How Take The AI makes money — and why it’s good news for you
Independent review sites have three ways to pay the bills: ads, subscriptions, or affiliate commissions. We picked affiliate commissions because it’s the only model where you don’t pay for our work, and we don’t have to clutter articles with ads that ruin the reading experience.
What this means concretely
Some of the links on this site — specifically, the “Try [tool]” buttons on our reviews and comparisons — are affiliate links. If you click one and later subscribe to that tool, the vendor pays us a commission. That commission comes out of the vendor’s marketing budget. It does not change what you pay. It does not give you a worse deal. In some cases, using our link actually unlocks a discount the vendor offers through partners.
Why it doesn’t bias our reviews
A few commitments we hold ourselves to:
- We never rank a tool higher because it pays more. Rankings are set before we check commission rates. We’d rather publish an honest review and lose a sale than burn our credibility.
- We still cover tools that pay zero. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini pay no commission to anyone. We cover them in every relevant comparison because leaving them out would be dishonest — they’re usually the right answer for most people.
- We always name the weakness. If a tool we’d otherwise recommend has a bad free tier, a clunky mobile app, or privacy concerns, we say so — even if we’d earn more by not mentioning it. Honest weakness is what makes honest strength believable.
Programs we’re affiliated with
For full transparency, here are the affiliate programs we currently participate in:
- Amazon Associates (US, UK, France) — for physical products mentioned in reviews.
- ElevenLabs — AI voice generation tools.
This list will grow as we review more tools. When a new program is added, articles covering that tool are automatically updated to use the affiliated link — but never without a disclosure line at the top of the article.
How to tell which links are affiliate
Every article that contains affiliate links starts with a disclosure line at the top. The “Try [tool]” buttons at the end of each tool review are the affiliate links — when you click one, you’re redirected to the vendor’s site through our tracking link. Inline mentions in the body of the article (where a tool’s name is a link) may or may not be affiliate; the disclosure at the top of the article covers both cases.
Questions?
If you think a ranking looks suspicious, or if something reads like a sponsored post dressed as independent review, tell us. We take credibility feedback seriously — it’s the only asset this site has.