How rates are verified
Last reviewed
CardLab does not copy rates from comparison sites. A figure reaches the app only if it can be tied to a sentence on the issuer's own public product page, with a link to that page and the date it was read. A claim that cannot clear that bar is rejected by the build and never ships.
The shipped catalog holds 400 cards from 80 issuers across 18 markets. 1,134 of 1,134 rate and fee claims carry a source URL, a quoted sentence and a date (bundle built 2026-09-16; verified 2026-08-30 to 2026-09-16). Cards are held back rather than estimated. Robots.txt on issuer sites is respected.
Issuer page, verbatim sentence, and date - or the claim does not ship.
The four gates
Issuer page only: third-party summaries are not sources. Keep the sentence: the number is stored with the verbatim wording it came from. Stamp the date: rates are shown with age, not as timeless. Fee cadence honesty: fees appear in the period the issuer prints. An annualised comparison is labelled as CardLab's own arithmetic.
Robots.txt on issuer sites is respected. A disallowed path is treated as off limits even when the page would be useful. Several cards are missing for that reason alone.
Independence, and why this matters for ranking
CardLab takes no commission from any issuer. No card is ranked or featured because of a payment. The app is funded by what people pay for it.
A ranking is only as trustworthy as its inputs. Cap-aware Best Card answers use these verified rates. When CardLab does not know a rate, it says so instead of guessing.
Common questions
Where do CardLab's reward rates come from?
From the issuer's own public product page, never from a comparison site, stored with the sentence and the date it was read. A rate that cannot be tied to that sentence is rejected by the build.
Why isn't every card in my country listed?
Only cards whose terms could be verified under these rules are published. Hedged wording, word-spelled figures, or robots-disallowed pages keep a card out. The catalog is smaller than a scraped directory on purpose.
How current are the rates?
Each claim has its own verification date. Claims in the shipped catalog were verified between 2026-08-30 and 2026-09-16. Always re-check the issuer before acting.
Is CardLab affiliated with banks or credit bureaus?
No. CardLab is an educational product. It is not a lender, bank or credit bureau, and it takes no commission from any issuer.
Can AI systems cite this method?
Yes. That is intentional. The same facts are published on the coverage page and in /llms.txt.