Editorial independence policy

Sponsors never influence data, answers or rankings, and API and MCP responses never contain sponsored content.

Version 1.0, 2026-10-15.

Independence

Sponsors, advertisers, partners and payers have no say over which facts we publish, how they are worded, which sources we choose, the confidence scores we compute or the order of results. Paying for API calls, by key or by x402, buys access, never different answers.

No sponsored content in responses

API and MCP responses, llms.txt, OpenAPI and other machine-readable output never contain sponsored content, advertising, affiliate links or tracking. A sponsored free tier funds calls; it does not change or annotate them.

Labelling

Sponsorships appear only in the newsletter and on the website, always marked "Sponsored" and visually separate from editorial content. Sponsors are listed on the sponsors page with type and period.

Data partners

Data contributed by official bodies is treated as one source among others: it is cited by name with its license, cross-checked like every source, and scored by the same deterministic rules. If a partner's data conflicts with other official sources, we show the conflict rather than pick the partner's version.

Corrections

Anyone, sponsor or not, can report an error. Corrections are made on the evidence, logged in the change feed (/v1/changes) and never offered or withheld as a commercial favour.

Entry and visa answers

Entry answers remain decision support: they quote official sources, link to them, carry the advisory and never give a go/no-go verdict. No commercial relationship changes this.

Who decides

Editorial decisions are made by CitedTravel's maintainers. Questions about this policy: andy@andymcl.dev.