The deal, in plain terms

What this site is

CitedIndex is a researched directory of tools. Listings are researched from public sources and must pass an automated quality gate before publishing. See how we rank. The gate is never for sale: no payment can put a tool into the index or change its editorial verdicts.

Using the index

The directory is free to browse, for people and for their agents. The machine-readable surfaces we publish (llms.txt, the markdown version of every page, the MCP and JSON endpoints) exist to be used. What is not okay: disrupting the service, attacking or probing it, circumventing rate limits, or passing our researched index off as your own. We may block traffic that abuses the service.

Accounts

Submitting a tool or buying a placement creates an account tied to your email. Keep that inbox secure and your details accurate. Account actions (claiming a listing, upgrades) verify through it. We may suspend or close accounts that break these terms.

Submissions and claims

Submit only tools you are authorised to represent, with accurate information. By submitting, you let us use what you send as input to our research and publish the researched result. Every submission is researched independently and published only if it passes the gate; submission never guarantees listing, and nothing a submitter writes becomes page copy unverified.

Paid placements

Featured renews monthly. Advertising slots and digest sponsorships renew monthly. New advertising rates depend on demand; your rate stays locked while your subscription is active. Cancel from your dashboard to stop future charges. Placement continues through the paid period, then stops; your free listing remains. Express review, lead-credit packs and commissioned briefs are one-time purchases and never renew. We no longer sell Premium, annual placement billing or the Primary Source profile; a placement or profile bought before that keeps the terms it was bought under.

Your placement. Featured puts your listing in the clearly separatedAdvertisement block at the top of its category page, above the full list. Featured listings in a category share that block, in no fixed order; no exclusive category or number of views or clicks is guaranteed. Payment does not affect organic ordering, research or assessment. Every paid position includes a visible Advertisementlabel within the position itself. This disclosure cannot be removed, hidden or relocated.

What a placement does not buy, at any price: entry into the index, because the quality gate is never for sale; a change to any researched field; a verdict; the reversal of an exclusion; or anything at all about a competitor's listing, which we will not downrank, unlist or omit for money. Display advertising is a separate purchase: a unit in one of four fixed slots — the home page, category pages, the search page and the best-of pages — which sits outside the list of tools altogether, carries the same label, and moves nothing in the order.

Paid placements and advertising units carry a visible Advertisement label. Their outbound links, affiliate destinations and funding-credit links userel="sponsored nofollow". The followed link that comes with Boost (and with the Express orders and Website link subscriptions sold before it), is the only paid-link exception, described below. Independently chosen editorial citations cannot be bought or exchanged; see our methodology.

Boost. When you submit, we check whether your product fits this directory before you choose how it goes live. You then choose the free option, which goes live as soon as we have researched and built the listing, or Boost, a one-time payment of $29 that puts it first in the queue, live within 24 hours, with the followed link and the article described below. If we could not complete that check when you submitted and a later check does not accept the submission, we refund a Boost payment in full, automatically, and say so in the decision email. Boost replaced the Express ($9) and Express with article ($19) options on 3 October 2026; orders placed before then are delivered as sold.

Boost for a listing that is already published. The owner of a published listing can buy the same Boost, $29 once. There is nothing to review, so the link becomes followed as soon as the payment settles, and the article follows within a few days. This purchase has no refund-on-rejection: the listing was accepted before you paid. The link and article terms below apply unchanged.

The Boost website link. Once a Boost listing is published (or at once, for a listing that already is), the link to your website on your own listing is a followed link, without nofollow orsponsored attributes, for as long as the listing is published. The link does not appear on category, tag, best-of, comparison or search pages, or on another vendor’s listing. It includes a visible Advertisement label and a statement naming you as the payer, beside the link. This disclosure cannot be removed, hidden or relocated. If your website URL changes, we qualify the link again until the new destination is verified.

The Boost article. With Boost (and with the retired Express with article), after the listing is published we research and write one article about your product: what it does, its pricing, who it is for, who should look elsewhere, and alternatives from our index, listed without ranking. We write it from our research and your public pages; you do not supply text or review it before publication. It is published with a visible Sponsored note naming you as the payer, next to one followed link to your website.

Website link subscriptions. We no longer sell the annual Website link. Existing subscriptions ($99 per year) keep their followed link, renew until cancelled, and retain their agreed price, paid-through term and refund commitments.

No bought organic position. A followed link changes one link’s attributes, not inclusion, organic ordering, research, verification or the verdict. We do not guarantee search-engine rankings, traffic or any particular search-engine treatment of the link.

Early qualification or withdrawal. Two conditions can end the followed-link attributes early. First, the destination becomes unreachable or redirects to an unverified destination: we qualify the link again and explain why. Second, we withdraw followed links across all our sites, including in response to search-engine action. For a Website link subscription we then refund the unused term pro rata; an Express listing stays published with an ordinary link. These actions form part of the agreement. We retain purchase, destination, term and withdrawal records to account for each agreement.

A commissioned brief is our work, not yours. You can pay us to research and write a brief on a buyer question you name. We choose the method, the sources and the population, and we write every word; you get a named, disclosed credit on the page. You do not see it before publication, your name is not in the title, you get no say in the findings, and it will never rank a set of tools you are in. If the research does not support a publishable brief we refund it rather than publish something we do not stand behind. Your optional sentence appears only in the disclosed funding credit, never as our research.

Affiliate arrangements. Some outbound links to a tool earn us a commission if a reader signs up. Those links are chosen by us, editorially and after the listing is written; they are disclosed on the page that carries them; and they carry rel="sponsored nofollow" without exception. An affiliate destination cannot also be a purchased followed link. Vendors cannot buy affiliate links or pay to remove a competitor’s affiliate link, and affiliate arrangements confer no organic position.

Differentiated treatment. Paid owner placement adds a clearly separated Advertisement position and access to expanded analytics where measured. Paid listings have priority within the due re-verification queue, after listings never verified at all; this is work done sooner, not a different research standard. Lead credits deliver qualified leads, as described at checkout. None of these payments changes the ordinary organic order, research, verdict, exclusions, quality gate or treatment of a competitor’s listing.

Advertising is open to any brand, subject to our ad content policy: no crypto or token promotions, no gambling or betting, no adult content, no weapons, and nothing illegal or deceptive. We may refuse or cancel a placement that violates it, and a placement cancelled for a breach is not refunded. See pricing for what each placement is.

Placements start when payment settles. If something goes wrong with a paid placement, email support@citedindex.com and we’ll make it right.If we fail to deliver something you paid for, we refund it. The specific research-commission and followed-link withdrawal refund commitments above also apply.

Change-of-mind cancellations are not refunded. Recurring services run to the end of the paid period and stop renewing once cancelled. Lead credits do not expire; purchasing credits makes the balance available for future qualified leads. These purchases are not refunded for a change of mind, without limiting mandatory consumer rights or our non-delivery commitments.

What we do refund is our own failure. If we take payment and do not deliver what it bought, you get your money back.

Accuracy and third-party sites

Listing facts are researched from public sources, carry their source and are re-verified on a schedule. Still, tools change faster than any index: verify pricing and capabilities with the vendor before you rely on them. The sites we link to belong to their owners; their content, terms and privacy practices are theirs, not ours. Spotted an error? Tell us and we’ll re-verify.

What we are not liable for

CitedIndex is provided as-is, without warranties. To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses: lost profits, lost data, decisions made on listed facts, downtime, or what third-party sites do. Our total liability for any claim is capped at what you paid us in the twelve months before it arose (zero if you paid nothing). Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including your mandatory consumer rights.

Ending things

You can stop using the site at any time, and have your account deleted by emailing support@citedindex.com. We may suspend or end accounts and placements that break these terms. If we end a paid placement without a breach on your side, we refund the unused window.

Law and changes

These terms are governed by the law of the Netherlands, where CitedIndex is operated from; consumers keep any protections their local law makes mandatory. We may update these terms; the date above always reflects the current version, and material changes to paid placements never shorten a window you already bought.