Three rules we operate under — and what they mean for you as a borrower.
REI LoanDoc is a comparison and matching service for personal loans. We're not a lender. We don't underwrite, approve, or fund loans. We help borrowers find offers from a network of third-party lenders.
That puts us in a position of trust. Here's how we operate.
REI LoanDoc is free for borrowers. There's no fee to use our form, no fee to see your matches, no fee to read our content, no "premium" tier, no upsell.
We're paid by partner lenders when you choose to apply with them. That compensation comes from the lender's marketing budget — it does not change the APR, fees, or terms you receive. You pay the same as if you had gone directly to that lender.
If we ever introduce a user-facing fee, it will be announced 30 days in advance and you'll be able to opt out before it takes effect.
Read our Advertiser Disclosure →
Read our Affiliate Disclosure →
When you fill in our form, we run a soft credit inquiry. A soft inquiry:
A hard credit inquiry — the kind that can temporarily lower your score by a few points — only happens if you choose to formally apply with a specific lender from your match results. At that point, you'll have already seen the lender's published terms and decided it's worth pursuing.
This means you can compare offers without spending credit-score "currency" on rejections.
Read more in our Privacy Policy →
Read our GLBA Privacy Notice →
When a lender in our results pays us a commission for matched applications, we tell you. The disclosure appears on our Affiliate Disclosure page and on every page where partner products are listed.
We sort your matches by profile fit — which lenders' published eligibility criteria align with what you entered on the form. We do not reorder matches based on which lender pays us more, and we don't hide lenders who pay us less.
Two practical consequences:
If a match ever looks suspect, contact us and we'll explain the matching logic for your specific case.
You can summarize our promise in one sentence:
We make money when you find a lender that fits you — not when we push you toward one that doesn't.
That alignment is the entire reason a comparison service exists in the first place. If it ever stops being true, the service stops being worth using. We'd rather close than break this rule.
If you believe we've fallen short of any rule on this page, email us at [email protected] with "Our Promise" in the subject line. We respond to every report, and each quarter we publish a summary of changes made in response on this page.
Last reviewed: May 1, 2026. This page describes commitments by THE REI LOAN DOC LLC and applies to the operation of thereiloandoc.com and its associated mobile applications.