How AI Leakage makes money, why no tool we rate or suggest is ever part of it, and how you can check.

The short version

We take no affiliate commission from any company whose products we assess. Not on the AI tools we rate. Not on anything suggested in a report, a course or an article. Not on supporting products such as backup, password managers or endpoint security. No company whose product could appear in a verdict of ours pays us anything, in any form, ever. One arrangement does pay a commission, and no vendor is anywhere near it: people who hold our certificates can introduce others to our own training, and are paid when they do. It is set out in full below.

This is a rule rather than a description of where we happen to be today. The rating is the product, and a rating that can be bought is worth nothing to the person reading it.

Why we work this way

Most free guidance about business AI tools is published by a company that sells one. The advice is often good, and every recommendation in it still ends at the publisher’s own product. That is not dishonesty. It is the shape of the business model.

We wanted our answer to be able to end anywhere: at a competitor’s product, at a cheaper tier of something you already pay for, or at the conclusion that what you are using is fine and you should change nothing. None of those answers is fully available to a publisher paid per referral.

What this means in practice

• No link in a vendor profile is an affiliate link, on any tier, for any tool in our database.
• No tool suggested in a personalised report or in course material earns us anything, whether or not we have rated it.
• We take no commission on adjacent or supporting products either. This is a change from an earlier version of this page, which permitted commission on non-rated categories such as backup and password management. That allowance has been withdrawn.
• We are not a reseller and not a partner in any vendor programme. The only referral arrangement we operate is on our own courses, described under Current arrangements below, and it involves no third-party product at any point.
• Where we point to a tool we have not assessed, we say so plainly and cite the public source we relied on. An unassessed suggestion is a starting point for your own checking, not a verdict from us.

Current affiliate relationships

As at 8 August 2026. This page is updated whenever the position changes.

No vendor relationships. One arrangement on our own training.

With companies we rate or suggest: none. There has never been one, and under the rule above there will not be one. There are no affiliate links to any third-party product anywhere on this site.

On our own courses: yes, since 8 August 2026. Someone who holds one of our certificates can introduce another person to our training and be paid for that introduction, and the person introduced pays less than the list price. This is money moving between us and our own readers over our own course. No tool in our database is involved at any stage, so it cannot influence a rating, a profile or a report. Anyone making an introduction is required to tell the person that they are paid for it. We would rather disclose this plainly than quietly widen the meaning of a promise we had already made.

If either position changes it will be stated here, dated, and on every page affected, before it takes effect.

How we do make money

From training and certification. The vendor database, the alerts, the policy template and the other free tools earn nothing by design. They exist to be useful and to be checked. What we sell is the training built on top of them, bought by the person or the business taking it.

The practical effect is that our revenue comes from the reader, not from the companies the reader is being warned about. That is the arrangement we think a publication like this one has to have.

Other commercial arrangements

We do not accept sponsored evaluations. A vendor cannot pay us to research their own product, on any terms. We withdrew that option in August 2026 because our position rests on revenue coming from readers rather than from the companies readers are being warned about, and that is a simpler and stronger thing to say without an exception attached to it. One arrangement remains, and it involves no vendor and no commission: a managed service provider or IT consultancy can license our vendor database, policy templates or audit method to use with their own clients. That is a customer buying a tool from us, and it does not touch how anything is rated. Terms are on the Methodology page.

How to check us

There are no affiliate links on this site, so the check is simple: any outbound link you find should go straight to the vendor’s own page with no tracking parameter attached to it. If you find one that does carry a tracking parameter, we have made a mistake and we want to know.

Corrections

If you believe a relationship is missing from this page, or a disclosure is missing from a page that should carry one, email info@aileakage.com. We will investigate and correct within five business days.