Affiliate and Ownership Disclosure

Effective date: August 22, 2026

The Short Version

Some links on BuyingBench are affiliate links. If you click one and buy something, we may earn a small commission. This never costs you anything extra.

BuyingBench is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program and other retail affiliate networks. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Some links go to storefronts our own company owns and operates. On those we are the seller and keep the full margin, not a commission. They are labelled as ours wherever they appear, and they are never scored entries in an article’s comparison. See Ownership and common control below.

Affiliate links and our own storefronts have zero influence on our scores, rankings, or recommendations.

How It Works

When we link to a product in our test articles, we use affiliate links where available. These links track that a purchase came from our site, and the retailer pays us a small referral fee (typically 3–8% of the sale price). This cost comes from the retailer’s marketing budget — it does not increase the price you pay.

Ownership and Common Control

BuyingBench is operated by the same company as two online storefronts:

This is a material connection under FTC guidance and we disclose it whether or not any money changes hands on a given click.

What this means in practice:

• Where an article’s category overlaps a product one of those storefronts sells, we may recommend that product. It is labelled “from a shop we own”, it carries this disclosure, and it is not entered as a scored product in the article’s comparison.
• We are the seller on those links, so we keep the full margin rather than a referral commission. They are not affiliate links and are not labelled as sponsored.
• Products we sell ourselves have not been through any evaluation described in the article that recommends them. We are not reviewing our own products at arm’s length and do not claim to.
• Our own products are never scored, ranked, or presented as a test winner.

What We Don’t Do

• No sponsored reviews. We never accept payment to review a product.
• No score manipulation. A product’s affiliate commission rate has no effect on its BuyingBench Score.
• No paid placements. Product positioning in our articles is determined by our published evidence, not payment.
• No hidden arrangements. This page discloses both our affiliate relationships and the storefronts our company owns.

What Our Articles Are Actually Based On

We want to be exact about this, because it is the thing most easily overstated.

We do not currently purchase or physically test the products we write about. Our articles are built from manufacturer specifications, published safety and recall notices, and aggregated verified-buyer feedback. Every article states its own evidence basis at the top and carries a “Not yet tested” marker where no hands-on evaluation has taken place. Where an article has been through hands-on evaluation, it says so explicitly.

Scores shown on this site are derived from those documented, published criteria — not from an in-house lab test — and our methodology page describes exactly how they are produced. If you find a page on this site that claims or implies hands-on testing we have not done, that is an error: please tell us through our corrections policy and we will fix it.

Affiliate and storefront revenue funds the site’s research and maintenance.

Your Choices

You are never obligated to use our affiliate links, and you are never obligated to buy from a storefront we own. If you prefer, you can search for any product we write about directly on the retailer’s website. Our findings and recommendations remain the same regardless of how you purchase.

Questions?

If you have questions about our affiliate relationships or our storefront ownership, contact us at [email protected].