How TapBuff makes money
Updated
Some links to filters can earn TapBuff a commission if you buy. You pay the same price. It never decides what a report says, which standard a page names, or which filters appear.
The plain version
TapBuff is free to read and has no ads. It is paid for by affiliate commissions: when you follow certain links to a retailer or a filter maker and buy something, the seller pays TapBuff a share of the sale. The price you pay does not change.
Where a page has a link that can earn a commission, it says so in plain words above the first one, before you click.
Which programs
TapBuff is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, TapBuff earns from qualifying purchases.
Amazon links appear only where TapBuff confirmed the Amazon page is for the exact model shown. Every product also links to its maker’s own page, which earns nothing.
Prices on TapBuff are each maker’s own list price, with the date checked, not Amazon’s. Amazon’s price may be higher or lower; the Amazon page is the final word on what it charges.
Commission links carry rel="sponsored" in the page markup, and pages that use them show the disclosure above the first link. If TapBuff joins another program, it will be named here.
What money cannot change
A report shows what EPA’s data shows. The standard a page names comes from NSF’s own documents. A filter is named for a contaminant only if a certifier’s own listing carries the claim, whether or not it earns anything. Systems with no certification can appear in TapBuff’s registers, labeled as having none, with the date we searched. No maker can pay to be listed, moved up, or kept off a page.
TapBuff has not accepted products, samples, loans or payments from any maker or retailer. If that ever changes, it will be disclosed on the page it affects.
No testing claims
TapBuff has not tested any filter itself. Every claim about what a filter reduces comes from a certifier’s listing, linked and dated on the page. If TapBuff ever tests a unit, the page will say exactly what was done.
More on how pages are built
The data sources, the matching and the rules for every number are in the methodology.