How we research and rate lenders

Where the numbers come from

Every figure on a lender page comes from that lender's own published disclosures unless the source note beneath it says otherwise. We read the lender's site, record the exact page URL, quote the sentence the figure came from, and stamp the date it was read. That record is attached to the specific claim, not to the page in general, so you can see which source supports which number.

What 'Not disclosed' means

It means the lender publishes nothing. It is not an estimate, not a category average and not a zero. Most directories fill these gaps with industry averages, and the result is that a business is sent to a lender that will decline it, because the average said 550 and the lender's real floor is 640. Of the 35 lender-product records we have researched in detail, 4 publish a rate of any kind. That ratio is the single most useful fact about this market and hiding it would make the site look better and work worse.

Pricing basis is a separate field from price

A factor rate and an APR measure different things. A factor rate of 1.30 is a multiple of the amount advanced with no time dimension — repay it in four months or twelve and the dollar cost is identical. An APR is annualised, so the same dollar cost expressed as an APR rises as the term shortens. Every pricing figure on this site carries its basis on the row above it, and we never convert one to the other in a comparison table. Our calculators will show you an APR-equivalent approximation for a factor rate if you enter a term, and they label it an approximation.

Verification and review dates

Each claim carries a verification status and a next review date. When that date passes the claim is marked past its review date and shows as such on the public page, rather than continuing to present as current. Lender terms change without notice, and a figure that was accurate in March is not evidence in September.

Customer ratings versus our assessment

Third-party ratings are recorded from public profiles we can confirm belong to that lender, with the platform, the exact profile URL, the rating, the review count and the date retrieved. Where we cannot confirm the profile belongs to the lender, we say so on the page instead of showing the rating as though we had. Ratings under 30 reviews are labelled a thin sample. Customer sentiment and our editorial view are kept in separate sections because they answer different questions, and they frequently disagree — several lenders here hold a 4.6 on one platform and a 1.0 on another.

What we will not publish

We do not publish invented reviews, ratings, rates, approval odds, funding speeds, licences or customer experiences. We do not scrape review platforms without authorisation, which is why our rating coverage is partial rather than complete. We do not pad a ranking to reach a round number: a list of six lenders means six lenders met the criteria.

AI assistance

Some drafting here is AI-assisted, and any page where that is true says so at the top. An AI-assisted draft cannot be published until a person has checked its factual claims against the sources listed at the end of it. The publishing system enforces this rather than relying on discipline: an AI-assisted article submitted for publication without that check is held at in-review automatically.

Corrections

If a figure here is wrong, tell us at [email protected] with the page and what you found. Corrections are logged with the date and what changed.