How we earn
Off the Leash is free to read and takes no sponsorship or paid placement from brands. When you buy through a retailer link we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes a score.
Last updated: 7 August 2026
The plain English version
Reviewing dog food properly takes time, and someone has to pay for it. We decided that someone should not be the brands we review. So instead of sponsorship or paid placement, we use affiliate links.
When you follow a link from our site to a retailer and buy something, that retailer may pay us a small percentage of the sale. You pay exactly the same price you would have paid going direct. Nothing is added to your basket, and no discount is taken away from you.
As an Amazon Associate, Off the Leash earns from qualifying purchases.
Commission never buys a score
This is the part that matters. Every food is scored by the same published method, applied to the same fields, whether it earns us a penny or nothing at all. You can read exactly how a score is built on how we score dog food.
Specifically:
- Commission rates play no part in a score, a pillar score, a band or a ranking.
- No brand or retailer can pay to be reviewed, to be reviewed sooner, or to be left out.
- No brand or retailer sees a review before it is published, and none of them can ask for a change to one.
- We write critically about foods that earn us commission, and we recommend foods that earn us nothing.
- What the Food Finder shortlists, and the order it shortlists in, comes from your answers and our scoring, not from what pays best.
Who we work with
Retailer links are managed through affiliate networks, which handle the tracking and the payments. We work with:
- Awin
- Webgains
- Amazon Associates
- Adtraction
- Rakuten Advertising
When you click a retailer link, the network sets a cookie so any purchase can be attributed to us. We are told how many clicks and sales happened and what commission is owed. We are never told who you are. The detail sits in our privacy policy.
Where we are today
We are in the process of joining the networks listed above, so not every retailer link on the site earns us anything yet. Rather than change this page link by link, we assume throughout that any outbound retailer link may be an affiliate link. If you would prefer not to use one, search for the product directly at the retailer instead. It makes no difference to what you pay or to what we write.
Questions
If you want to know whether a particular link earns us commission, or you think something on the site reads like it was paid for, email woof@off-the-leash.co.uk and ask. We will give you a straight answer.
Related pages
Read our privacy policy, our terms of use, or how we score dog food.