Privacy

Short version. Fundladder collects no personal information through these pages. There is no sign-up, no account and no mailing list, and we do not use cookies. What you type into the filters and the funding options questions stays in your browser, with two exceptions that keep nothing: the public records lookup passes a business name to the SEC and the New York and Colorado open data portals, and the optional "describe your business" box passes what you write to Anthropic, an AI company, to pick out answers. We do not sell or share personal information, and we do not use analytics.

Who we are

Fundladder is a free information service that maps the ways a business can raise money. It is run on a not-for-profit basis, and these pages cover the United States. For the little described below, we are responsible for your information.

What you type

The route filters, the compare view and the funding options questions run in your browser. Your choices are kept in the page address (the URL) so you can bookmark or share a view. We do not send them to our servers or store them.

Your answers to the funding options questions (such as how much you need, your state, your sales and whether you would give a personal guarantee) are kept in the part of the page address after the "#" sign. Browsers never send that part to any server, including ours. Your results are worked out in your browser, using fixed rules. If you bookmark or share a results link, anyone who opens it will see those answers, so treat the link like the answers themselves.

The question about the owners' citizenship is optional, has a "Prefer not to say" answer, and is never filled in for you. There are no questions about race, sex, veteran status or other personal characteristics.

To report something wrong or out of date, email data@fundladder.uk. We receive your email address and message and use them only to check the correction and reply.

Looking up a business in public records

"Check a lender or platform" and the funding options questions can look up a business in public records: its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and its record in New York's or Colorado's business registry, from the states' open data portals (data.ny.gov and data.colorado.gov). When you search, the business name goes to our server, which asks the SEC and the two portals and sends the answer straight back to you. From the state registries we ask only for the business's name, type, status, formation date and city, never the names of its owners, officers or agents. When you pick an SEC result, its record number (the SEC's CIK) goes the same way. We do not log, cache or store the search or the result, and it is not tied to you. The search is sent in the body of the request, not the page address, so it does not appear in web addresses or server logs. The SEC and the state portals receive the search from us, not from you, and the records they return are already public. Please search for a business, not a person.

For the federal contracts, grants and loans a business has had, the results link to the recipient search on USAspending.gov. We send it nothing: if you follow the link and search there, USAspending.gov's own privacy policy applies.

In the funding options questions, you can fill in answers from what the records show clearly: the state of the business's address, and its legal form when the state's record settles it. The answers go into the questions in your browser, where you check each one.

Describing your business

The funding options questions have an optional box where you can describe your business in a few sentences. If you use it, what you write goes to our server, which sends it to Anthropic's Claude model to pick out answers to the questions, each quoting your words. The answers come back to your browser, where you check them, and fixed rules work out the results as usual: the model does not decide which options match. It never answers the questions about a personal guarantee, selling shares or the owners' citizenship. We do not log or store what you wrote or the answers.

Anthropic receives what you wrote from us, not from you. Under its terms for its API, it does not use it to train its models and deletes it within 30 days, unless its automated safety checks flag it (then it may keep it for up to 2 years) or the law requires it to keep it longer (Anthropic's Privacy Center). Please leave out names and anything confidential. If you would rather not share it, answer the questions yourself: the box is optional.

No analytics

We do not use analytics or any other tracking. We do not count page views, and we do not measure how the funding options questions are used.

Hosting

The site is hosted by Cloudflare, on Cloudflare Workers. Like any web host, Cloudflare's servers process technical information, such as your IP address, to deliver pages to you and to keep the service secure. We have not switched on Cloudflare's logging of requests to our site. To stop the public records lookup and the description box being overused, the site counts, on Cloudflare, how many times each visitor uses them in a minute. The count is kept under a scrambled (hashed) form of your IP address, in memory only, for about a minute; it is never written down, never kept with what you typed, and we do not see it. This may happen in the United States and elsewhere.

Selling, sharing and tracking

We do not sell or share personal information, and we do not use it for targeted advertising. We do not track you across other sites, so browser signals such as Global Privacy Control have nothing to switch off here.

Children

These pages are written for people running businesses. They are not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them.

Links to other sites

Each route page links to its sources, such as sba.gov, sec.gov or ecfr.gov. When you follow those links, the other site's privacy policy applies.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, state law may give you the right to know about, correct or delete personal information a business holds about you. Apart from any email you send us, we do not hold information that identifies you, so there is usually nothing to return. If you ask, we will reply within 45 days.

Contact

For any privacy question, email data@fundladder.uk. If you email us, we receive your email address and message and use them only to reply.

Changes

If we change what we collect, we will update this page first and show the date below.

Last updated: October 31, 2026.