How we make money — CompareVillas affiliate disclosure

The model, in one paragraph

CompareVillas is free to use and plans to stay that way. To pay for the research, some of our outbound links to villa companies and booking platforms are — or will become — affiliate links. If you click one and go on to book, the provider pays us a commission. It comes out of their marketing budget, not your pocket: you pay exactly the same price as if you'd gone to them directly.

The honest bit: we're pre-launch

Today, most of our links earn us nothing

CompareVillas launches fully in autumn 2026, and we're currently applying to partner programmes. That means most links on this site today are plain, untracked links that pay us nothing — we include them anyway because they're useful. We're telling you this because the promise below only means something if you can check it against reality, and right now reality is: almost no income, same editorial standards.

The promise: commission never touches editorial

Here's the firewall, spelled out:

Commission never affects a score, a verdict or a ranking. Our scores are computed from verifiable data — map-measured distances, published specifications, stated protections. Whether a provider pays us commission is not an input, full stop. The methodology page shows the working.
Some links earn us nothing — and we link anyway. If the right fit for you is a provider with no affiliate programme, or one that rejected us, that's still who we recommend. A comparison site that only shows you the companies that pay it isn't a comparison site; it's a brochure.
No provider can pay to appear, to rank higher, or to soften a verdict. No sponsored placements dressed up as recommendations. No preview copies. No pay-to-remove.
Nothing here changes what you pay. Affiliate commission is paid by the provider on top of your booking, never added to it.

You'll always know

UK advertising rules (ASA/CAP) require affiliate content to be obviously identifiable, and we go further than the minimum: every page that links out to villa companies or platforms carries a "How we make money" strip near the top, and this same disclosure sits in the footer of every page on the site. When affiliate links go live, they'll be on pages that carry that labelling — you will never have to guess whether a link might pay us. Checked July 2026

What we'll never do for money

Accept payment, hospitality or free stays in exchange for coverage or scores;
Let a provider edit, preview or veto our content;
Hide a provider because they don't pay us, or bury one because they stopped;
Add tracking that inflates your price or plants cookies without consent (see our privacy notice).

Hold us to it

If you ever think a commercial relationship has bent our editorial — a score that doesn't match the data, a ranking that smells wrong — tell us at hello@comparevillas.com. We'll investigate under our complaints policy, and if we got it wrong, the correction is published with a date stamp for everyone to see.