How I work
How reviews get made
Every review on this site follows the same process. It's slower than copying another blog's table — that's the point.
Updated
On this page
Where the numbers come from
Primary sources only: the issuer's fee schedule, terms and conditions, official docs, and the product itself. Other review sites are never a source. Community reports (Reddit, X) are used for one thing — surfacing problems to verify — and when they appear in an article they're labeled as sentiment, not fact.
Every fee, rate, cap, and country list carries an "as of" date and links to where it was found. A number without a date and a source doesn't go in.
The scorecard
Cards are scored across five dimensions, justified line by line in every review:
- Fees — issuance, monthly, top-up, FX, withdrawal, and the spread nobody mentions.
- Real reward value — cashback after the caps, tiers, and token-price asterisks.
- Availability — where you can actually get and use the card, checked against the issuer's own country list.
- Custody & security — who holds the keys, what happens if the issuer has a bad year.
- Everyday usability — top-ups, Apple/Google Pay, limits, support when something breaks.
No score arrives without its working. If a card gets a 4 on fees, the review shows the exact fees that earned it.
"Where it falls short" is mandatory
Every review includes a section on the card's weaknesses — every card has them — and every roundup says who should not get each card. A review with no downsides is an advert, and this site doesn't publish adverts dressed as reviews.
Freshness is a deadline, not a vibe
Stale fee data is worse than no data. Card facts are re-verified against the source on a fixed schedule:
| Data | Re-verified |
|---|---|
| Tier-1 cards (the majors) | Every 30 days |
| Tier-2 / Tier-3 cards | Every 60 / 90 days |
| Roundups and rankings | Every quarter |
| Evergreen guides | Every 12 months |
The verification date prints on every page that uses the data. When terms change, affected pages get a visible "Updated" note — never a silent edit.
What referral deals can't touch
Some cards pay a referral commission — all of them are listed here. Those deals buy disclosed placements — the CTA after the verdict and the sticky bar at the bottom of the page — and nothing else. They don't touch scores, rankings, who gets reviewed, or what gets said. The fastest way to check: read what this site publishes about its own referral partner.
Corrections
Spotted a wrong or stale number? There's a "Suggest an edit" link at the bottom of every page that pre-fills the report. Real errors get fixed and stamped with what changed.