Methodology

Every fee, APR, and credit-term figure in a Fine Print Report comes from a source-evidence row that has been reviewed by our research team against the issuer's own published terms page — not scraped aggregator data, and not an unreviewed extraction. A report only publishes a figure once that review has actually happened.

“Effective first-year value” figures reuse the same friction-scored realization model as our Fee Reality Check calculator — the advertised face value of a card's credits discounted by how much friction stands between a typical cardholder and actually using each one (enrollment steps, use-it-or-lose-it cadence, merchant lock-in). This is a model, not a measurement of actual redemption — we label it as such.

We do not accept paid placement for inclusion in, or ranking within, the Fine Print Bureau. Reports publish in the order their underlying evidence clears review, not by advertiser relationship.

Each report shows the date its terms were last verified. If an issuer changes its terms, the report is out of date until we re-verify against the new terms page — we do not silently carry forward a stale figure.