A personal-finance comparison site that the FTC once caught selling its rankings and faking reviews; it now discloses its advertiser conflicts, but the money still comes from the lenders it rates.
What it's really for A personal-finance review publisher monetized by lender referral fees.
What our grade covers The grade on this page is about its 'best' loan and finance-product rankings, not everything the site does.
High Scoring Confidence Checked against primary sources. We are confident in the facts and the grade here.
LendEDU is paid most by the lenders and financial-product companies it ranks, through affiliate and lead-generation commissions when readers click or apply. By its own disclosure, that compensation "may impact where & how companies appear on the site," including which cards show and the order partners appear in tables; the company states paying cannot buy a favorable rating. The FTC, however, alleged that historically the site did sell placement: "LendEDU sold its rankings to the highest bidder," said the Bureau of Consumer Protection director, and the 2020 settlement barred it from misrepresenting how compensation influences its rankings.
Source →- Operating since
- 2014 (12 years) · source
- What it costs you
- Free to read The reviews are free to read.
- How they make money
- Affiliate and lead-generation revenue: by its own disclosure, LendEDU is paid by some of the companies it features when readers click, apply for, or take out a financial product. It says compensation can affect where and how products appear (which cards are shown, the order partners appear in tables) but states companies cannot pay to guarantee a favorable review or rating.
- What they do
- LendEDU runs a personal-finance comparison site that publishes reviews, rate tables, and star ratings across student loans, personal loans, mortgages, home equity, auto loans, banking, and credit cards, and routes readers to lenders and product partners. It assigns proprietary 5-star editorial ratings that it says draw on 500+ review articles and 10,000+ data points collected over a decade.
- What to watch for
- Watch for the gap between the editorial ratings and the commercial layout: the same companies that pay LendEDU can occupy the most prominent placements and table positions, so visibility is partly a paid product even though the site says ratings themselves are not for sale. The methodology page describes a star scale but discloses few of the specific, testable criteria behind any individual score, and the FTC previously found the site had sold rankings and posted fake reviews, so its current disclosures are a regulator-driven correction rather than a long-standing practice.
- Composite score
- 1.70 / 5.00 → grade D+
How the grade was reached
Does the site take money from the very entities it ranks? Pay-for-placement, vendor-funded data, and affiliate commissions all pull this down. The less the ranking can be bought, the higher the score.
What is the ranking actually built on? Hands-on testing scores highest, then verified first-hand reviews, then opinion or popularity surveys and self-reported figures, then pay-to-rank, which scores lowest.
Is the methodology published, specific, and reproducible? Can a reader see how a given rank was reached, or is it a black box?
Are commercial relationships, sponsorships, and affiliate arrangements disclosed clearly and near the rankings themselves, rather than buried?
How hard is it to game? Controls against fake reviews, solicited reviews, and vendor gaming raise this; an open box anyone can stuff lowers it.
Evidence
- The FTC alleged LendEDU misled consumers into thinking it gave objective rankings when it offered higher rankings and ratings to companies that paid for placement; the Bureau of Consumer Protection director said 'LendEDU sold its rankings to the highest bidder.' The site also posted fake five-star reviews, and the operators agreed to pay $350,000 and to stop misrepresenting how compensation influences content. Source: FTC press release, May 2020 (final settlement) →
- LendEDU's own disclosure states it is 'compensated by some of the companies seen on our website when readers click to, apply for, or take out a financial product,' that this 'may impact where products appear on our site (including ... the order in which partners appear in tables),' but that 'companies can't pay us to guarantee favorable reviews or ratings.' Source: LendEDU About page →
- LendEDU's methodology page describes a proprietary 5-star scale and says ratings draw on '500+ review articles based on 10,000+ data points' over 10+ years, while disclosing that 'Compensation and editorial research influence how products appear on a page'; it specifies few of the testable per-product criteria behind individual scores. Source: LendEDU Ratings and Methodology page →