Trust & Sourcing

How we source the numbers on every margin page

Every table under /margin carries a source name, a retrieval date, and a link. This page explains the rule we hold ourselves to, what stage our data is in today, and how that changes as it improves.

Where we are today: Public-Data Mode

Agentis is building a proprietary database of order-level ecommerce cost data — carrier surcharges, payment fees, chargeback outcomes, and return economics, tied to real transactions rather than published rate cards. That dataset is not available yet. Every margin page published before it ships is built entirely from verified public sources: carrier rate cards, payment processor fee schedules, platform fee schedules, published chargeback fee tables, and documented discount mathematics.

Where a page shows a number no single source publishes, it is because we combined two or more public sources into one calculation — never because we estimated, rounded to a nicer figure, or filled a gap with a guess. Where a figure is vendor-reported rather than published by the primary party (a payment network, a carrier, a platform), the page says so explicitly next to the number.

We will never describe public-source data as “scan data,” “order-level data,” or a “proprietary benchmark.” That language is reserved for numbers actually derived from the Agentis dataset, once it exists.

What each table shows you

Source name — the specific document or page the figure came from (e.g. “Shopify Help Center — Chargebacks and inquiries”), not just a company name.
Retrieval date — when we pulled the figure, shown separately from the page's last-updated date, since a page can be reviewed without every underlying figure changing.
Link — a direct link to the source, so you can verify the figure yourself rather than take our word for it.
Basis — every table is labeled “public” (built from published sources, current state) or “proprietary” (built from the Agentis dataset, once that exists for a given table).

Update cadence

Public-source figures (carrier rate cards, processor fee schedules, platform fee tables) are re-pulled quarterly, or immediately when we learn a source has changed. Each page's “last updated” stamp reflects the date its underlying data was actually refreshed, never the date the page code shipped — a page that hasn't needed a data change in six months will still show the date its numbers were last confirmed current.

Every data change is logged. When a table's source, figures, or basis change, the page records what changed and when, so a number you cited last quarter stays traceable even after it's updated.

What changes when the Agentis dataset ships

As the Agentis order-level dataset becomes available for a given cost component, the tables built on public sources upgrade in place — same URL, same page, a proprietary table added or a public one replaced, the basis label updated from “public” to “proprietary,” and a changelog entry recording the change. Topics that require order-level data and currently have no public-data answer — like return-fraud cost by category — open only once that data exists to answer them honestly.

We're not waiting on that dataset to publish useful pages today, and we won't let public-source pages pretend to be something they're not while we build it.