Methodology
How cards are ranked
Rankings on PointsExplained are computed from the card catalogue by code, with the same rules for every card. There are no star ratings or editorial scores — no card carries one.
The ranking
This is what the quiz computes from your answers, and what the persona guides built on a quiz profile compute from a preset one.
- 1
Which cards are eligible
Cards in your country that are still offered. Your credit range must meet the card's stated minimum (a card with none stated is never excluded). Business and student cards appear only when you ask for them. If you ask to skip annual fees or set a maximum fee, only cards whose fee the page can state pass that filter.
- 2
Estimated yearly rewards
For each spending category you enter — groceries, dining, travel, gas, transit, online and everything else — twelve months of spend is multiplied by the card's best earn rate for that category, or its base rate, up to any spending cap on record. Cash back counts as a percentage. Points and miles are converted at a fixed value per point for each loyalty program in your country's currency — the conservative end of the range our points calculator shows (for example 1.2¢ for Aeroplan in Canada and 0.6¢ for American Express Membership Rewards in the US). Where we hold no value for a program, its points are not valued at all, and a card with nothing else we can value is listed as one we can't score yet rather than ranked on a guess. In India, a points rate counts only where we hold the block of spend it is stated per (“4 points per ₹150”). These are estimates, not guarantees.
- 3
Welcome offer
Added only where the card's own page would print it: the offer states a figure and has not passed an end date we hold. An offer paid in points is valued as the points multiplied by the program's value per point (nothing, where we hold no value for the program); only an offer with no points is valued at its stated cash figure.
- 4
Annual fee
Subtracted where the page can state it: a positive fee on record, or a zero confirmed against the issuer's terms. A first-year waiver removes the fee only when a document states the waiver with no condition attached.
- 5
Order
A card whose annual fee the page cannot state ranks after every card whose fee it can, because its net value (rewards plus welcome offer, minus the fee) leaves out a fee we do not know. Within each group, cards are ordered by net value with small adjustments: a card that matches your main goal gains 15% of its net value (at least 25), a card on your preferred network gains 20, and when your goal is building credit, cards for building credit move to the top. Remaining ties go to the lower fee, then to the card name.
Which pages rank, and which list
- The quiz ranks every eligible card by the rules above, using your answers.
- Persona guides built on a quiz profile run the same ranking on a preset profile for that persona.
- Persona guides built on a category list cards we hold in that category, ordered by the welcome-offer value on record for some guides and in catalogue order for others. They are shortlists, not rankings.
- Researched shortlists. Most Canadian persona guides, and a few US ones, use a shortlist from dedicated research instead; its order is the research's. Every fee, welcome offer and earn rate printed on a researched pick is the figure our catalogue holds for that card — the same one its card page shows — and research text is printed only in sentences that state no figure and no date. A researched shortlist is labelled “pending editorial review” until the site's editor approves it.
- Category pages, issuer pages and the card hub list the cards we hold. They do not rank them.
What a page will print
Not every figure in the catalogue has been checked against a document, so every card surface applies the same evidence rules. A figure that fails them is shown as a blank marked “Not confirmed” — never as a zero.
| Annual fee | A positive fee on record is printed. A zero is printed only where a check that read the fee from the issuer's terms confirmed it. |
|---|---|
| Foreign transaction fee, interest rates | A 0% is printed only where we hold the document that states it — its web address, when it was read, and the figure — and the card still holds that figure. A positive figure on record is printed. |
| Welcome offer | Printed only where the card's offer text states a figure, and never after an end date we hold. |
| Labels such as “No annual fee” | Shown, and used to file a card in a category, only where the matching figure is confirmed. |
| “Checked” dates | A card page marks every figure: “Checked” with the month and a link where we hold the published document that states it; “Not published by the issuer where we checked”, with the month we checked, where the issuer's pages we checked state no such figure; “Issuer restricts access — check their site” where the issuer's site blocks automated reading; and “Not yet checked” for everything else. A figure in either of the middle two states is left blank, never printed. The card's own “Annual fee checked” date covers its annual fee only. |
Where the figures come from
| Source | What it gives us |
|---|---|
| Issuer product pages and terms | Fees, rates, earn structure and offers. Some were extracted by automated tools, including an AI model. |
| Documents regulators require issuers to publish | UK summary boxes, India's “most important terms and conditions”, Portuguese price lists (preçários), Brazilian tariff tables. |
| Data regulators publish | Canada's FCAC credit card comparison tool, the US CFPB credit card agreement database, Australia's Consumer Data Right product data. |
Independence from issuers
PointsExplained has no affiliate partnerships and earns nothing from card issuers, so no commission enters any ranking. See our affiliate disclosure.
Issuers do not see pages before they are published and cannot pay for a ranking. A figure changes only when a document supports it.
How current is this?
We do not publish a guaranteed update cadence, because we will not claim one we cannot prove we met. Card terms change without notice, and any figure on this site can be out of date.
A card page dates a figure only where a check against the issuer’s published terms is on record. A figure the issuer’s pages we checked do not state is marked “Not published by the issuer where we checked” with the month we checked; one behind a site that blocks automated reading is marked “Issuer restricts access — check their site”; neither is ever printed as a number. Every other figure is marked “Not yet checked” rather than implying a date. Always confirm the current fee, rate, and offer on the issuer’s own page before you apply.
Questions about the methodology?
Email us at hello@pointsexplained.com or read our editorial guidelines.