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Privacy Policy

Last updated: 15 October 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how RiftCompare (“we”, “us”) collects, uses and protects information when you visit https://riftcompare.com (the “Site”). RiftCompare is run by one person, its founder (see who runs RiftCompare), who is responsible for the information described here. By using the Site you agree to the practices described here.

Information we collect

  • Account information — you sign in with Google or Discord. We receive and store your email address, your display name and, where the provider supplies one, your profile picture. We never see your Google or Discord password. (Accounts opened before sign-in moved to Google and Discord may still hold the hashed password they were created with; it is no longer used to sign in.)
  • What you save — if you have an account: the cards you watch and any target prices, your collection and portfolio, decks you publish, and your best game scores.
  • Alerts and newsletters — if you sign up for a price alert, a set release alert or our newsletter, with or without an account, we store your email address, what you asked to hear about, your market, and whether you have paused or unsubscribed.
  • Things you send us — contact and feedback messages, support tickets, wrong-price reports and store suggestions: what you wrote, and your name and email address where you give them.
  • Store consulting bookings — for a store that booked a session while we offered them (until October 2026): the store’s name and website, a contact name, email address and market, and any goals or preferred times it added. Stripe collected the billing address and any tax number for the invoice.
  • Usage data — pages viewed, searches, clicks and similar interactions, collected to operate and improve the Site. When you click through to a store we record the store, the market and the page you came from, not who you are, and card searches and page views are kept only as anonymous totals per card.
  • Device & log data — your browser type, approximate region and IP address, as standard for any website. Your region is used to pick your market and to suggest your delivery region for postage estimates.

Cookies and browser storage

We use cookies and similar technologies for four distinct purposes:

  • Strictly necessary and preferences — set without consent because the Site cannot work as expected without them: tcge_session keeps you signed in (30 days); oauth_state_* and oauth_next_* protect and complete a sign-in (ten minutes); country remembers the market you chose and theme light or dark mode (a year each); eur_display remembers whether UK store prices are shown in pounds or euros, set when you are placed in the UK market (a year); rc_adfree stops ads loading for Plus and Premium members (a month, renewed while you are one).
  • Sign-up attribution — rc_ref holds the referral code from a link someone shared with you (30 days) and rc_signup_src which sign-up button you pressed (30 minutes). Neither identifies you.
  • Analytics — Google Analytics cookies, set only when analytics is allowed (see Analytics below).
  • Advertising and consent — set by Google and its advertising partners to serve and measure ads, including personalised ads where you have consented. Where Google’s consent message is shown to you, it stores your answer in its own cookie.

Some conveniences are kept in your browser’s local storage instead, on your device — for example recent searches, cards you viewed recently, game progress and scores, banners you dismissed, and an email address you typed into an alert form so you don’t have to type it again. Analytics and advertising cookies are only set after consent where consent is required. You can clear any of this, or disable cookies entirely, in your browser settings, though parts of the Site may stop working as expected.

Advertising & third-party vendors

We use third-party advertising on this Site, including Google AdSense. RiftCompare is funded by advertising, affiliate commissions (see below), Plus and Premium subscriptions.

  • Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this Site and other websites.
  • Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this Site and/or other sites on the Internet.
  • Where a consent regime applies to you — the EEA, the UK and Switzerland — we ask for your consent before any advertising or analytics cookies are set, using Google’s certified consent message. Until you answer it, advertising storage, ad personalisation, ad user data and analytics storage are all set to denied (Google Consent Mode v2), and any advertising you see is non-personalised. The Privacy settings link in our footer re-opens that message so you can change your answer at any time.
  • If no such regime applies where you are, no consent message is shown and the Privacy settings footer link brings you to this section instead. The opt-out controls below still apply to you, and blocking third-party cookies in your browser prevents advertising cookies entirely.
  • You may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings. You can also opt out of some third-party vendors’ use of cookies at aboutads.info/choices.
  • For more on how Google uses data from sites that use its services, see How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.
  • We also show our own first-party promotional units — plain links to other RiftCompare pages. These set no cookies and involve no third party.

The native RiftCompare mobile apps use Google AdMob, which is subject to the same Google advertising policies and the same opt-out controls linked above.

Affiliate links

Some outbound links to retailers (such as eBay, Amazon and TCGplayer) are affiliate links. If you buy through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This never affects the prices we show, and it does not affect the order in which a price comparison is ranked, with one exception we label where it happens: on our Radiance pre-order table, open eBay listings are shown first within each product, tagged “Shown first”.

We are a member of the eBay Partner Network, TCGplayer’s affiliate programme (run through Impact) and the Amazon Associates programme; as an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. The tracking tag on an affiliate link tells the retailer which RiftCompare page and market the click came from, never who you are. The retailer’s own privacy policy covers what happens on its site.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how the Site is used — which pages are visited, what is searched for, which features and store links are clicked — and Vercel Analytics and Speed Insights for aggregate traffic and page performance.

Every visit starts with analytics storage set to denied (Google Consent Mode v2). Where a consent regime applies to you, it stays that way until you consent through Google’s consent message; until then Google Analytics receives only cookieless, anonymous pings and Vercel’s analytics do not load. Where no consent message is shown, analytics is switched on a moment after the page loads, and Google Analytics may set its cookies.

If you are signed in and analytics is allowed, we also send Google Analytics an opaque identifier for your account, so visits from your phone and your computer count as one person. It is a one-way code derived from your account, never your email address or your name, and it is cleared when you sign out. Vercel Analytics sets no cookies.

Emails we send

We email you only about things you asked for or that concern your account: price alerts (a drop, a target price reached, a card back in stock or newly listed), set release alerts, the newsletter if you subscribe, a weekly digest to registered accounts, a welcome email when you create an account, messages about a Plus or Premium trial or subscription, occasional announcements to registered accounts, and replies to anything you send us.

The weekly newsletter may include one clearly labelled sponsored message. We send it ourselves: sponsors never receive your email address or any other information about you, and clicking their link is the only way they learn you read it.

Emails are delivered through Resend, and the weekly account digest and announcements through Brevo. Every alert and newsletter email carries an unsubscribe link, and alert emails also support the one-click unsubscribe your email app may show at the top. For price alerts, unsubscribing pauses the emails for that address rather than deleting your watches; deleting them is a separate “Delete all my watches” link in the email’s footer.

Payments

Plus and Premium subscriptions (and, until October 2026, store consulting sessions) are processed by Stripe. Card details are entered on Stripe’s systems and are never seen or stored by us — we receive only a payment reference, the amount, and whether it succeeded, plus, for a consulting session, a link to the invoice Stripe generates.

Who processes your data

We rely on these services to run the Site, each for the part named:

  • Vercel — hosting, and Vercel Analytics.
  • Neon — the database that stores accounts, alerts and prices.
  • Google — sign-in, Google Analytics, AdSense and its consent message.
  • Discord — sign-in.
  • Stripe — payments and invoices.
  • Resend and Brevo — sending email.

How we use information

We use the information above to provide and secure the Site, remember your preferences, send the emails you asked for, understand how the Site is used, display relevant advertising, and respond to your enquiries. We do not sell your personal information.

Keeping and deleting your information

Account data, what you save and your alert subscriptions are kept while your account or subscription is active. You can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it — your account, your alerts, anything you sent us, or everything linked to your email address — by emailing riftcompare@gmail.com.

Your choices

You can manage cookies in your browser, change your consent answer with the Privacy settings link in the footer, opt out of personalised ads using the links above, and unsubscribe from any email from the email itself. Children under 13 (or the minimum age in your country) should not use the Site.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by the “last updated” date above.

Contact

Questions about this policy? Email riftcompare@gmail.com or visit our contact page.