Handy finance tools, but the order of the offers is shaped by who is paying.
What it's really for A personal-finance comparison site paid by affiliate and lead-gen fees from the products it rates.
What our grade covers The grade on this page is about its ratings and 'Best Picks' for cards, loans, and banks, not everything the site does.
High Scoring Confidence Checked against primary sources. We are confident in the facts and the grade here.
WalletHub's largest payers are the card issuers and banks it ranks (American Express, Chase, Discover, Capital One, Citi, Wells Fargo, SoFi, and others), and it states outright that "advertising impacts how and where offers appear on this site (including... the order in which they appear and their prevalence)," meaning paying advertisers get more visible placement.
Source →- Operating since
- 2013 (13 years) · source
- What it costs you
- Free to read The reviews are free to read.
- How they make money
- It earns affiliate and lead-generation commissions from banks and card issuers, getting paid when users click, apply, or are approved for financial products through its links.
- What they do
- It publishes ratings, "Best Picks," and reviews of credit cards, loans, banks, and insurance, plus free credit scores and user/business review profiles.
- What to watch for
- The order and prominence of the offers you see are shaped by which companies pay WalletHub, so a higher-placed product is not necessarily the best deal for you, and the company-review profiles accept largely unverified posts.
- Composite score
- 2.40 / 5.00 → grade C
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
- Launch announcement: Evolution Finance launched WalletHub out of beta on August 2, 2013 as a personal-finance social network; the parent company Evolution Finance, Inc. was founded in 2008 by Odysseas Papadimitriou. Source: WalletHub blog — Evolution Finance Launches WalletHub.com →
- WalletHub's advertiser disclosure: 'we make money when people click, apply or get approved for those products,' and 'Advertising impacts how and where offers appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear and their prevalence).' It lists paying partners including American Express, Chase, Discover, Capital One, Citibank, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, SoFi, Chime, LendingClub, Upstart, GEICO, Progressive and others. Source: WalletHub — Advertisers / Advertiser Disclosure →
- WalletHub's editorial policy claims independence and describes a 'data-driven approach' using a proprietary database of 1,500+ cards, 1,200+ banking products and 600+ loans with published category methodologies; however it provides no described verification or fraud-prevention controls for user-generated reviews ('editorial and user-generated content on this page is not reviewed or otherwise endorsed by any financial institution'). Source: WalletHub Editorial Policy →