Link disclosure

App Spender is free and there is nothing to buy from us. Part of how it pays for itself is that when we point you at a cheaper alternative and you sign up for it, that company sometimes pays us a share. This page exists because you are entitled to know that before you click, not after.

How you can tell

Every link that earns us a commission says so, in plain words, immediately beside the link. Not in a footer, not on a page you would have to go looking for. If a link does not carry that mark, it earns us nothing.

Those links also carry a sponsored marker in the page itself, which is the standard signal browsers, screen readers and search engines read. The two go together, and neither is optional.

What a commission is never allowed to change

It cannot change what we recommend. If the right answer is to cancel something, that is what the review says, and cancelling earns us nothing at all. If the right answer is a free alternative, that is what is offered first, and free alternatives earn us nothing either.

This is not a promise we ask you to take on trust. The part of the product that decides what to recommend cannot read which links pay us. It has no access to that information, and an automated test fails the build if anyone gives it access. Free options are always ranked ahead of paid ones, and something you buy once is ranked ahead of anything charging you monthly.

Nothing about you goes into a link

A link from this product carries no identifier for you and nothing from your review. Not the name of an app you pay for, not what you pay, not a merchant line from your statement, not your email, not a reference number that could be traced back to your session.

The reason is the same reason the rest of this product works the way it does. A link carrying the name of the app you are cancelling would hand your subscriptions to a company you have never dealt with, which is exactly what App Spender exists to stop.

Links go straight to the provider

When you click through, you go directly to that company. Nothing routes through us on the way. An earlier version of this product sent clicks through our own site first, which would have meant our server recording which app you were leaving, for no benefit to you. We took it out.

Our own apps

Some suggestions are for software built by Musket Goose, the company behind App Spender. Those are always labelled as ours, and only appear on an app that does the same job. We would rather tell you it is ours than have you find out.

Why we tell you this way

South Africa's Advertising Regulatory Board treats a commission as a relationship that has to be disclosed clearly and up front. The Consumer Protection Act prohibits misleading anyone about commercial intent, and the United States Federal Trade Commission requires the same of anything its residents see. We would disclose it anyway. A tool that tells you how to spend less has no business hiding who pays it.