links go to the issuer’s public application page with no commission attached.
Per the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s Endorsement Guides, we mark affiliate-eligible links with a small † indicator in the UI and label this page from the wizard’s Review step.
How recommendations are computed
Our recommender is deterministic and rules-based. Cards are ranked by a transparent formula combining:
- Your stated spend mix (dining, groceries, travel, gas, streaming, rent)
- Each card’s published earn multipliers and category caps
- Annual fee, sign-up bonus value, and (when relevant) a redemption-fit score derived from your home airport, airline preferences, and hotel-chain preferences
Affiliate status is never an input to the ranking. A card without an affiliate relationship is ranked exactly the same as one with the highest commission. If you ever see a recommendation you can’t reproduce from these inputs, tell us — we’ll fix the bug.
Editorial & data sourcing
Card data (rewards multipliers, fees, perks, transfer partners) is maintained by
hand from public issuer pages and updated on the cadence shown in
data/cards-catalog.meta.json. Airport-to-airline mappings use BTS
T-100 segment data (2024). We are not a bank, a broker, or a financial advisor;
recommendations are informational only.
Privacy
Your wallet, transactions, and travel profile stay in your own account and are never sold or shared. See our privacy policy for details.
Last updated: 2025-01-15.