Monetization

How Kawthar is funded

Kawthar costs real money to run — servers, databases and the services that keep prayer times accurate. That cost is carried by businesses that benefit commercially from the platform, never by the community that uses it.

What the community never pays for

Being part of Kawthar

Community members never pay to join, browse, or take part. There is no membership fee and there never will be.

Religious content

Prayer times, masjid information, scholar and education content are free permanently. We will not put worship behind a payment.

Free events

Attending a free community event costs nothing through us.

Being listed

Every halal business gets a complete directory listing and can sell, for free. Paying buys visibility — never the right to exist here.

What businesses pay for

A share of marketplace sales

When a business makes a sale through Kawthar, we take a percentage of that sale. It is deducted from the business’s payout rather than added on top of what the buyer pays — a buyer’s total is the items plus tax and shipping, nothing else. It applies to sales settled through our card processing; a business that settles through its own payment account keeps the whole sale.

An optional featured tier

Businesses will be able to pay a flat monthly amount to be featured in the directory and pin their deals. That tier is not open yet — and when it opens, the free listing stays complete either way.

Founding sponsorships

A small number of halal businesses will be able to sponsor the platform. No business sponsors Kawthar yet. When one does, the sponsorship will be clearly labelled wherever it appears, and every sponsor is approved by hand.

What we refuse to do

No ad networks. Nothing on Kawthar is sold by an automated advertising marketplace.
No advertising trackers and no behavioural ad targeting — nothing here is wired to an ad network, and we do not follow you around the internet. We do measure how the site is used, with a privacy-configured analytics tool: session recording is switched off, and signed-out visitors get no stored profile.
Selling your personal data is not one of the ways Kawthar makes money — the revenue sources listed above are the complete list. Some guide pages carry a partner’s Amazon affiliate links, labelled on those pages; that commission goes to the partner, not to Kawthar.
No donation appeals for Kawthar itself. We do not ask members for money to keep the lights on — the donation links on this site raise money for local masjids, not for us.
No pay-to-rank religious content. Sponsorship never affects prayer times, masjid data, or scholar content.

Sponsored placements are always labelled as sponsored, and every sponsor is approved by a person before appearing. If you ever see something on Kawthar that looks like it breaks one of these promises, tell us.