How points, rank and expiry work

Rank is total points, highest first. Ties go to whoever joined first, so an older climb is never pushed down by a newcomer who merely matched it.

• Base - 10 points, permanent. Every paid climb gets them for the $10 minimum entry. No paid climb ever drops below 10 or falls off the wall.
• Bought - $1 = 1 point, permanent. Buy at entry or any time after. A $200 entry is 10 base + 190 bought. Bought points never decay: they are a purchase, not a performance.
• Earned - they expire. +1 for each new person who reaches the wall through your share link. +5 when one of them buys a place of their own.
• Bonus - held while it is true. +30 for keeping the outclimbed badge on your own site. Not bought and not on a clock: you hold them for as long as the badge stays up. How it works.

The wall can also be read by category, or switched to Today, which ranks only what was bought and earned since midnight UTC - a different question from who is biggest overall.

Today's board starts empty at midnight UTC and shows only climbs that moved since. Always on Today is a monthly plan, $30 a month, that moves a climb every day: shortly after each midnight UTC it adds 1 bought point, so the climb is on that day's board every day the plan runs.

• The first point arrives with the payment. A month of the plan is 28 to 31 points, one per day.
• They are ordinary bought points: permanent, on the all-time wall too, and kept when the plan ends.
• Cancel any time from your dashboard. The points keep coming to the end of the month already paid for, then stop. A failed renewal pauses them until it is paid.
• A new product on the plan goes on the wall at once and for good, with no free queue and no timer.

A free listing goes on the wall at 0 points and with no base points. It has 30 days, and at the end of them:

• Any payment keeps it for good. Points from $10, the dofollow link or an ad slot: the moment one clears, the clock is gone and it is a permanent climb like any other.
• The badge keeps it while the badge stays. A website holding the badge bonus is not removed. Past the 30 days the badge is what keeps it there, so the day the daily check takes the bonus back (after 7 checks in a row without it), the listing is paused with it: off the wall, but still yours. Put the badge back and check it from your dashboard, or make any payment, and it returns with the same link, clicks and history. There is no deadline on that.
• With neither, it is removed. The listing and its history are deleted. We email you 7 days before, and again when it happens.

A set number of free listings go on the wall each day. Days are UTC. A free listing joins a queue, which moves at the start of each day in the order listings came in; the form shows the expected day before you submit, and we email you when yours goes up. A queued listing is not visible to anyone, and its 30 days start the day it goes up. Any payment on it, from $10, skips the queue: it is on the wall at once and permanent. The badge does not skip the queue.

An X profile has no page to put the badge on, so for those it is a payment or nothing. Each site or handle can be listed free once, whichever page of it you list: a removed free listing can come back as a paid one, not as another free one. List one free.

There is no fading in between. A visitor point is worth a full point on day 29 and nothing on day 30, and each point runs on its own clock from the moment it was earned - so points fall off one at a time, not all at once.

Your profile shows what each climb has and what drops off within the next 7 days, and the wall marks any climb about to lose points with a flame and, for the last 7 days, a strip underneath saying how many points are going and what it will cost to pass it once they have gone.

Put the outclimbed badge on your own site and your climb holds +30 bonus points for as long as it stays there. The snippet is on your profile: copy it, paste it on the page you listed and press Verify. If you would rather put it on another page, give us its path - it has to be on the same domain.

• The badge has to be in the page's HTML, the image inside the link around it, and visible: a badge hidden with display:none, a hiding class, zero size or pushed off screen does not count. Whether the link is followed or not makes no difference.
• We check that one page once a day. If the badge is missing we email you straight away, and once more the day before the bonus goes; after 7 checks in a row without it the bonus is removed, and we email you again.
• A check that cannot reach your site - a timeout, a server error, a bot wall - is not a miss. But a page we cannot read at all for 30 days in a row can no longer be vouched for: we email you after 14, and at 30 the bonus is removed. One check that gets through starts the count again.
• Removed bonus points come back the moment the badge does: put it back and verify again.

Bonus points are not bought points. What you pay for is never taken back; a bonus is held for as long as the thing it rewards stays true, and the rules say so up front.

The badge can also show your site's Domain Rating, 0 to 100: Domain Rating by Ahrefs, refreshed weekly. It is Ahrefs' number, not ours, and it has no effect on your rank here. Check any site's DR with our free Domain Rating checker.

One point per person, once. Not per visit, not per day. If someone opens your share link a hundred times, or comes back every morning for a month, that is still the single point they were worth the first time.

The point is counted the moment someone arrives through your link. Opening your own link earns nothing: not from the network you listed it from, not while you are signed in, and not from any device where you have opened your dashboard. Link previews and traffic that looks automated are not counted either.

Visits that look repeated or automated are held, and the owner is emailed. The third time, however far apart, the held points are removed and the link stops earning points (visitors can still use it). It can be unlocked for $100, which also buys 100 points. Caught again after an unlock, it may be locked again straight away.

The +5 does not require anyone to buy on the spot. When someone follows your share link we remember where they came from for 30 days. If they buy a place at any point in that window - the same hour, or sixteen days later - the +5 is yours, and it then holds its full value for 6 months.

That is why sharing somewhere people come back to is worth more than a single burst of traffic: the visit pays once, but the window keeps paying.

Note the asymmetry. A visitor who pays to join is worth 5 times a passive click and lasts 6 times longer. Promote to an audience that might actually enter, not to raw traffic.

• One visitor point per person per climb, for as long as that climb exists.
• At most 10 referred-signup bonuses per climb in 24 hours. Ten real signups in a day is far beyond anything the wall has seen; ten fake ones is an afternoon's work, so the ceiling is on the cheat, not on you.
• No referring yourself. A signup that shares your email or comes from the machine you signed up on earns no bonus.
• Outbound clicks count once per person per day, so a number on the wall is people, not page reloads.
• Refunds undo what they bought. A refunded top-up removes those points; a refunded entry removes the climb and the bonus anyone earned for referring it.

The strip above the wall is separate from rank, and it is bought rather than earned. It holds 10 ads, newest first: paying puts you at the front, everyone else moves down one, and once it is full the ad at the back drops out.

While a slot is free it costs $150. Once all 10 are taken you are paying to push somebody out, and the price steps up by $100. There is no cap on where that goes - the more the strip is contested, the more a place in it costs. Position inside the strip is not for sale; every ad on screen is shown for the same length of time.

• Chat or invite links (Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Signal, Messenger).
• Adult sites.
• Bot traffic to your share link. It is deduplicated, filtered, and not counted.
• Opening your own share link to earn points, from any device, browser or network. Those visits are held, and on the third catch the link stops earning points.
• Anything illegal, deceptive, or that we simply do not want on the wall. We can hide a climb at our discretion.

The full version, including payment terms, is in the Terms.

Sign in at /login with the email you paid with. No password: we mail you a link, and opening it shows a confirmation page before anything happens, so nothing in your inbox can sign you in on its own. Everything bought under that address is in one place - each climb with its own referral link, points, clicks, and the controls to edit it, buy more points, or take it down.

Removing a climb is not reversible: the points go, including the ones you paid for, and there is no refund. The URL becomes available again, so anyone - including you - can list it afresh starting at 10 points. Payments are handled by Dodo Payments as merchant of record.

• How much does it cost to list a product on outclimbed?
• Do points expire?
• Can I lose a rank I paid for?
• How do I move up without paying more?
• What are bonus points and how do I get them?
• Are outclimbed links dofollow or nofollow?
• Can I get a refund?
• What happens if I remove my listing?

All questions and answers