Advertising Disclosure

EFFECTIVE 3 AUGUST 2026

Most comparison sites make money in ways that quietly shape what you see. This page states exactly where TrueTotal stands on advertising — today, and under what conditions that could ever change.

What we will never do

These are not current preferences that could quietly be reversed in a redesign. They are the commitments that define the product — if we broke them, the service would no longer be worth running.

Sponsored rankings — never. A position in a ranking cannot be bought, at any price, by anyone. This is the promise the whole service rests on.

Paid inclusion — never. A product is listed because it belongs in the comparison, never because someone paid to appear.

Native advertising — never. We will not publish advertising dressed as editorial. If it were ever paid for, it would say so in the headline, not a footnote.

Pop-ups and interstitials — never. Nothing will cover the answer you came for.

Behavioural ad targeting — never. We do not build advertising profiles or run cross-site tracking. There is nothing to target with.

Selling your data — never. Never — not to advertisers, not to brokers, not to anyone.

Why a comparison site refusing ads is not just a pose

Advertising and honest ranking pull in opposite directions. Once a seller can pay for visibility, every ranking decision acquires a second audience, and the reader stops being the customer. We would rather earn less from a reader who trusts the answer than more from one who has quietly become the product.

Affiliate commission avoids that conflict only because of how it is wired: the ranking is computed before any commercial data is consulted, commission rates are not an input to the calculation, and the rate we earn is published next to the link. See Editorial Standards for how independence is enforced rather than merely promised.

If this ever changes

We do not intend to introduce advertising. If it ever became necessary to keep the service free, we commit in advance to the following, and this page would be updated before anything appeared on the site:

• Unmistakable labelling. Any paid unit would be labelled “Advertisement” or “Sponsored” in plain language, at the same visual weight as the content around it.
• Never inside a ranking. Paid units would sit outside ranked results entirely — never as a row within them, never re-ordered, never styled to resemble an organic result.
• No effect on the calculation. A true total would still be computed from the same inputs regardless of who advertises.
• No behavioural targeting. Any advertising would be contextual at most, never based on tracking you.
• Announced, not slipped in. A dated change note would appear here and in the Trust Center.

Reviews, editorial and gifts

We do not accept payment, free products, hospitality or gifts in exchange for coverage, a review or a better position. Where a manufacturer supplies information we use it as a source and cite it as one — a manufacturer’s claim is graded as such and never presented as independent verification.

Questions or a complaint

If anything on TrueTotal looks like undisclosed advertising to you, please tell us — that perception is a failure on our part whether or not money changed hands. Email hello@truetotalcalculator.com or use the complaints route.