How Toolvern Makes Money
Last updated: 20 August 2026
Every directory has a business model. Most of them don’t tell you what it is. Here’s ours, in full.
The short version
Tool vendors purchase expedited verification, verified digital profiles, dynamic badge access, and featured category spotlights to reach active B2B software buyers. Readers pay nothing, and all benchmark data is open access.
What we sell
| Plan | Price | What the buyer gets |
|---|---|---|
| Free Submission | $0 | Standard queue review (up to 30 days). Standard directory listing upon verification. |
| Verified Badge Partner | $0 | Priority 72h publication in exchange for displaying our verified rating badge or embed on the vendor site. |
| Verified Vendor Profile | $29 | Expedited 24-hour verification, permanent verified profile, dynamic badge API access, and verified catalog placement. |
| Featured Category Spotlight | $79 | In-depth editorial product analysis, priority positioning in category benchmarks, and detailed feature breakdown. |
Prices scale transparently as directory authority and buyer traffic grow. The price displayed at checkout is the full price you pay.
What paying does not buy
This is the part that matters, so it gets its own section.
Payment does not buy a better score. The Toolvern Score is computed from published criteria — see our methodology. A paid tool with opaque pricing and no API scores exactly as badly as a free one.
Payment does not buy position. Category pages are ordered by score and relevance, not by who paid.
Payment does not buy a nicer description. If a tool has a real limitation, we write it in the “not for” section, paid or not.
Payment does not buy protection from criticism. A sponsored review is still a review. If we test something and it disappoints, that goes in the article — and the sponsor was told this before buying.
Affiliate links
We currently earn no affiliate commission from any tool on this site. Outbound links go straight to the vendor’s site, without a tracking parameter that pays us.
This is worth stating plainly because it is not the norm. The largest directories in this space route their outbound links through affiliate programs — you can see the parameters in the URLs — and generally don’t mention it anywhere on the page.
If this ever changes, we will mark affiliate links on the page where they appear and update this page first, not afterwards.
What we do with tracking parameters
Links from our badges and embeds carry ?ref=embed and an identifier. That exists so
the tool’s owner can see how many visits their widget produced — it’s a counter for
them, not revenue for us.
Editorial and commercial are the same person
There is no wall between departments here, because there are no departments. This site is run by one person, Stepan Noianov, who writes the content and also takes the money.
Which is exactly why the rules above are written down in public. A published rule you can hold someone to is worth more than an org chart.
How to hold us to it
If you think something on this site reads like it was bought, say so: support@toolvern.com. If you’re right, we’ll fix it and note it in the changelog.
Written and maintained by Stepan Noianov · support@toolvern.com