Disclosure
How Affiliate Links Work
Some links on this site — in reviews, comparisons, and best-of lists — are affiliate links. If you purchase a product through one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This funds a meaningful part of the testing and writing behind every review, and we'd rather state that plainly than bury it in fine print.
Why This Doesn't Affect Our Scores
Every product on this site is scored using the exact same Methodology — protection, performance, and price & UX — regardless of whether an affiliate relationship exists. A vendor paying a higher commission does not get a higher score, a better ranking slot, or softer language about a real weakness found during testing. We test first and sort out any commercial relationship separately.
Why We Think This Matters More in Security Software Specifically
Antivirus affiliate commissions can be unusually generous compared to other product categories, which is exactly why we think transparency matters more here than most. A review site with an incentive that large and no visible separation between revenue and scoring shouldn't be trusted blindly — including this one. Judge us by whether a partner vendor's real weaknesses actually show up in our reviews, not just by whether we admit affiliate links exist.
How We Choose What to Recommend
Our recommendations start from testing, not from which affiliate programs exist. When we decide to publish a review or add a product to a Best Antivirus list, that decision is made by evaluating the product against our criteria first. Only afterward do we check whether an affiliate program is available, and if one isn't, we cover the product anyway with the same depth. Several products on this site carry no commercial relationship to us at all, scored identically to ones that do.
Editorial Independence in Practice
The people writing and scoring reviews don't see which affiliate deals generate the most revenue, and no one's pay is tied to how a review performs commercially. If a partner vendor's product had a real drop in lab performance, we'd lower the score and say so directly — that's the actual test of whether this separation holds up.
What We Never Do
We don't accept payment for a guaranteed positive review, a specific score, or a spot on a ranked list. We don't let a vendor preview or approve review copy before publication. We don't soften a real weakness — poor lab results, aggressive upselling, a confusing interface — because the vendor is a commercial partner. If a review ever reads like marketing copy from the vendor itself, that's a mistake worth reporting.
If We Ever Ran Sponsored Content
We don't currently run sponsored posts or paid placements. If that ever changes, sponsored material would be clearly labeled and kept entirely separate from our tested, scored content — never folded into the rating system.
Keeping This Page Honest
We'll update this disclosure any time our funding model or editorial process actually changes. What you're reading reflects how things work as of the site's most recent content update.
Something Doesn't Add Up?
If anything here seems inconsistent with what you're seeing elsewhere on the site, tell us through our Contact page — we'd rather hear about it and fix it than have it sit unnoticed.
How This Compares to Sites That Don't Disclose Anything
Plenty of antivirus comparison sites exist purely as affiliate funnels with no independent testing behind them — a ranking that happens to put the highest-commission vendor first isn't a coincidence in those cases, it's the entire business model. We'd rather be transparent about running on affiliate revenue while still proving, through a public methodology and named reviewers, that the revenue model and the ranking are kept apart. Judge that separation by whether a partner vendor's real weaknesses actually show up in our reviews, not just by whether we admit affiliate links exist.