Radical transparency
The commission table nobody publishes
Every affiliate site earns commissions. Almost none will show you the rates, because the rates explain the rankings. Here are ours: every tool recommended anywhere on ProvenStacks, what its affiliate program pays publishers, and where we ranked it anyway.
Read the first four rows twice. Our most-recommended tool appears in every stack and pays us nothing, and when Notion closed its program days after we launched, the ranking didn't move. If rankings were for sale here, this page couldn't exist.
| Tool | What it pays publishers* | Where we recommend it | Our verdict anyway |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude | $0 (no affiliate program) | All 10 stacks, 2 comparisons | Our #1 pick, ten times over |
| ChatGPT | $0 (no affiliate program) | Named a fine budget alternative across stacks | Recommended where it fits |
| GitHub Copilot | $0 (no affiliate program) | Developers stack | In the stack, and we tell you it's the first line-item to cut |
| Notion | $0: program closed to new affiliates (July 2026; terms had become ~$50/signup + 20% of year one) | Writers & developers stacks, Notion-vs-Coda | Recommended anyway, and we sent builders to Coda in the head-to-head |
| Surfer | $0 for now: the program pays ~25% recurring, but our application was declined (July 2026, new-site traffic gate). We'll reapply with traffic data. | Writers stack (conditional) | "Skip unless SEO is ⅓+ of your income": unchanged before, during, and after the application |
| Jasper | ~25–30% recurring first year | Jasper-vs-Claude comparison | We recommend Claude ($0) over it for most writers |
| Frase | Recurring (program terms vary) | Surfer-vs-Frase | The budget pick we endorse over the bigger commission |
| Grammarly | Bounty per signup (CJ) | Writers stack | Recommended with a real overlap warning |
| Fathom | Referral program | Consultants stack, Fathom-vs-Otter | Free tier praised as genuinely enough for many |
| Otter | Affiliate program | Writers stack, Fathom-vs-Otter | Recommended for interview-heavy work only |
| Reclaim | Recurring | Consultants stack | Recommended; free tier flagged first |
| Gamma | Program terms vary | Consultants stack | Recommended with template-rigidity warning |
| Bonsai | Flat bounty per paid signup | Consultants & developers stacks | Recommended |
| Descript | ~15% recurring (PartnerStack) | Real-estate & video-editor stacks | Recommended |
| Canva | Capped bounty per Pro signup | 4 stacks | Free tier recommended first, every time |
| Jobber | Referral program | Tradespeople stack | Recommended; we tell happy Housecall Pro users to stay put |
| CompanyCam | Partner program | Tradespeople stack | Recommended, and we published its price jump within a day |
| eRank | Affiliate program | Etsy stack | Cheapest tool on the site; recommended |
| PhotoRoom | Affiliate program | Etsy stack | Recommended with an aesthetic warning |
| Metaview | Partner program | Recruiters stack | Recommended; Fathom's free tier named as fallback |
| Recruit CRM | Recurring | Recruiters stack | Recommended; spreadsheets defended for tiny desks |
| Calendly | Affiliate program | Recruiters stack | Free tier recommended first |
| DigitalOcean | Bounty per customer | Developers stack | Recommended for handover economics, not hype |
* Rates as published by each program, July 2026. Programs change terms; treat as indicative. Honesty requires a further admission: as a new site we're still mid-enrollment in several of these programs, so some links currently earn us nothing at all. The rankings were locked before any application was filed. That's rule one.
Why publish this?
Because the incentive problem is the entire reason this site exists. When you can see that our most-recommended tool pays us $0, that we sent readers to the cheaper rival in two of our four head-to-heads, and that our strictest "skip" warning sits on one of our highest-paying links, you don't have to trust our adjectives. You can check the arithmetic.
If you catch a place where the money seems to have influenced a ranking, email contact@provenstacks.com and we'll answer publicly on the re-test log.
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Stack updates, price changes we catch, and the occasional tool demotion, with the commission disclosed every time.
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