In force since 30 August 2026.
What affiliate links are
Some links to school websites on EduCompass Hub are affiliate links. This means that if you follow such a link and buy a course, the school (directly or through an affiliate network) pays us a fee — a fixed amount or a percentage of the order value. This is how the site earns money; we have no other sources of income: we do not charge for inclusion in the catalogue, for ranking positions or for reviews.
The price for you does not change. The cost of a course when you arrive via an affiliate link is the same as when you go to the school's website directly. The fee is paid by the school out of its marketing budget. We do not offer cashback, bonuses or any other reward for clicking through, and we do not use promo codes that were not issued by the school.
How affiliate links are labelled
- In the HTML code every affiliate link carries the attributes
rel="nofollow sponsored noopener"— the standard labelling for search engines. - Next to the call-to-action button on course pages a caption reads: "affiliate link. The price for you does not change".
- The footer of every page carries a general notice that the site contains affiliate links.
- If a school has no affiliate programme, or its rules do not allow our format, the link to the school is direct and is not labelled as affiliate.
The /go/ redirector and click counting
The "Go to course" and "View the course on the school's site" buttons route through an internal address of the form /go/<number>/. On click the site:
- increments the click counter for that specific course or school by one (an aggregate number not linked to you);
- redirects you to the school's affiliate or direct link.
The redirector sets no cookies, does not store your IP address and passes nothing to the affiliate network except the destination address. /go/ addresses are excluded from search indexing. The counter helps us understand which courses interest readers and plays no part in the Compass Score calculation. In addition, a click on an affiliate link may be recorded as an event in analytics systems (see the Privacy Policy).
After the redirect you land on the school's website or on the tracking address of an affiliate network, which then forwards you to the school. At that point the affiliate network and the school may set their own cookies to attribute the purchase — this happens outside our site and is governed by their policies (see the Cookie Policy).
Commission does not affect scores or order
We keep editorial work and partnerships apart. This means:
- Compass Score is calculated by an open formula from seven criteria; commission, rate, partnership status and sales volume are not part of the formula. See the Compass Score Methodology.
- The order of courses in rankings is determined by score or price; in comparison tables the default sort is by price. Partner courses are never placed above non-partner ones.
- Reviews list pros and cons regardless of whether the school has an affiliate programme.
- Affiliate programme data is stored separately from editorial fields and never overwrites them.
- Starting or ending a partnership does not change the score, order or texts; any score change, whatever the reason, is recorded in the log on the course page.
Types of partnerships
The full list of models we use or may use:
- CPA networks (affiliate networks that aggregate the programmes of many schools). The network issues tracking links to us, records clicks and orders, and pays the fee under the rules of the specific school's programme. We currently work through such networks; the list of connected programmes changes over time.
- Direct school affiliate programmes. The school issues the link itself and pays the fee without an intermediary. Terms are set by an agreement with the school.
- Promo codes and offers. On the offers page we publish only promo codes issued by the school or an affiliate network for our placement. Codes found elsewhere online and expired offers are not published.
- Advertising placements. Standalone banners and promo blocks are advertising, not affiliate links; they carry the Russian-language advertising label ("Advertising. Advertiser. erid") and are paid for under a separate contract. Advertising does not affect scores either.
Models we do not use: paid inclusion in the catalogue, paid ranking positions, unlabelled "sponsored reviews", incentivised traffic (bonuses for clicking), pop-ups and click-unders with affiliate links, paid search advertising on school brand names.
We do not sell courses and are not a party to your contract
EduCompass Hub is an information service. We:
- do not enter into a training contract with you and do not accept payment for courses;
- are not a representative, agent or official partner of any school and do not act on a school's behalf;
- bear no responsibility for the quality of training, timelines, refunds or the school's performance of its obligations — those matters are governed by the contract between you and the school;
- have no access to the data you enter on the school's or the affiliate network's website.
Questions about payment, refunds, access to the course and educational documents are resolved directly with the school via its contacts and offer agreement. If a school breaches the terms described in our course card, let us know — we will update the card and, once confirmed, reflect it in the score.
How to tell whether a link is an affiliate link
Hover over the call-to-action button: affiliate links route through /go/ and carry a caption. In the page code they have the attribute rel="sponsored". If you prefer to visit the school's site without the click being counted, type the school's address into your browser manually; this has no effect on our score or the content of the review.
Questions
Questions about affiliate links, and requests from schools to connect or disconnect a programme — via the Contacts page. See also the Editorial Policy and the Terms of Use.