Common questions.
Honest answers.

Fairly is a consent-first consumer data marketplace. Users opt in to sharing specific categories of data — demographic, lifestyle, financial, and so on — get paid for that data through several earning surfaces, and direct a share of Fairly's annual profit toward a charity of their choice. Advertisers get access to anonymized audience segments built from consented data.

The model is structurally different from traditional ad-tech: every consent is granular and reversible, the user's wallet receives the full advertised reward (no platform cut from earnings), and the 15% charity commitment comes from Fairly's annual profit, not from user payouts.

Yes. There's no fee to install, no fee to create an account, no fee to participate, and no fee to cash out. Users keep 100% of the advertised reward for everything they earn.

At launch: Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc) for the extension, plus iOS and Android for the mobile app. The desktop dashboard works in any modern browser, including Safari and Firefox. Native Safari and Firefox extension support is on the roadmap.

Only data users actively consent to. The profile is a set of opt-in categories — demographic, lifestyle, financial, browsing on supported retailers, purchase history from supported retailers, survey responses — plus several sensitive categories that have their own separate opt-in (race, religion, health, political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, detailed financial).

Each category defaults to off. Users can see what's in each category in their dashboard, and turning any category off clears the underlying data.

We don't sell raw user data to anyone. What we sell to advertisers are audience segments — anonymized, aggregated counts of users matching specific criteria. Matching happens on our side; the advertiser sees segment size and aggregated demographics, not individual records.

Every category in the profile has its own toggle, defaulting to off. Sensitive categories require a separate, conscious opt-in — there's no "agree to everything" shortcut. Every consent change writes its own row to the user's audit log so they can see exactly what was turned on, when, and what's currently active.

Sensitive data lives in a separate storage tier with stricter access controls and a separate audit trail that records every read or write.

Yes — and we want to be straightforward about it. Beyond what's actively shared, we derive certain attributes from user behavior on the platform (for example, inferring an interest in outdoor gear from supported-retailer activity). Inferred attributes can be used in audience segments alongside self-reported ones.

Inference only operates on data already consented to — turning a category off clears the inferences derived from it. Inferred attributes are visible in the profile, and users can dispute any of them. Disputed attributes stop being used for segmenting.

Two ways. First, turning a category off in the dashboard clears the underlying data for that category immediately, with the audit log retaining a record that the change happened. Second, full account deletion soft-deletes for 7 days (so users can change their mind), then cascades through profile data, inferred attributes, wallet records, and the audit log itself.

Several ways, all live at launch:

• Affiliate cash back when you use a Fairly coupon at a supported retailer
• Receipt scans through the mobile app
• Paid surveys matched to your profile
• Sponsored offers with engagement and purchase rewards
• Research sessions — longer 1:1 or focus-group studies
• Email receipt parsing via optional Gmail or Outlook connection

No. The 15% is calculated on Fairly's annual profit — what advertisers pay us across the year, less what it costs to run the platform — not on what users earn. Users keep 100% of the advertised reward for every survey, offer, session, and cashback transaction.

$10. Once available balance crosses $10, the cash-out button unlocks.

None. No installation fee, no membership fee, no withdrawal fee. The wallet pays out the full available balance with nothing skimmed.

Affiliate cashback and certain offers have a clearance window — the retailer needs to confirm the purchase wasn't returned or canceled before Fairly's commission clears. Once it does, the user's share moves from pending to available.

Survey rewards, sponsored-engagement rewards, and research-session payments clear faster, usually within a day.

Sometimes an advertiser uses a Fairly audience to measure whether a campaign actually works. To do that honestly, we randomly hold back a small group — about 1 in 10 matching people — as a control group. If you land in that group for a campaign, you sit out that activation and won’t earn from it.

The pick is random, and we re-roll it for every campaign — so being held out of one never affects another. You match everything else as usual.

It’s the same method scientific studies use: a control group is the only way to know a result is real and not a coincidence. It keeps Fairly’s audience data trustworthy, which keeps the rewards flowing for everyone.

At the end of each fiscal year we take Fairly's net revenue, subtract what it cost to run the platform, and 15% of what remains becomes the annual charity pool. The pool is then split across charities proportionally — weighted by the qualifying activity each user contributed and the charity each of them had selected over the year, not by simple user counts. We publish the annual report with the revenue, the costs, the pool, and the per-charity split. If the year closed at a loss, the pool is $0 and the report says so.

Because any number we showed you during the year would be a guess. The pool depends on Fairly's profit for the full year, and profit isn't known until the year closes — so a running per-user figure would be quoting you a share of a total that doesn't exist yet, and it would be wrong in any year we don't turn a profit.

Your dashboard shows the charity you picked, which is the part you control. The amounts land in the annual report, where they can be checked against the same revenue and cost figures we used to compute them.

Yes, any time, from the dashboard. The year-end split follows whichever nonprofit you had selected across each part of the year, so switching in July does not retroactively move the first half of the year.

Annually. After the fiscal year closes, we calculate the pool, publish the report, and send each nonprofit a single annual disbursement.

We publish the annual impact report at joinfairly.com/impact/[year] with the net revenue, the operating costs, the resulting pool, and what each nonprofit received — so the 15% can be checked against the same figures we used. Past years stay accessible.

Don't have to. Most of the trust claims on this site are verifiable independently: the audit log is visible in your dashboard, consent records are exportable as JSON, and the charity pool math is published openly each year.

If anything in the product contradicts what we say on this site, we treat that as a bug. Tell us at [email protected].

Three structural differences. First, user data is here because they said yes to each category, not because someone scraped it. Second, advertisers see anonymized segments and aggregate counts, not individual records. Third, when a user says no — by toggling a category off or deleting their account — the underlying data clears, with a log to prove it.

Coupon tools and cashback apps share a portion of affiliate commission. Fairly does that too, but it's one of several earning surfaces — surveys, sponsored offers, research sessions, receipt scans, and email parsing all add to the wallet alongside cashback. The 15% charity commitment is published annually and comes from Fairly's profit rather than user earnings.

Anonymized audience segments built from consented user data, plus surfaces to deploy sponsored offers, paid surveys, and research sessions. Targeting happens on our side against verified, opt-in attributes. Advertisers pay Fairly; the agreed reward is shared with users when they engage.

Advertisers build segments using demographic, behavioral, and self-reported attributes — with the option to include inferred attributes that carry confidence indicators. The matching is performed on Fairly’s side; the advertiser sees audience size and aggregated distribution, not individual users.

Self-reported attributes are cross-checked against behavioral signals where possible (for example, declared brand affinities cross-checked against purchase history on supported retailers). Inferred attributes are derived from observed activity. Every targeting attribute carries a confidence indicator visible in the segment builder.

Reach out at [email protected] and we'll walk through the platform, segment-building, pricing, and verification onboarding. A more detailed advertiser overview is coming to joinfairly.com/advertisers.