How we check the facts

Where the facts come from

First choice is Starlink’s own words: its Referral Program Terms, Terms of Service, help-center articles, starlink.com’s pages and the price lists its order pages load. We read those texts themselves, not someone’s summary of them. Each fact is stored once, with its source, Starlink’s exact words where there are some, and the date we read it, and every page and tool reads from that one store, so a fix in one place fixes it everywhere. Press reports fill a gap only where Starlink is silent, and they’re labeled.

Last full check: Nov 3, 2026. We read 77 Starlink texts and 7 press reports; every one is listed below with the date we read it.

What the labels mean

Starlink's own text (no tag; its “source” link goes to the page we read)

Read from Starlink's own help-center, legal-document or order-page text (the JSON the starlink.com pages load) on the date shown.

Our reading (“(our reading)” after the sentence, or an “Our reading” tag)

Not stated by Starlink in so many words. Our plain reading of Starlink's own text or pages, labeled as such.

Our math from Starlink’s price (no tag; the price it starts from links its source)

Worked out by us from Starlink’s own prices (for example, how much of the credit is left after one bill). The inputs are dated; the arithmetic is ours.

Press report (a “press report” tag)

Reported by press, with that source's date. Labeled wherever it appears.

Reported (a “Reported” tag)

What customers say in public, for example on Reddit: paraphrased, without usernames, with its date. It shows what people run into; it never stands in for Starlink’s rules.

Unverified (an “unverified” tag)

No source states it, or sources conflict. Never shown as a number or a promise.

How often we re-check

• Every week: Starlink’s list of US legal documents, with the fingerprints of the Referral Program Terms and the referral help article. Through Dec 28, 2026, also every Monday: the two US price lists Starlink’s order pages load before you enter an address, for Residential and Roam, so a new or vanished price level shows up within days.
• At least every 30 days: every current fact. A script re-reads Starlink’s pages, signed out, with no referral link and no address, re-matches every quoted sentence word for word, and compares fingerprints. Our tests fail when a current fact hasn’t been re-read for 30 days.
• When Starlink changes something: we update the fact, keep the old wording as dated history, and post a news item when the change touches the reward or your first bills.

Fingerprints. For 65 of Starlink’s texts we keep a fingerprint: a SHA-256 hash of the text with its spacing normalized. Starlink can edit a help article without changing its date. When a fingerprint changes, every fact from that text that we can’t re-match word for word is listed for a re-read by hand.

Prices

Starlink’s Residential prices depend on the service address. We show every monthly level Starlink’s own price data has shown, each with where and when we saw it. A level we haven’t seen again for 30 days stays listed as history, with its date; we never delete one. No page or tool presents one price as “the” price, and no total includes tax unless it says so. Every level we’ve seen.

When Starlink removes a help article

We don’t quietly drop it. Starlink has removed its older referral help articles (“How do I use a referral link?” and “Additional FAQs - Billing”); both returned “not found” on Nov 2, 2026, and the live article is “Does Starlink have a referral program?”^[1]. We keep what each one said, quoted from an archived copy with its date, next to what Starlink says now, on the rules page and in a data file, so you can see why some answers online still repeat it.

Screenshots, illustrations and examples

• Screenshots of starlink.com are real, cropped and dated in their captions. The order-page ones were taken on Oct 30, 2026, in an automated browser session that used a public address (the Texas State Capitol in Austin), mostly through the site owner’s referral link, signed out, and stopped before Checkout: no order was placed. We won’t run an automated session with a referral link again. When Starlink’s wording changes, the site owner re-takes them by hand.
• Illustrations of bills, dates and statements are drawn from Starlink’s own prices, before taxes, and labeled as illustrations. We never draw a copy of a Starlink page or something that looks like an invoice; your own invoice is the one that counts.
• Examples are hypothetical and labeled. When one uses a price, it’s one of Starlink’s, with its source.
• Photos come from photographers who license them for reuse, credited next to each photo and on the about page.

How pages and posts are written and reviewed

Drafting. Pages and posts are drafted with AI help. A draft can’t make up a rule, price or date: those come from the fact store, and the build stops at a fact it doesn’t know.

Posts. Before a post goes live, the site owner checks it against Starlink’s current pages, including its title, description, structured data and image descriptions, and records the date as the post’s “reviewed” date. The site publishes a post only once that date is set and the post’s scheduled date has come, so no post goes live without that review.

Pages. Pages read every fact from the same store, so a re-checked fact changes every page that shows it at the next build. Automated tests check the built pages for wording we never use, for referral links outside their marked places, for facts without a source, and for dates and titles that break our rules.

What counts as news

A news item is a dated record of one change Starlink made that touches the referral reward or your first bills. Each one says what changed, when, who it affects, what to do now and what stays the same, and cites Starlink’s own text first. News items carry no referral link.

Corrections

When something here is wrong or out of date, we fix it, date the change and log it in the corrections log, with what it said before. We don’t quietly edit a rule, price or date and pretend it was always right.

Our data

The facts behind the main tables are public files, built from the same store as the pages:

• Starlink Residential price levels and what the credit covers (CSV) (checked Nov 3, 2026)
• Starlink Residential price levels and what the credit covers (JSON) (checked Nov 3, 2026)
• Starlink referral rules: Terms and help center side by side (CSV) (checked Nov 3, 2026)
• Removed Starlink help articles and what Starlink says now (CSV) (checked Nov 3, 2026)

Every source we read