About CrowdIndex

Who we are

CrowdIndex is an independent editorial team based in the European Union. We review peer-to-peer (P2P) investment platforms operating in Europe — the EU, Switzerland, and the UK — and we publish a ranked list of the 19 platforms we currently cover, together with full reviews of each.

We are not affiliated with any of the platforms we review. We do not operate a P2P platform of our own. We are not a regulated investment adviser, and nothing on this site is investment advice — see our terms of use and the disclaimer on every review.

What we are is a small editorial team applying the methodology that financial review publishers like NerdWallet (in the US) and Investopedia (globally) apply to mainstream financial products — sourced research, comparison tables, transparent methodology — to a European P2P sector where, until now, most of the available reviews have been written by single bloggers paid through affiliate commissions, or by the platforms themselves.

Our mission

European retail investors who want to understand P2P lending currently navigate a market with three problems:

Most reviews are paid. The single largest English-language P2P review site is operated by an affiliate marketer with a 9-year-old domain who has rarely published a negative platform review. The German-language space is dominated by a small handful of YouTube channels that are paid review-by-review. The pattern repeats in Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese.
Mainstream financial press does not cover the sector. Bloomberg, Reuters, the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and the big national business desks publish almost no original reporting on EU P2P. The handful of tier-1 stories that exist (Fortune’s profile of InRento’s CEO, a few EC Press Corner releases on InvestEU-backed platforms) cover individual platforms, not the sector.
Platforms grade their own homework. Platform-published default rates, recovery statistics, and yield figures are not externally audited. The investor protection schemes that do exist (MiFID II investor compensation, ECSP rules) cover platform-side failures but not investor judgement.

The investor needs a third option — independent editorial review, sourced to primary documents, with a transparent methodology and an explicit position on each platform.

That third option is what CrowdIndex is trying to be.

What we cover

We currently review 19 European P2P investment platforms, ranked on our home page and reviewed individually:

Maclear · Mintos · PeerBerry · InRento · Robocash · Nectaro · Capitalia · Indemo · Crowdpear · EstateGuru · Profitus · InSoil · Lendermarket · Twino · Hive5 · Scramble · Debitum · Reinvest24 · Loanch

Each platform review is built from a research dossier of 33 to 57 sources — regulators, audits, court filings, investigative journalism, platform disclosures, and community sentiment. The reviews follow a consistent 10-section structure (Hero, At a Glance, 60-second explainer, Strengths, Things to Watch, How It Works, Who It’s For, Compared to Alternatives, FAQ, Bottom Line) so you can compare any two platforms directly without re-learning the layout.

Alongside the platform reviews we publish topical guides: how P2P lending works, how to evaluate platform risk, how to build a diversified P2P portfolio, what each EU regulation actually protects you from. These are linked from every platform review where they are relevant. See our methodology for the editorial framework that ties it all together.

Editorial team

CrowdIndex is built and edited by a team of 9 specialists with backgrounds in fintech analysis, financial journalism, regulatory advisory, and quantitative research. Our coverage is led by James Thornton (CEO & Founder, ex-Bloomberg / ex-NerdWallet) and Daniel Brenner (Senior Editor, ex-Handelsblatt / ex-N26), with four analysts owning specific dimensions — regulation, real estate, quantitative methodology, and tax — plus a localization editor and operations coordinator handling our six-language editorial calendar.

For full team bios, credentials, and current openings, see our team page.

Our publication policy:

Individual author bios for every reviewer and editor (on the team page)
Conflict-of-interest disclosures for any reviewer with prior employment at a covered platform — disclosed on the affected review page
Reviews scoring above 9.0 require senior-editor + CEO joint sign-off

If you are a journalist or researcher who would want to write for CrowdIndex, see our team page for current openings or contact us.

Editorial independence

We accept affiliate commissions when readers sign up to platforms via links on our site. This is how we fund the research. Our editorial position is:

Ranking is editorial, not commercial. Our methodology, dimensions, and scoring framework are set before any affiliate-revenue negotiation with any platform. See our full methodology.
We document the framework publicly. You can read the criteria, the scoring scale, and the reasoning. You can challenge any specific score.
We will publicly correct mistakes. When a verified factual error reaches us, we update the affected page within 7 business days and add a “corrected on [date]” note. For corrections that change scoring, we publish a note explaining what changed.

Read our full affiliate disclosure for how the commercial side of the site works.

Our research process

For every platform we cover, we build a research dossier following a 23-block template covering:

Identity — legal entity, ownership structure, founders, cap table
Regulation — licence type, regulator, licence number, AML supervision
Track record — cumulative volume, current AUM, default history, recovery statistics
Financials — audited annual reports, profitability, equity position
Operations — team size, key personnel turnover, technical infrastructure
Press — independent coverage tier (tier-1 mainstream / industry / blog / press release / regulatory alert)
Community sentiment — Trustpilot, Reddit, Mustachian Post, Rankia, P2P Independent Forum
Affiliate and partnership signals — which review sites recommend, on what commercial terms (where disclosed)
Risk signals — investigative coverage, regulator warnings, default disclosures, audit qualifications

Each block is sourced to specific documents — between 33 and 57 sources per dossier, all numbered and retrievable. Where we cannot verify a piece of marketing claim, the dossier records the gap explicitly. The platform review that appears on the site is a sanitised, reader-facing condensation of that dossier — the score is editorial judgement applied to documented evidence.

What we do not do

To be clear about scope:

We do not operate a P2P platform. CrowdIndex is purely an editorial review service.
We do not provide investment advice. Nothing on this site constitutes a personal recommendation to invest. Investment decisions are your own; consult a licensed financial adviser for advice on your specific situation.
We do not publish paid placements that hide affiliate relationships. Every page on the site that contains affiliate links discloses the relationship. Sponsored content (if we ever publish it) would be clearly labelled as sponsored.
We do not run scam-detection sites or “shadow” anti-review sites. Some EU P2P-adjacent operators run anti-platform domains used for reputation pressure. We do not operate any such domain.
We do not accept payment to remove or modify reviews. If a platform requests a correction, we evaluate the evidence on the merits — paid or unpaid does not factor into the decision.

How we make money

Affiliate commissions. When you click a link from a platform review to the platform’s signup page and you complete a registration that results in qualifying activity (typically a first deposit), the platform pays us a commission. Commission size varies by platform — from approximately €10 to €100 per qualifying signup — and is disclosed in aggregate on our disclosure page.

We do not run display advertising. We do not sell email subscriber data. We do not run sponsored email campaigns where the sponsor controls the editorial. We do not charge readers for access to reviews.

If we add additional revenue sources later (paid newsletter, premium research, API access), we will disclose them on this page.

Reach out about errors

If you have found a factual error on the site, please tell us.

Email: editorial@crowdindex.org
Subject: start with “FACT CORRECTION:” and the platform name
Response time: we aim to respond within 7 business days of receiving verifiable evidence
Escalation: if a correction request is refused and you believe the refusal is wrong, you can escalate by replying — every escalation reaches the senior editorial reviewer

We take corrections seriously. The site is more useful to readers if it is correct. Help us keep it correct.

For general questions, partnership enquiries, or press contacts, see our contact page.