How ToolDirectory.AI makes money, where the money does and doesn’t reach, and how to tell a paid surface from an editorial one at a glance. Written by the editorial team, not legal.
The full policy is below. If you only have a minute, this grid tells you which surfaces on ToolDirectory.AI involve money changing hands — and which don’t.
Some outbound links from ToolDirectory.AI to third-party AI tools are affiliate links. If you click one and subsequently sign up for or buy a product, we may receive a commission — at no additional cost to you. We do not mark up prices and we do not collect any additional information from you as a result of an affiliate click.
Tool creators can pay for promotional surfaces such as featured listings, verified badges, homepage carousel slots, and newsletter spots. Every paid surface carries a visible label. If you can’t see a label, it isn’t paid.
Sponsorship of a placement does not influence editorial ratings, category eligibility, ranking, or removal decisions. The wall between “what was paid for” and “what our editors say” is non-negotiable — see the next section.
Our reviews, comparisons, rankings, and category roundups are decided independently of advertising and affiliate relationships. A tool’s presence on the site, its description, and its placement in non-paid surfaces are determined by our editorial team based on relevance, quality, and active operation.
The editorial team and the sales team are separate. Editors are not told who has bought what before publishing a review, and sales has no edit access to ratings or rankings.
Affiliate revenue and paid placements keep ToolDirectory.AI free for visitors and fund continued editorial coverage of the AI tooling space — every review you read, every “tool died” notice in the AI Graveyard, every weekly newsletter. We disclose these relationships so you can weigh them when deciding which tools to try.
If you ever spot a placement that looks paid but isn’t labelled, or a label that doesn’t match what we describe here, tell us — that’s a bug, not a policy.
Email support@tooldirectory.ai with the tool name and the URL of the page you’re looking at. We’ll tell you whether that specific surface is paid, affiliate-tracked, or editorial — and, if it’s paid, who paid for it.
See also our Terms and Privacy Policy.
If a placement looks paid but isn’t labelled, or a label doesn’t match the policy on this page, that’s a bug. Email the team directly and we’ll fix it.
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