Affiliate Disclosure

Last reviewed: August 2026

PlanRio is free to read and reader-supported. Some links on the site are affiliate links: if you book a tour, hotel, eSIM or travel insurance through one of them, the partner pays us a small commission at no extra cost to you. Those commissions never change what we recommend — we suggest what we'd tell a friend to book, and say so plainly when something isn't worth it.

How PlanRio is funded

We don't sell tours, run hotels or take payment to feature anyone. The site is paid for by affiliate commissions and a small amount of advertising. Every affiliate link — GetYourGuide activities, Booking.com stays, eSIMs, insurance — is routed through a single Travelpayouts account, the network we use to manage those partnerships. Consolidating everything through one account keeps the tracking honest and consistent, and means the same disclosure applies everywhere on the site.

Commissions never influence our recommendations

This is the line that matters. We decide what to recommend first — based on real, on-the-ground experience of Rio — and only then look for an affiliate link to that specific thing. We never pick a worse tour because it pays more, and we never invent a link where a good one doesn't exist: when there's no honest affiliate product for a page, we ship it with no booking button rather than send you somewhere generic.

If a famous attraction is overpriced, a tour is a tourist trap, or you'd be better off doing something yourself for free, we tell you — even though saying so costs us the commission. That's the whole point of an independent guide.

Our commitment on exploitative tours

Some experiences we will not monetise on principle. We actively warn readers away from exploitative "human safari" favela jeep tours and any operator that treats a living community as a spectacle. On pages about favelas we recommend only community-run, walking, locally-guided visits — and where we can't verify a tour is ethical, we run the page with no tour link at all and explain why. No commission is worth recommending something we wouldn't do ourselves. You can read the full policy in our editorial standards.

How to spot an affiliate link

Affiliate links open in a new tab and carry a rel="nofollow sponsored" attribute, and every page that uses one shows a short "we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you" note. Ordinary editorial links — to official attraction sites, maps, transport operators and news sources — are not affiliate links and earn us nothing.

How to support PlanRio

The simplest way to support the site is to book through our links when one points to something you were already going to buy — there's no cost to you and it keeps the guides free and updated. You're never obliged to, and choosing not to changes nothing about the advice you get.

See also our editorial standards, privacy policy, terms of use and about page. Questions? hello@planrio.com.