The short version
What an affiliate link is
An affiliate link is a URL with a tracking parameter that tells the merchant we referred you. If you buy something within the merchant's tracking window (typically 30 days) we get a small percentage of the sale — usually 5% to 30% depending on the product. The price you pay is exactly the same as it would be without the link.
Affiliate revenue is a small but growing portion of how this Site funds itself. The rest comes from display advertising (via networks like Ezoic and, later, Mediavine), newsletter sponsorships, sponsored placements (which are always labelled), and — from Month 6 — our own educational products.
Programs we participate in (or plan to)
The list below covers the affiliate and referral programs we participate in or intend to join during our first 12 months. It is not exhaustive — we add programs as we test more products.
- Anthropic Claude API — via partner program
- OpenAI — where available via approved resellers
- Cursor
- Vercel
- Railway
- Fly.io
- Cloudflare Workers
- Neon (Postgres)
- Supabase
- Pinecone / Qdrant / Weaviate (vector databases)
- Beehiiv (newsletter platform)
- Ahrefs, SEMrush (SEO tools we use ourselves)
- Various programs via Impact Radius and PartnerStack
How we choose what to recommend
Our editorial standard is simple: we only recommend what we have installed, tested, and would use ourselves. The presence or absence of an affiliate program does not change whether a product makes our directory or gets a positive write-up.
Concretely:
- Every recommended MCP server has been installed, configured, and its main tools have been called by our team.
- Every recommended Skill has been loaded into at least one AI provider and tested end-to-end.
- Every recommended paid tool has been used on our own workflows.
- When we cover a product that has no affiliate program (there are many) we cover it with the same depth. Postgres is not paying us. We still cover it thoroughly.
Read our full Editorial Policy for how testing works and how we handle corrections.
How to identify an affiliate link
We disclose affiliate links in two ways:
- At the page level, when a page contains one or more affiliate links, we add a note near the top of the page.
- At the link level, affiliate links carry the
rel="sponsored"attribute per Google's guidance, and their tracking parameters are visible in the URL.
Sponsored content, placements, and newsletter sponsorships
From time to time we publish content that is paid for by a sponsor — for example, a "featured" placement on a category hub, a newsletter sponsor slot, or a product deep-dive commissioned by a vendor. Whenever this happens:
- The content is clearly labelled Sponsored or Featured Partner.
- Editorial standards still apply — a sponsor cannot buy an inaccurate claim.
- Sponsored placements do not affect the ranking of unsponsored entries in our directory.
FTC compliance
We follow the US Federal Trade Commission's Endorsement Guides. Where required by the FTC or by equivalent rules in the UK (ASA), EU, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, we disclose our material connection to any product we recommend.
Questions
Email editorial@skillsandservers.com — we are happy to explain any specific placement.