Terms & Privacy

Terms of Service

By using certbueno.com and running a salary check, you agree to these terms.

These terms cover the free salary check and your use of certbueno.com only. Any service provided under a separate written agreement — for example a commercial or vendor contract — is governed by that agreement, which prevails over these terms.

What you get

A salary check is a digital report benchmarking a named IT certification against CertBueno's market data for your stated location, experience level, and engagement type. It is provided free of charge, delivered on screen and by email.

The report is indicative, not advice

Median pay figures are drawn from real quarter-end market sources; per-level and per-city figures are modeled and indicative. The report is information only — it is not financial, career, legal, or tax advice, and is not a guarantee of any salary, offer, or outcome. Decisions you make based on it are your own. The result also reflects the details you enter — inaccurate, unrealistic, or nonsensical inputs will produce an inaccurate result, for which we are not responsible.

AI Cert Stack

The AI Cert Stack is a paid research product (US$179): a personalized recommendation — researched by our analysts and AI and fact-checked against market sources — of certifications that may complement the credentials you already hold, delivered by email. It is research and guidance only, not financial, career, legal, or tax advice, and is not a guarantee of any salary increase, pay rise, job, promotion, or other outcome. Every salary or value figure it contains is a sourced estimate or range, never a promise. Deciding to pursue any certification, and any result of doing so, is your own responsibility. Questions or concerns: help@certbueno.com.

Acceptable use

• Provide accurate information when running a check.
• Do not scrape, resell, or redistribute the data or reports.
• Do not attempt to break, overload, or gain unauthorized access to the service.

Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, CertBueno Ltd is not liable for any loss arising from reliance on the report. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited under law. As the salary check is provided free of charge, our total liability to you for any claim arising from it is limited to GBP 100.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of England & Wales, and disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of its courts. We may update these terms; the current version always lives at this page.

Privacy Policy

CertBueno Ltd is the data controller for personal data collected on certbueno.com. This explains what we collect, why, and your rights under UK GDPR.

What we collect

• Salary check inputs: your email, your highest certification, experience level, engagement type, job title, city and country, and current annual salary. Optionally: any other certifications you hold, your telephone number, and your LinkedIn profile. We do not collect your employer.
• Newsletter signups: your email and first name.
• Certification interest: when you register interest on a certification page, we record which certification and — only if you provide it — your email, so we can notify you if a registration path opens.
• Technical: IP address, and device and browser type (user-agent), for security and abuse prevention.

Why we use it

• To generate and email your report, and to provide the service you requested.
• To improve CertBueno's index and market models (in aggregate).
• To map how certifications are held together — which credentials stack with which — in aggregate, so our recommendations get better.
• To gauge demand for certifications and report that interest to certification providers in aggregate.
• To send the CertBueno Weekly, if you opted in (you can unsubscribe any time).

We never sell your data, and we never share your name or contact details with third parties for their own marketing.

Who processes it

We use trusted processors to run the service: Supabase (database), Resend (report & transactional email), Beehiiv (newsletter), and Netlify (hosting). Each processes data on our behalf under their own security terms.

Retention

We keep salary-check and report records, and certification-interest records (votes and notify requests), for as long as needed to provide the service and to meet our legal obligations, then delete or anonymise them. Newsletter data is kept until you unsubscribe. The IP address held to rate-limit the emails we send (your report, and confirmations of certification interest) is deleted automatically within 24 hours.

Outbound click records are retained for 25 months, then deleted or aggregated into non-identifying summaries.

Your rights

You can request access to, correction of, or deletion of your data, object to processing, or withdraw consent, by emailing help@certbueno.com. You may also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

Cookies

Essential storage. To run the salary check and remember your choices we use a little session storage and a small localStorage marker that records when you have voted on a certification page so you are not asked twice. These are strictly necessary, carry no advertising identifier, and need no consent. We also keep a first-party record of your cookie choice (cb_consent) and, so we can apply the right default, your broad region (cb_region).

Advertising (optional). With your consent we use the Meta pixel (provided by Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd) to measure and improve our advertising. It sets cookies in your browser — chiefly _fbp, and _fbc if you arrive from a Meta ad, each lasting up to about 90 days — and reports which of a few actions you took: viewing a page, completing a benchmark, or making a purchase. We never send Meta your salary, email, certifications, job title, location or any account data, and Meta's automatic advanced matching is turned off. For the data the pixel collects, CertBueno and Meta act as joint controllers for its collection and transmission (under Meta's Controller Addendum); how Meta uses it afterwards is governed by its own policy. Meta may process this data outside the UK and EU, including in the United States, relying on the UK extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses. In the UK and EU these cookies are set only after you accept; elsewhere they load by default and you can opt out at any time. To change or withdraw your choice, use Manage cookie settings or clear the cookies in your browser. Meta's own data policy explains how it uses this data.

Campaign attribution. When you arrive from one of our links or campaigns, the campaign tags in the web address (the utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content and utm_term parameters) and the referring website address are stored in your browser's sessionStorage for the duration of your visit, and recorded against a submission you choose to make (a benchmark, a newsletter sign-up, a purchase, or an enquiry) so we can understand which campaigns bring people to CertBueno. This is not a cookie and is cleared when you close the tab; it holds no advertising identifier and is used only to measure our own marketing.

Outbound link measurement

When you click through to a certification provider from CertBueno, we record the certification, the time, the page you came from, your device and browser type, and your approximate country. We do not store your IP address for this purpose, and we do not use cookies for this measurement. We use it to understand which certifications visitors pursue and, in aggregate, to report referral volumes to certification providers.

Page and index measurement

We also count how many people view each certification page and how many reach it by clicking a certification in the Top 100 index. These counts are anonymous: we record only the certification, whether it was a page view or an index click, the page you came from, and your approximate country. We do not store your IP address, any identifier, your device or browser type, or a cookie for this. A small piece of session storage — cleared when you close the tab, and not a cookie under PECR — is used only to stop a page refresh being counted twice. We use these counts, in aggregate, to gauge demand for certifications and report interest to certification providers.

Methodology

The salary figure we headline on the index and on each certification page is the top of band — a modeled estimate of the upper end of the pay range for a certification, not a measured median. We calculate it as the certification's median × 1.18. The multiplier is a fixed modeling assumption applied consistently across every certification; it is indicative, not a measured or guaranteed figure.

The underlying medians are drawn from quarter-end market sources. Their precision is preserved through the modeling: a figure shown in full (for example $198,311) derives from a directly sourced median; a figure rounded to the nearest thousand ($261k) derives from an estimated or carried-forward median; and the ≈ symbol marks a low-confidence estimate. Rankings are determined by salary-premium and demand data and are refreshed quarterly. Verified vendor status affects registration links only, never rank.

Currency and level

The index is published in US dollars. A salary check adjusts the median for your stated experience level and engagement type using fixed modeling factors, and — where you check from outside the United States or the United Kingdom — converts the result from the US-dollar base using a fixed reference exchange rate held in our model, not a live market rate. Converted figures are labeled as such in your result and are indicative only. UK figures are sourced in pounds directly rather than converted, and are labeled accordingly. In every case the headline remains a modeled, indicative figure and not a guaranteed offer.

Emerging roles

A small number of entries track emerging job roles rather than certifications — roles for which no recognized body yet issues a credential by that name. These are labeled EMERGING ROLE on their pages, and there is nothing to register for. Their pay figures are role-based — reflecting people working in the role — rather than holder-based, which reflects certified holders. Where established adjacent credentials exist, they are listed on the page.