Disclosure & methodology

How we make money. How we choose products to review. What we never do.

How we make money

The "Apply" and "Shop" buttons on this site are affiliate links — they go through Cuelinks (an Indian affiliate network) and then to the merchant. If you apply for a card and your application is approved, OR if you make a purchase, the merchant pays us a small commission. You pay nothing extra; the price/fee you see is the same as the price/fee you'd pay going direct.

For credit cards, commissions are typically ₹300–₹1,500 per approved application. For skincare and e-commerce, it's a percentage of the order value (3–15% depending on category).

What this changes

Nothing about what we recommend. Two reasons:

1. Reviews that recommend everything earn worse over time — readers don't trust them, and Google's Helpful Content Update has demoted them since 2024.
2. Telling you "don't apply for card X if your spend pattern is Y" sends fewer applications, but the applications that do go through have a higher approval rate. That actually pays better.

How we review credit cards

Every review covers, in this order:

1. What you actually earn — after caps, after redemption value, after thresholds. The "5% cashback" headline is meaningless without the cap.
2. What it really costs — joining fee, annual fee, and the real spend threshold to waive the annual fee.
3. Who should not apply — named explicitly, in the page. Not "see eligibility" — actually called out by spend pattern, income level, or life stage.
4. What the better alternative is — by specific competing product. We name HDFC, Axis, ICICI cards even though we don't always have affiliate links for them.

Sources: each issuer's own key-fact statement (mandatory disclosure in India), each issuer's fees & charges page, and third-party reviewers (CardInsider, Paisabazaar, TechnoFino) used for cross-checking real-world data.

How we review skincare

We don't claim personal use unless we have personally used the product, in which case we say so. For most brand reviews, we work from:

• The product's INCI ingredient list (regulated disclosure on every cosmetic sold in India)
• pH ranges where the brand publishes them
• Reviewer aggregation on Nykaa, Amazon, MakeupandBeauty.com
• The brand's own technical documentation

We do not accept free samples in exchange for reviews. If we ever start, we'll say so on this page.

What we never do

• "Top 10 best [product]" listicles that ranked by commission rate
• Fake "we tested all of these" claims
• Hidden affiliate links — every Apply / Shop button is labeled with rel="sponsored nofollow" in the HTML
• Affiliate cookies set on page load — we only set affiliate tracking when you click an outbound link
• Pop-ups, exit intent modals, "sign up for deals" newsletters

Who runs this

protodex.io is run by Manjunath G. We also publish protodex.io (an index of MCP servers with security scores), mcp-boilerplate.protodex.io (a developer product), and other small properties. The deals subdomain is a side project funded entirely by affiliate revenue. No outside investors, no advertorial network.

Contact

Errors, corrections, or "you forgot to mention X" feedback: reply to any affiliate page or reach us at the contact link on protodex.io. We update reviews when new fees / terms / products land — every review page shows the last review date in the byline.