Race Rules · Outbid.today

MISSION WINDOW

One UTC day, one mission

Each UTC calendar day is a separate mission. It begins at 00:00:00 UTC, ends at 23:59:59 UTC, and the live countdown points to that cutoff. The active leaderboard starts again with zero daily fuel after midnight UTC.

A reset changes daily fuel, daily rank, daily impressions and clicks, time held at number one, time in the top three, and the daily activity feed. It does not erase a product, a payment record, lifetime fuel or clicks, highest historical rank, mission wins, archived mission results, winner badges, or Orbit Pack status. Daily rank. Permanent legacy.

The previous mission can be finalized lazily on the first relevant request after midnight. Historical bids are retained rather than deleted or rewritten.

ALTITUDE CALCULATION

Successfully paid fuel sets the order

Ranking is determined directly by cumulative fuel that Polar has confirmed as successfully paid during the active mission. One paid US dollar equals one visible unit of fuel. Money is recorded in integer cents; launch and refuel inputs use whole US-dollar amounts.

Products are ordered by these rules, in sequence:

active-mission fuel, highest first;
the time the product first reached its current total, earliest first; and
a stable product ID as the deterministic final tie-breaker.

There is no editorial boost, voting algorithm, revenue share, or secret ranking factor. A rank may change immediately when another payment succeeds, a succeeded Polar refund reverses fuel, or a prohibited listing is removed.

LAUNCH PARAMETERS

Launch, refuel, and pass amounts

A product's first launch requires at least $5. A listed product can refuel for at least $1 and may refuel more than once in a mission. A single payment cannot exceed the configured limit, which is $10,000 by default. Each payment must be a valid whole-dollar amount within the limits shown at checkout.

The nominal fuel needed to pass a selected competitor is target fuel − your current fuel + $1. The server recalculates the product, target, mission totals, and required amount immediately before it creates Polar Checkout. Client estimates are only estimates.

A Checkout session reserves no rank. The board can move while checkout is open, so Outbid.today never guarantees that a stated amount will produce or preserve a particular position.

PAYMENT CONFIRMATION

Polar's verified webhook is the source of truth

Opening a Checkout session or returning to the success page does not add fuel. Fuel is activated only after Outbid.today receives and verifies a successful Polar webhook. Duplicate webhook deliveries do not add fuel twice.

Payment acceptance is fail-closed. Sandbox Checkout requires the configured Polar sandbox and PAYMENTS_ENABLED. Live Checkout also requiresPOLAR_LIVE_APPROVED, which may be enabled only after Polar explicitly approves this exact advertising and paid-placement model. Sandbox or general account access is not live approval.

If Polar reports a succeeded refund, the related net fuel is reversed exactly once and active ranks are recalculated. Payment history remains in the record, and an appropriate activity event may be shown. Being outbid, receiving fewer visits than expected, or changing your marketing plans is not a refund reason.

PRODUCT IDENTITY

Submit only products you may promote

You must be authorized to promote the submitted product and to use its name, pitch, URL, favicon, and other supplied material. Information must be accurate enough not to mislead visitors. Do not impersonate a company, founder, or representative.

Equivalent URL variants are normalized so one product is not duplicated simply because tracking parameters, capitalization, fragments, default ports, or a trailing slash differ. Existing products refuel their current listing. A paid placement is not an endorsement, certification, partnership, or proof that the listed company approved the listing.

NO-FLY LIST

Prohibited content and destinations

You may not launch or link to:

malware, phishing, harmful downloads, or software designed to compromise a person, device, account, or network;
illegal products, services, conduct, or content;
adult sexual content or services;
gambling, wagering, or unlicensed prize schemes;
deceptive financial schemes, token scams, pump-and-dump promotions, or misleading investment claims;
impersonation, forged affiliation, or deliberately deceptive identity claims;
hate, extremist, terrorist, or content that promotes violence against protected people or groups;
copyright or trademark abuse, counterfeit goods, piracy, or material you lack permission to use; or
redirects, cloaking, or later destination changes intended to evade these rules.

Attempts to access localhost, private or link-local networks, cloud metadata addresses, unsafe schemes, or dangerous nonstandard ports are also blocked.

MISSION SAFETY

Listings can be removed or restored

Outbid.today may review, remove, hide, or restore listings; block a destination or domain; preserve payment evidence; and stop future launches when content is prohibited, unsafe, infringing, deceptive, or materially misrepresented. Paying does not purchase a right to keep prohibited content live.

Moderation can change the visible board. Where appropriate, affected operators can ask for review at hello@outbid.today with the destination, mission date, and evidence of authorization. Removal does not automatically create a refund; applicable law and the Terms still apply.

PUBLIC TELEMETRY

Exposure is measured, not promised

Paid products receive leaderboard placement, an animated rocket, a permanent page, tracked outbound visits, exposure statistics, sharing tools, historical performance, and eligible rotation in Today's Radar. Radar uses a deterministic fair rotation among recently paid products; it is not sold as an SEO backlink.

Paid outbound links are marked rel="sponsored". Leaderboard and Radar impressions, clicks, CTR, presence, and time-based metrics are best-effort aggregates and may be delayed, deduplicated, or filtered for obvious abuse. Outbid.today does not fabricate missing values and does not guarantee traffic, clicks, conversions, SEO value, uptime, or a particular rank.

A product manager may publish one current self-reported outcome. The product manager supplies lifetime revenue reasonably attributed to Outbid.today, and the server snapshots the product's confirmed net lifetime fuel when the report is saved. Displayed ROI is (reported revenue − fuel snapshot) ÷ fuel snapshot. It is labeled self-reported, is not independently verified, and never affects rank, Radar rotation, winner status, or a prize.

Only the product's valid private management capability can update or remove its report. Missing reports are shown as unreported, never treated as zero, and never used to create a platform-wide performance claim.

FINAL ORBIT

The winner is decided only after finalization

A product shown at number one is only in position to win. The TrendsFast Orbit Pack is awarded to the finalized number-one product after the UTC mission ends; it is not won when a product first reaches orbit or while the countdown is live.

The default pack includes AEO, SEO, GEO and AI-discoverability analysis, prioritized technical and content recommendations, answer-page and topic opportunities, a Today / This Week / This Month roadmap, 5,000 promotional TrendsFast API credits, and a permanent Mission Winner badge. The package or credit amount shown for that mission controls if configuration changes.

The winner receives a private claim entitlement using the email collected by Polar. A claim can move through eligible, ready-to-claim, claimed, fulfilled, or expired states. Public pages show status without exposing the email or claim token. The Terms contain the remaining prize conditions.

DATA INTEGRITY

The production race uses real events only

Production does not insert fake bids, payments, companies, visitors, clicks, activity, winner history, testimonials, or TrendsFast reports. If live presence cannot be measured, the viewer count is hidden. If nobody has paid, totals are shown as zero and the first successful paid rocket takes orbit.

These Rules explain the mechanics in plain language. The Terms govern use of the service, and the Privacy Notice explains how related data is handled.