How We Make Money

The model

WaterTestAtlas earns money when you order a lab test through us. That only happens with labs that have signed an agreement with us to take orders this way. For those labs, we take your order and your payment, then hand the order to the lab, which runs the test and reports the result. We earn money on each of those orders under our agreement with the lab.

Labs that take orders through WaterTestAtlas today: 0 (none yet, so we earn nothing from orders today). This number comes straight from our lab data rather than being written into the page, so the page doesn't state an old count.

Payment goes through Stripe Checkout. You enter your card details on a payment page hosted by Stripe, not on a WaterTestAtlas form, and we never see or store your card number.

Reading our guides, using the test finder and checking your results cost nothing, and you don't need to order through us to use any of them.

What never changes

How much we earn never decides which lab you see first.

• Ranking ignores money. The ranking code has no access to what we earn.
• Every certified lab is listed by the same rules. A lab with no agreement with us is still shown when it takes samples from homeowners and is certified by your state to test drinking water, and for each of your tests that has a state certification of its own. If it is the best value for your tests, it is shown first.
• You can always order directly. For a lab that doesn't take orders through us, the lab box says "Order directly from lab" and links to the lab, so you can buy from it without going through WaterTestAtlas at all.
• The lab is named before you pay. Whichever way you order, you see which lab will run your test before you spend anything.
• Guidance is not for sale. Test plans and result explanations come from published benchmarks and our versioned data. Nobody can pay to change what we tell you to test or what your result means.

Our methodology sets out each ranking rule in full.

No affiliate links for treatment products

We don't earn anything from filters, softeners or other treatment products. Our pages carry no affiliate links to them.

That keeps our advice about treatment simple. We never recommend treatment without a certified-lab result, and when your results come back below every benchmark, we tell you no treatment is needed, because we have nothing to sell you either way.

Free options, even though we earn nothing

Some states and universities offer free or low-cost testing, and we point you to those programs even though we earn nothing when you use them. In Pennsylvania, for example, the Department of Health's environmental health program is partnering with Penn State Extension's Drinking Water Program to offer free water testing for private well owners.

Free programs often have limits on who qualifies or how many households they can test, so check with the program directly. You can find the programs we know about for your state through water testing in your state.