Our methodology
How we rank, and how we get paid
Most “best debt relief” lists are paid placement wearing a lab coat: the firm that pays the highest affiliate fee sits at number one. We’re not going to pretend money doesn’t exist, we may be compensated when you contact companies on this site, and that’s disclosed on every page. Here’s what we do instead of pretending: a fixed rubric, applied identically to every firm, published in full below. Read it, then check our scores against it.
The five factors
-
30%Weight
Business-debt & MCA expertise
The single biggest predictor of your outcome. A merchant cash advance is structured as a purchase of future receivables, it arrives with UCC-1 filings, personal guarantees, and sometimes a confession of judgment. A firm built for credit cards is bringing the wrong playbook. What we check: does the firm work commercial files as its core practice or as an exception? Does it know the funder landscape? Does it handle stacked positions, SBA workouts, and vendor debt, or quietly refer them out?
-
25%Weight
Legal capability
MCA settlements get papered as legal agreements, and the leverage comes from the contract: reconciliation clauses funders never honored, usurious effective rates dressed up as purchases, defective filings. What we check: attorneys in-house or a real working network, not a referral to a stranger once things get serious. Can they challenge a COJ? Defend a lawsuit? Firms with no legal capability cap out at 6.0 on this factor no matter how good their negotiators are.
-
20%Weight
Fee structure
Incentives decide behavior. Our hierarchy: one clear fee stated as a percentage of the debt, in writing before you sign, beats layered enrollment-plus-monthly pricing, which beats anything vague. Fees demanded before any work exists are an automatic zero, that’s not a deduction, it’s a disqualification, and charging before settling is also illegal for phone-sold debt relief.
-
15%Weight
Transparency & track record
What we check: BBB standing and complaint patterns (not just the letter grade), Trustpilot and Google review volume and recency, regulatory history including CFPB actions, whether real numbers appear in writing before you sign, and whether the firm will tell a prospect “we can’t help you.” A company that says everything is fixable loses points here. A company with a regulatory settlement gets it named in our review, reform is real, but so is the record.
-
10%Weight
Speed to resolution
When an ACH debit hits your account every morning before payroll, a 48-month program is not a plan, it’s a countdown. What we check: typical time to first settlement, whether the firm moves to address daily debits immediately, and whether single-position files resolve in weeks or get parked in a multi-year queue.
What disqualifies a firm entirely
- Upfront fees before any settlement exists
- Guaranteed settlement percentages quoted before reading a contract
- “Stop paying” instructions with no legal strategy behind them
- A pattern of BBB complaints alleging fees taken with no creditor contact
- No verifiable presence, no reviews, no address, no names
Sixteen of the twenty-five firms we evaluated this cycle failed at least one of these. They are not ranked; they are not named with scores; they are simply not here.
What we verify, and where
- BBB profiles: rating, accreditation date, complaint volume and responses
- Trustpilot, Google, and ConsumerAffairs review distributions
- CFPB and FTC actions, state AG records where public
- Published fee schedules, minimums, and state coverage
- Accreditations: ACDR/AFCC, IAPDA, CDRI
Every listing is re-verified monthly. Figures like “$100M+ settled” are the companies’ own reported totals, we cite them as claims, and we weight verifiable third-party data above them.
The compensation question, answered plainly
Yes, if you call the number on this site or submit the form, we may be paid, including by our #1 pick. That is how review sites keep the lights on, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying about something structural. What compensation buys on this site: placement of phone numbers and forms. What it cannot buy: a score. The rubric above is fixed, weighted, and applied to every firm identically, and our #1 pick earns its 9.8 on the merits: exclusive business-debt focus, attorney-backed leverage, one straightforward percentage-of-debt fee, and speed. If a firm ever beats it on those five factors, the ranking changes.