Editorial Policy

Complete editorial independence

No card issuer can pay for inclusion, exclusion or higher ranking. We may show ads and earn commissions from some links; neither is an input to our scores. We do not publish sponsored content. This site shows Google ads, and links marked “Partner” may earn us a commission at no cost to you. See our Affiliate & Ads Disclosure.

Card rankings, scores, and editorial content are determined entirely by our published scoring methodology, and nothing else.

Who writes and reviews our pages

Every ranking, guide and calculator is researched, written and reviewed by the Your Best Editorial Team, the editorial staff of Your Best Financial Network, published by ByTheMath. Pages carry the team’s name rather than one author’s because no single person decides a ranking: the same published scoring model ranks every card, and every page goes through the same sourcing and review steps described here.

Each page shows when it was last updated.

Where our information comes from

• The issuer first. We take fees, earn rates, welcome offers, intro APRs, credits and benefits from the issuer’s card page and its Rates & Fees or pricing disclosure. Each card record keeps a link to that source.
• The issuer wins a disagreement. When a third-party site and the issuer’s page differ, we use the issuer’s page.
• Loyalty programs for points. We check transfer partners and transfer ratios against each loyalty program’s terms. Point values come from our published point valuations, and the scores use those same values.
• No guessing. When an issuer doesn’t publish a figure, we show it as not stated rather than fill it in. Figures that are our own estimates, such as the value of credits a typical cardholder uses, are labeled as estimates and explained in the methodology.

How we keep card data current

• Twice a day, a scanner re-reads the issuer pages it can read and flags anything that differs from our data.
• Pages the scanner can’t read (for example, terms shown only in a pop-up disclosure) are re-read by an automated checker: daily for bank and co-branded cards, monthly for store cards. The same checker re-reads rewards and benefits on the other cards weekly.
• New cards. We check issuers’ card lists weekly, so we find and add new cards.
• A person reviews every flagged change against the issuer’s page before it reaches the site. Nothing a scanner or checker finds is published on its own.
• Ongoing APR ranges are variable and move with the prime rate. We check them in periodic full audits rather than daily; the issuer’s Rates & Fees page is always the final word on the rate you would get.

How rankings work

Every card is evaluated using the same scoring model regardless of the issuer. There are no manual adjustments, no featured placements, and no way for any third party to influence where a card appears. The only thing that changes a card’s ranking is a change to the card’s terms or a change to our published methodology. When the data changes, scores recalculate and pages rebuild automatically.

Guides and advice

Our guides explain how card features work. They are general information, not personal financial advice: the right card depends on your credit, your spending and how you pay your balance. Before you apply, confirm the terms on the issuer’s site, which are the terms that apply to you.

Corrections

If we get something wrong, we fix it and log it. We list factual errors, such as a wrong fee, rate or welcome offer, with the date in our corrections log. A routine change to an offer by the issuer is an update, not a correction. To report an error, email contact@bythemath.com with the page address and what is wrong.