The deal behind the free calculator embed
You get a calculator that works, loads in about 4 KB, and keeps a reader on your page instead of sending them off to a search result. We get one credit link underneath it. That is the whole arrangement. Both halves deserve a straight explanation, so here they are, the free part and the condition.
The credit link has to sit outside the frame. It is a requirement, and we would rather explain it than just insist on it. A link placed inside our own iframe is our page linking to our page. It credits nobody, and a search engine reading your article never sees it, because what is inside a frame belongs to the framed document and not to yours. Move the same link four lines down, into your HTML, and it becomes what a citation is everywhere else: your page naming where something came from. That difference is the reason the program exists. Pretending otherwise would insult anyone who has looked at an iframe before.
What runs inside the embedded frame
The calculator, and nothing else. These figures were measured on the HTML we actually serve. They are not goals:
| What a visitor's browser loads | Present in the frame |
|---|---|
| Cookies | None |
| Analytics or tracking | None |
| Advertising | None |
| Third-party requests | None |
| External scripts | None |
| Total transferred | About 4 KB |
The cookie row has a practical payoff. Embedding something that sets no cookies creates no consent obligation for a page that did not already have one, so this widget will not drag a cookie banner onto an otherwise simple page. Many embeddable calculators cannot say that, because whatever the frame loads alongside the free tool is what pays for it.
The advertising row gets the same candor. The full tool pages do carry advertising, and that is how the network is funded. The frames carry none. A widget that shows up on someone else's article with our ads in it would be renting their audience without asking, and nobody should call that a gift.
What the calculator frame does not include
Nineteen of the twenty-two frames contain the whole tool. Three stop earlier on purpose. Better to list them here than to let a host find the boundary after publishing:
| Tool | The frame returns | Kept on the full page |
|---|---|---|
| Hard Money Loan | Monthly interest, points at closing, balloon at payoff | Effective APR, LTC and ARV constraints, carry and sale costs |
| Margin and Markup | Margin, markup, and the conversion between them | Breakeven pricing against fixed cost and volume |
| Severance Pay | Weeks owed and gross total | Gross-up for a target net figure after withholding |
Each of those three frames says so in its own footer. The visitor hears it from the widget and does not have to notice something missing on their own.
Choosing the right calculator for the page it lands on
Pick the calculator that answers the question your article already raised. That is when an embed earns its space. A roofing article that covers tear-off and disposal is a natural home for the roofing cost frame, and a poor one for the margin frame, even though both deal with money. What you gain: a reader who would have opened a new tab to run the number stays on your page to run it, and readers who stay are the ones who reach the end.
Every frame is 430 pixels tall, a height picked so the inputs and the result show
together on a phone without scrolling. Width is fluid. The snippet marks the frame
loading="lazy", so a calculator placed below the fold costs nothing until
the reader scrolls down to it.
Embed conditions, in full
There is one. Keep the credit link in your page's HTML, visible, and pointing at the tool. You can reword the sentence around it, restyle it to match your typography, and put it above the frame instead of below.
You may not strip the link, mark it rel="nofollow" or
rel="sponsored", hide it with CSS, or present the calculator as your own
work. Nothing technical enforces any of that, and that is on purpose. A frame that
phoned home to check whether it was being credited would break the promise in the table
above. The arrangement assumes that a site owner who took a free tool will leave a line
of credit under it, an assumption that has held up well everywhere else on the web.
If something breaks
Report it: a frame that stops rendering, a calculation you think is wrong, a result that disagrees with your own spreadsheet. The arithmetic disagreement is the report we most want to get. We published an audit of other people's calculators, and it would look bad to be precious about our own. The contact page reaches a person.
Frequently asked questions
Does embedding a calculator require an account, an API key, or approval?
No. The frame is a public URL. Paste the snippet and it works. There is nothing to sign up for, no key to rotate and no request waiting for approval. That also means nothing on your end can be switched off unless you edit the page yourself.
What does the frame load on the visitor's browser?
The calculator and nothing else. Measured on the served HTML: no cookies, no analytics, no advertising, no third-party requests and no external scripts. A frame weighs roughly 4 KB. Since it sets no cookies, embedding it adds no consent obligation to a page that did not already have one.
Why does the attribution link sit outside the iframe rather than inside it?
A link inside our own frame is our page linking to itself. It credits nobody, and a search engine reading your page never sees it. Outside the frame, it is your page citing a source, which is what a citation is. So the deal is simple: you get a working calculator, we get a citation someone can read.
Can the calculator be modified, restyled, or hosted on our own servers?
The frame renders as served and cannot be restyled from the host page. That comes from browser origin rules, not from a policy of ours. The border and corner radius in the snippet are yours to change, because they apply to the iframe element on your page. Self-hosting is not offered. The calculations get corrected over time, and a copied version would stop receiving those fixes while still carrying our name.
Does the frame contain the whole tool?
For most of the twenty-two, yes. Three stop at the core calculation on purpose and keep the deeper analysis on the full page. The hard money frame returns monthly interest, points and balloon, without effective APR. The margin frame leaves out breakeven pricing. The severance frame leaves out gross-up. Each of those frames says so on the frame itself, so the visitor does not have to discover the gap.
What happens if the tool is renamed or retired?
The frame URL is the tool's canonical path, and we treat it as a public interface. If a tool is ever retired, the path will redirect instead of returning a 404. An embed that breaks silently on someone else's page hurts them more than it hurts us.