Definition
Verified spend
The total amount a listing has paid that a payment provider has confirmed, re-checked against that provider's API, and had refunds deducted from. It is the only input to ranking position.
Outranked.me · updated
Verified spend is the cumulative amount a listing has paid where every payment has been confirmed by a payment provider, independently re-checked against that provider's API before it counted, and reduced by any refunds since.
It is the only quantity that determines position on this marketplace. Not recency, not relevance, not quality, not editorial judgement — verified spend and a deterministic tie-break, and nothing else.
What makes spend "verified"
Three conditions, all of which must hold before an amount is included:
- The provider confirmed it. A browser reporting a successful checkout is
a claim from an untrusted client, not evidence. Position never moves on a browser callback.
- We re-read it from the provider. After the webhook arrives, the payment
is fetched back from the provider's API and the amount compared to what we expected. A mismatch fails the payment rather than granting a position.
- Refunds are deducted. A refunded payment reduces verified spend and
therefore reduces position. A leaderboard where refunded money still counts is a record of attempts, not of spend.
What it is not
Verified spend is not a quality signal, and a board ordered by it is not a ranking of who is best — a distinction covered in what pay-to-rank cannot do.
It is also not the amount charged to a card, when those differ. Payments are converted into a single base currency at the rate recorded on the payment, so that a board containing several currencies remains comparable. The amount charged and the amount counted are both stored, and both are auditable.
Where you can see it
Every listing publishes its verified spend, and every board is ordered by it. The current cost of passing the top entry in any market is published on the market pages, and the full rule is set out in our methodology.