Methodology

What our Medicare comparison engine actually does, where the data comes from, how we make money, and what we won't do.

Where the data comes from

Every plan, premium, deductible, copay, OOP max, and drug coverage tier shown on this site is the carrier's federally filed value, ingested directly from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services public data feeds:

• Plan Benefits Package (PBP) — the full benefits structure of every Medicare Advantage plan in the country.
• Landscape Source File — premium and Part D info for every plan in every county.
• Quarterly Formulary File — every drug covered by every Part D plan, with tier placement, prior authorization flags, step therapy flags, and negotiated pricing.
• Service Area Files — which counties each plan serves.
• Star Ratings — CMS's quality scores for each contract.
• Monthly Enrollment by CPSC — real enrollment counts per plan per county.

We refresh from these feeds on the schedules CMS publishes them on (most are monthly, formulary is quarterly). Every plan card on the site shows the as-of date of its underlying data.

How we make money

We don't sell insurance. We are not a licensed insurance agency, we don't have appointments with carriers, and we don't take commissions on plan enrollments. When you click "enroll" on a plan card, we send you to the carrier's site or to Medicare.gov. We don't process the enrollment. We don't get paid if you enroll.

This site is supported by:

• Optional one-time PDF products ($9–$29) — downloadable workbooks, mistake-prevention checklists, and decision worksheets. Buying one doesn't change anything you see on the free site.
• Optional Annual Open Enrollment review subscription ($49/year) — once a year, we re-run your stored inputs against the new year's plans and email you a one-page summary of whether switching saves you money.
• Affiliate revenue from non-Medicare products — when we link to telehealth services, hearing aids direct-to-consumer, prescription discount cards, medical alerts, estate planning tools, or expat health insurance, we may earn a referral fee. None of these affiliate categories influence the Medicare plan ranking. We do not take affiliate revenue from any Medicare Advantage, Medigap, or Part D plan.
• B2B licensing to fee-only financial advisors and CPAs — they license our comparison engine to give clients credible Medicare guidance without becoming Medicare agents themselves.

How the ranking works

When you submit your inputs, we compute four numbers per plan:

• Annual premium = (Part C monthly premium + Part D monthly premium) × 12.
• Annual drug cost = sum of your medications' monthly copays on this plan's filed formulary, capped at the 2026 Part D out-of-pocket maximum of $2,100. Drugs not on the plan's formulary are flagged separately.
• IRMAA surcharge — the income-related Part B and Part D adjustments applied to your filing status and MAGI.
• Typical medical OOP — a simplified estimate equal to 25% of the plan's in-network out-of-pocket maximum. This is a transparent assumption, not a guarantee. Your actual will be higher or lower depending on health services used.

We sort by your chosen priority (lowest expected total cost / predictability / drug coverage / network breadth) and show the top 3 with the math broken out. We do not add a recommendation. The numbers are what they are.

What the comparison does NOT do

• We do not verify provider networks. CMS itself acknowledges that carrier provider directories are unreliable — that's why the 2026 "Inaccurate Directory" Special Enrollment Period exists. Always call your doctor's office to confirm they accept the plan before enrolling.
• We do not include Medigap (Medicare Supplement) pricing yet. Medigap rates are filed state-by-state with each state's Department of Insurance, and ingesting all 50 states is on our roadmap. The Medigap plan-letter coverage structure (F / G / K / L / N) is federally standardized — we explain it on the Medigap page, but we don't quote prices we don't have.
• We do not sell, refer, or facilitate enrollment.
• We do not run your information past any insurance company, agent, or broker. Your inputs stay between your browser and our database. Read our privacy policy.

Why this matters

Most Medicare comparison sites are run by insurance agencies. An agency can legally only quote plans it has appointments with — meaning their "comparison" is filtered to their book of business, the plans that pay them commission. The larger players (eHealth, Boomer Benefits, Fidelity Medicare Services, GoHealth, Spring Venture) all operate this way. Their advice may be honest, but they have a structural conflict.

We don't. We can show every plan, including the ones nobody pays a commission on, because we don't take commissions at all. That's the only difference, and it's the entire point.

Source citations on every output

Every plan card shows the CMS file name and as-of date its underlying data comes from. If a number ever doesn't match what you see on Medicare.gov, the carrier's site, or the carrier's most recent filing, we want to know — write us via the contact page and we'll trace it back to the source ingest.