Data policy
How we verify our card data.
Every credit, fee, reset date and earn rate we list comes from the terms the card's issuer (the bank behind it) publishes. We're still checking some entries, and we flag those. Scores come from a published formula, and no advertiser has a say. This page explains what that means, including the parts we haven't finished.
Where the facts come from
Issuer terms first.
We read a card's credits, fee and earn rates from the issuer's card page, benefit terms or card agreement, and enter them into the MoneyRoom catalog (our card database) with the source noted. Any third-party cross-check is named and flagged: if we compared a detail against a review site or other published data, the card's record names that source, and a card whose details still rest on it carries “pending final verification” until our own review is done. When the source is the issuer's own page, the card's score page names that website and the reset calendar links to it.
Issuers change their terms without notice. The reset calendar and each card page show a “catalog data as of” date: the newest date on that card's record — the date we reviewed the card, if we have, or else the date we collected that issuer's cards. It is a date for the whole card, not each credit: individual credits do not carry dates of their own.
What the labels mean
The three labels you'll see, and what they mean.
- Catalog data as of <date>The newest date on the card's record. Check anything you rely on against the issuer's current terms.
- Card details pending final verificationThe card's details come from the issuer's published terms, but we haven't finished checking every detail ourselves. Right now that note is on 80% of the recurring credits we list. It never changes a score; it means: check the figure with the issuer before you rely on it.
- No date on fileWe have no date for this card. We say so instead of showing a date we can't back up, so a missing date never looks up to date.
We'd rather show an honest warning than a confident wrong number. If a number here disagrees with the issuer's current terms, the issuer is right, and we want to know.
How Card Score works
One published formula, run on every card.
The MoneyRoom Card Score is our 0–10 rating of a card. It weighs the credit value you're likely to use against the annual fee (40%), how much work the card takes (30%), and what it earns on a fixed, published list of everyday spending (30%). Every weight, every discount for credits people don't fully use, and everything we leave out is on the methodology page, and every public figure is scored from the same card catalog and earn-rate data the app uses; pages refresh daily. Nobody adjusts a score by hand.
- Welcome bonuses are never scored. The score describes a normal year: year two and after.
- Interest rates aren't included. The score measures rewards, not the cost of borrowing.
- Perks with no fair dollar value are listed, not priced. Lounge access, elite status, free-night certificates and insurance are worth too different an amount to each person.
Who pays us
No affiliate links — and our own conflict, disclosed.
There are no affiliate links on this site. We are not paid when you apply for a card, get approved, or click through to an issuer, and we have no advertising relationship with any issuer. That's how the business is set up, not a claim that we're better people: most credit-card sites are paid for each approved application, which is legal and disclosed, and many of them do careful work — but they earn more when you open a card. We don't.
Our conflict is the obvious one: MoneyRoom sells subscriptions, and these pages link to our own calculator and our own product. The scores come from a formula that doesn't know whether you're a customer, and the free plan tracks unlimited cards by hand without a bank connection. If a card's credits are simple enough that you don't need software to track them, its score page says so. Current prices are on the pricing page.
Corrections
Found an error? Tell us; we fix it and update the date.
Write to support through the address on the FAQ page with the card, the credit, and the issuer page you compared it to. When we confirm an error, we fix it in the catalog and the card's date moves to the day of the fix. Because every public figure comes from the catalog, the fix reaches every page that shows it. Never send account numbers, passwords, or bank logins.
MoneyRoom is built and run by its founder under MoneyRoom LLC, an Arizona company. There is no editorial team behind the “we” on this site.