This is the complete explanation of how CardRank scores credit cards — every input, every weight, every exception. If you want to know whether to trust a ranking, the first thing to ask is whether the people behind it will show you the math. Here's ours.
Every card in our database is scored against your quiz answers. The score is not the same for everyone. A card that ranks №1 for a high-spending business traveler will often not crack the top 5 for someone who mostly buys groceries. That's the point.
When you take the quiz, we collect eight pieces of information. None of them are stored anywhere. All scoring happens in your browser in about 40 milliseconds.
You don't have to trust us. You can view the source of the homepage, scroll to the scoreCards function, and read it yourself. The version of the algorithm shown there is exactly the version running when you take the quiz. There is no hidden server-side rerank. There is no "promoted cards" override. The code you see is the code that scores your results.
If a comparison site won't tell you how it ranks things, the answer is always the same: the highest bidder, dressed up as a recommendation.
We currently cover 15 cards. They were chosen by this process, in order:
We deliberately do not cover every card in existence. Coverage breadth is a vanity metric; what matters is whether the cards we do cover are the ones you should actually consider. As we grow, new cards get added when they meaningfully expand the match space — not just to pad the list.
Every welcome bonus, annual fee, APR range, and reward rate on CardRank is pulled from the issuer's official public card page. We do not cite secondary sources, we do not paraphrase other comparison sites, and we do not guess.
When an issuer changes an offer (which happens often), there is typically a lag of 1–7 days before CardRank reflects the change. If you see a discrepancy between what's on CardRank and what's on the issuer's page, the issuer is correct. Please email us so we can update the site.
A few welcome bonuses on this site are marked "offer varies" instead of listing a specific dollar amount. This is deliberate. Some cards (notably Amex Blue Cash Preferred, Chase Sapphire Preferred, and Amex Gold) rotate their welcome offers frequently enough that any number we'd publish would be wrong within days. We'd rather admit that than invent precision we don't have.
CardRank is supported by affiliate commissions from several sources: the Bankrate Credit Card Network, CardRatings, FlexOffers, CJ Affiliate, and Impact. When a card in our database has a tracked affiliate link available, the "Apply" button uses it. When no affiliate link exists for a card, the "Apply" button links directly to the issuer's public application page.
We never rank a card higher because its affiliate payout is higher. We never remove a card from our coverage because its affiliate relationship ended. We never accept payment for placement, editorial coverage, or preferential scoring. If an issuer ever asks us to do any of these things, we say no, and we will disclose the request publicly.
This policy is not a marketing claim. It's a hard operational rule enforced by the code: the scoring function has no knowledge of affiliate payout rates. It literally cannot discriminate in favor of higher-paying offers because the information isn't in its inputs.
If we publish something inaccurate, we fix it and note the correction. For card-level data errors (wrong APR, outdated welcome bonus, etc.), corrections are pushed quickly without a public changelog entry. For editorial errors in reviews — mistakes about how a reward program works, incorrect claims about benefits, misattributed quotes — we update the affected page and add a note at the bottom of the review explaining what changed and when.
If reading this page made you more skeptical of CardRank rather than less, that's a good thing. Skepticism is the correct default when a stranger on the internet is telling you which financial products to sign up for. We'd rather earn your trust slowly by showing our work than lose it fast by pretending we don't have incentives.
Last updated: April 2026. This editorial policy is versioned and any material changes will be dated and preserved.