Plumbline

Affiliate disclosure

Some links on Plumbline are affiliate links. Here is exactly how that works, and the rule that keeps it from touching our rankings.

Plumbline is free to read. We fund the research partly through affiliate links: if you open an account with some of the exchanges we cover after clicking one of our links, that exchange may pay us a commission, at no extra cost to you. This page explains the arrangement in full, because trust is the only thing a review site really sells.

The one rule: commission never moves a ranking

Our ranking of the best crypto exchanges is built from the six objective factors we publish, scored the same way for every venue whether it pays us or not. A higher commission never earns a higher place, and we will never present a payout as the safe recommendation. If the honest answer for a reader is an exchange that pays us less — or nothing — that is the answer we give.

Every affiliate link on this site is a button or link that says 'Visit', carries an inline note that it is an affiliate link, and is tagged in the page's code as sponsored and nofollow so search engines treat it correctly. Plain reference links to sources, documentation and regulators are not affiliate links and earn us nothing. If a link is not marked as an affiliate link, assume it is not one.

The venues that pay us nothing

Some of the exchanges and wallets we recommend run no consumer affiliate programme, so we earn nothing when you use them — Bitstamp is the clearest example on the exchange side, and self-custody wallets like MetaMask and Trust Wallet on the storage side. We recommend them anyway, and we flag on the page that they pay us nothing, because leaving out a good answer just because it is unprofitable would make this a catalogue, not a guide.

What we won't promote

We do not take commissions from, or link to, exchanges we cannot lawfully recommend to a reader's market — several large global exchanges cannot be promoted to US, UK or EU audiences, so we name them for context but do not link them. We also refuse gambling, presale, meme-token and 'guaranteed return' programmes outright, regardless of what they pay. Some links are unpaid placeholders today and will become tracked links only if and when a compliant programme is approved for the relevant market; the disclosure stays the same either way.