Who pays us, who doesn't, and what it buys

The mechanics

Outbound partner links on this site use our own /go/ paths (marked rel="sponsored nofollow"), which forward to the vendor. If you subscribe after following one, that vendor may pay Streakbreak a referral fee. The fee never changes your price at the vendor's checkout, and — the rule this site exists to keep — it never changes a score: our 100-point card and its weights are published on the home page, and verdicts are written from dated facts before any link is placed.

Who may pay us

Vendors this site links through /go/ paths, and where each relationship actually stands as of 23 September 2026: Babbel runs an established affiliate program (we link it as a prospective partner; regional programs differ). Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur, Rocket Languages, Mondly, Busuu and Memrise are reported by affiliate directories to run programs, but we could not verify their terms on an official page — so we treat the relationships as prospective and, deliberately, print none of their commission rates anywhere: the third-party figures contradict each other and repeating them would be laundering guesses into facts.

Who pays us nothing

Duolingo runs no affiliate program at all — nothing on the major networks, no partner page. It is also this site's most frequent recommendation for beginners, which is exactly the point: when the free app that pays nothing wins a matchup, it says so in the verdict. No payout, ever, decides a placement here.

The refusals we publish

• No coupon or promo-code pages. Third-party codes go stale, some vendors void unauthorized ones, and coupon-bait pages are the fastest way to stop being trustworthy about prices.
• No unverified commission claims. Where a program's terms exist only in contradictory aggregator directories, we link the vendor as prospective and print no rate.
• No Busuu-only recommendations. Busuu's parent company, Chegg, cut roughly 45% of its staff in October 2025; while that continuity risk stands, Busuu appears alongside alternatives, never as the sole pick.
• No paid placements. Vendors cannot buy reviews, rankings or kinder adjectives; pitches to that effect are declined without reply.

Reading this site defensively

Good practice with any affiliate site, ours included: check the date next to every price, prefer the vendor's live checkout over anyone's page (including this one), and assume any undated 'deal' is stale. Questions about a specific link or relationship: [email protected].