We monitor payday, title and high-cost lenders using federal complaint records and the actual text of state law.
Nothing on this site changes if you borrow or if you walk away — which is why we can tell you to walk away. How we make money →
The urgent problems, with the specific steps that work.
Rules are set state by state, and a meaningful number of online loans don't comply with them.
What the federal complaint record says about each lender.
From the federal complaint record
Filing a complaint gets your money back about 1 time in 73.
Everyone tells you to complain to the CFPB. Almost nobody tells you what happens next. Across 15,188,499 complaints in the public federal database, 1.36% ended with money returned. Six in ten closed with an explanation and no change at all.
That is not a reason to skip it — a complaint creates a record, and some lenders resolve far more often than others. It is a reason to do the other things at the same time, which is what the first section of this site is for.
Enter where you live and what you were charged. We'll show you the limits that apply and whether your loan appears to exceed them. Live for 6 states so far — all 52 jurisdictions in progress. For any state right now, see rate caps and rules by state.
These are the situations people search for at two in the morning. Each one has a specific answer.
Every other site in this category is paid by lenders. We are a business too, so here is exactly where our money comes from — check it against what we publish.
A flat fee when someone opens a Payday Alternative Loan. These are capped at 28% APR by federal rule — a fraction of what payday costs. Flat, not a percentage, so we earn the same regardless of the amount.
Newsrooms, researchers and compliance teams pay for our structured complaint analysis. They are not lenders and they have no say in what we publish.
Direct contributions from people who found the site useful. No paywall, ever — the crisis pages are the last thing that should sit behind one.
No advertising, no referral fees, no lead generation, no sponsored placement, no payment to remove or soften a lender page. If a lender offers, we publish the offer.
We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. We show you what published law and federal data say, with the source and the date we checked it. For your specific situation, a non-profit credit counsellor or a legal aid office is the right call, and both are usually free.
Complaint data has limits and we say so on every page. The CFPB does not verify what borrowers write. A high complaint count often just means a company has many customers. That is why our lender pages lead with a rate — the share of complaints that end with money back — rather than a raw count.
State law is checked against the statute, not against other websites. While researching this we found published guides contradicting each other on which states even permit payday lending — three states appeared on one guide's "banned" list and another's "no rate cap at all" list. Every state page here carries the citation and the date it was last verified.
If we get something wrong, tell us. We will correct it and note that we did, with the date.