Methodology

PointsCraft is a manual tracker for credit card benefits, points, and miles — on iOS and on this site. We earn money two ways: a Pro subscription on the iOS app, and contextual affiliate commissions when readers apply for cards through our links. This page explains how we decide what to feature, how we keep card data current, and the firewall between editorial choices and affiliate revenue.

Editorial independence

Our hard rule, from the project's internal guidelines: every recommendation must be genuinely useful even with no affiliate dollars attached. If we wouldn't show a card to a reader who couldn't earn us a commission, we don't show it. Trust outranks short-term revenue, full stop.

Two practical consequences:

• A card without an affiliate relationship still gets a full review page if it earns one on the merits. We do not hide non-commissioned cards.
• A card with a high commission does not get a higher rating, a better “best for” placement, or warmer copy than the merits support. Comparisons reflect what the data shows.

How a card enters the catalog

Every card in our catalog goes through the same checklist:

• Issuer-published facts only. Annual fee, welcome bonus, earning rates, and benefit values come from the issuer's own product pages, cardmember agreements, and benefit terms. We do not repeat values from other publishers without verifying them at the source.
• Recurring benefits are modeled, not summarized. Monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual credits are entered as structured benefits with their actual reset cycle — the same data model the iOS app uses to schedule reminders. This is what lets us show a real combined annual value instead of a marketing number.
• Welcome bonuses include the spend requirement and the window. A bonus without an MSR or a timeline is incomplete and we leave it off until both are confirmed.
• No guessed values. If a benefit's value isn't publicly stated by the issuer, we either omit it or use a clearly labeled conservative estimate. We would rather under-claim a card's value than over-promise it.

Keeping the catalog current

Card benefits change. Issuers add credits, remove credits, and adjust values without warning. Two mechanisms keep our pages honest about that:

• Last verified date. Every card review page shows the date its facts were last re-checked against issuer sources. If you see a stale date on a card you care about, email us — we prioritize re-verification of cards readers flag.
• Single source of truth. Card data lives in one JSON catalog that feeds both this site and the iOS app. A single edit updates every card review page, every comparison page, every “best for” listicle, and the iOS app's templates. We don't maintain parallel copies that can drift.

How “best for X” lists are built

Our “best for” pages (e.g., best for family travel, best for childcare) start from the question, not from the card list. We define the use case, identify the two or three earning categories that matter most for it, then surface the cards whose actual earning rates, recurring credits, and welcome bonuses align. Each entry explains why it earned the slot in plain English — including any caveats (high annual fee, restricted redemption, etc.).

Affiliate disclosure and how links work

Every page that contains an affiliate apply link displays an Advertiser Disclosure above the first link. We follow the U.S. FTC guidelines on endorsement disclosure.

We use both direct issuer programs and affiliate networks (such as Bankrate Credit Card Network, Impact, CardRatings/Awin, and FlexOffers). The commission a card pays does not influence its review score or its ranking on “best for” pages — see Editorial independence above. Where a card has no affiliate relationship, we show no apply button and link directly to the issuer's product page.

What we don't do

• No display advertising on the iOS app. The iOS app's only monetization is the Pro subscription and contextual affiliate apply links — no banner ads, no interstitials, no rewarded video.
• No claims about credit score impact, approval odds, or credit-building outcomes. Those are the issuer's call and depend on your full profile.
• No quotes of APR or specific bonus values without a verification date. Numbers without provenance rot fast and we'd rather drop a value than show a stale one.
• No automatic bank syncing or transaction scraping. PointsCraft is a manual tracker by design. Your card data stays on your device, optionally synced to your private iCloud container.

Corrections

If a benefit value, fee, earning rate, or welcome bonus on this site looks wrong to you, please email support@pointscraft.com with the card, the field, and the issuer source. Verified corrections ship to every surface (web + iOS app) on the next catalog update, usually within a week.