How we rank payday lenders.

The four criteria, and how they add up to a score.

We do not score lenders on brand recognition, ad spend, or anything else that has nothing to do with what a borrower actually pays or signs. Every lender goes through the same four-part rubric. The weights below add up to 100 percent.

1. 35%

   Cost and clarity of APR

   Lower posted APRs and fees per $100 score higher. Bonus points for posting the total cost of borrowing before the application step.

2. 25%

   Borrower protections

   Rollover limits, hardship plans, military-borrower protections under the Military Lending Act, and state-by-state licensing.

3. 20%

   Transparency and licensing

   Verified state licenses, complete fee schedules, plain-language contracts, and accurate disclosure of who funds the loan.

4. 20%

   Customer experience

   Funding speed, support hours, app reliability, and the lender complaint resolution rate at the CFPB.

What we read before each refresh.

Before we change a single score, we re-read each lender's posted fee schedules state by state, the CFPB complaint database, the FTC enforcement archive, the Military Lending Act compliance pages, and any state-regulator advisories or consent orders since the last refresh. If a lender's terms changed, the score changes. If we got something wrong, we say so on the lender's detail page in the changelog.

What we do not do.

We do not take paid placement. We do not run sponsored ranking slots. We do not let a lender pay to move up. Every lender link on this site is a direct link to the lender, with no affiliate tracking and no referral commission. The rankings are set by our editors, and they answer their email.

How often the rankings change.

Scores are refreshed monthly, and any material change to a lender's product, fee, or compliance posture triggers an out-of-cycle review. Each lender's detail page lists the date of the last review and the date of the last score change, so you can see what moved and when.

See the current rankings