How We Compare Agencies: Our Methodology

Where the figures come from

Every commission rate, contract length and access arrangement on this site comes from what the agency itself has published: its own website, its public pricing page, its terms, or its FAQ. Where a page has since changed, we work from the archived snapshot rather than from memory.

If an agency does not publish a figure, we write that it is not published. We do not estimate it, and we do not carry a number over from someone else's comparison article. A number with no primary source is worth less than an honest gap.

Some agency sites carry a chat assistant. We may ask it the same questions we put to the pages, in our own name and without pretending to be a creator. Its answers count as evidence that something is not published, never as a published term: a bot saying "35%" does not make 35% the price, but a bot with no answer on the login policy is a dated record that the site has none. Transcripts are kept with the date.

Public filings count as primary sources: a state register, a court or labor commissioner determination, a company record. Where one quotes an agency's contract, we quote it with the case reference and say what it is, one creator's agreement on one date, never a rate card. Where an agency's own pages and a filing disagree, both are shown.

What we do not do

We do not pose as creators. No fake applications, no secret shopper calls, no signing up under a false name to see what a sales pitch sounds like. It would produce better material and we are not willing to get it that way.
We do not rank by results. We cannot verify another agency's earnings claims, and neither can anyone else writing these comparisons. A ranking by results is either a guess or a repetition of marketing copy.
We do not publish another agency's private terms. If a creator sends us a contract, we may use it to understand what is normal in the market. We do not reproduce it.
We do not accept payment for inclusion, position or removal. This is covered in more detail in our editorial policy.

How we handle listing ourselves

FantasyRise appears on our own comparison page. There is no version of this that is fully neutral, so instead of pretending otherwise we do three things: we say so at the top of the page, we describe ourselves in the same format and against the same criteria as everyone else, and we name situations where another agency is the better choice.

Our position in the list is not the outcome of a scoring process. Nobody's is. The page is organized by what each agency is built for, not by rank.

What we compare on

Five things, chosen because they are checkable before you sign rather than discoverable afterward:

Commission. Published or not published, and on what basis it is calculated.
Contract term and exit. Minimum term, notice period, and what happens to your account when you leave.
Account access. Who holds the login, and whether that can be changed.
Content ownership. What rights the agreement transfers, and for how long.
Scope. What is actually delivered for the fee, stated concretely enough to hold someone to.

Minimum-term contracts are not by themselves a problem, and it would be dishonest to present them as one. Plenty of legitimate businesses work that way. The problems are terms you cannot see before signing, renewals that happen without notice, and exits with no route out. Those are what we look for.

How current this is

Each comparison page carries a "last checked" date. That is the date we last opened every listed agency's own pages and confirmed the figures still matched. We re-check quarterly, and sooner if someone tells us something has changed.

A publication date tells you when a page was written. A last-checked date tells you whether it is still true. We think the second one matters more, so it is the one we put next to the byline.

When we get it wrong

We will. Agencies change terms without announcing it, and we will miss some of it. If something here is inaccurate, email contact@fantasyrise.com and we will correct it, including when the correction makes a competitor look better than us.