Affiliate Disclosure

Short version: some links on this site earn us a commission. It costs you nothing extra, and it doesn’t change what we say about the product.

What that means

Benchgrove takes part in affiliate programs run by the software companies we review. When you click a link marked with an asterisk (*) and go on to buy a subscription, the vendor pays us a percentage of what you paid.

You pay exactly the same price either way. Affiliate links don’t add cost, and they don’t shorten trials or change the plan you get. Where we’ve negotiated an actual discount for readers, we label it as a deal — so if it isn’t labelled a deal, assume there’s no discount and you’re seeing the standard price.

Which links are affiliate links

Anything marked with an asterisk (*), and most buttons that take you to a vendor’s website.

Not every link earns us anything. Some tools we rate well have no affiliate program at all, and we still recommend them where they’re the right answer — we’d rather send you to the correct tool and earn nothing than send you to the wrong one and get paid.

What it does not affect

• Scores. The scoring criteria are published on our how we test page and applied the

same way to every tool, including ones that pay us nothing.

• Rankings. Category pages are ordered by score, not by commission.
• What we criticise. Every review names things the tool does badly, including tools we earn from.

We buy every tool we review with our own money. We don’t run reviews past vendors before publishing, and we don’t take payment for a review, a score, or a placement. If a vendor ever offers that, the offer itself goes in the review.

Why we do it this way

An affiliate site is only worth reading if its recommendations survive contact with reality. If we sold rankings, you’d buy a bad tool once, and never trust the site again. The business only works if the advice is right — so being straight with you is also the commercially sensible thing to do.

Legal bit

This disclosure is made in line with the US Federal Trade Commission’s guidance on endorsements and testimonials (16 CFR Part 255), and equivalent rules elsewhere. Benchgrove is an independent publication and is not owned by, or operated on behalf of, any software vendor.

Questions

If you want to know whether a specific link earns us a commission, just ask — hello@benchgrove.com. We’ll tell you.

Last updated: 1 September 2026