Westside Lending is a free online service that helps people shopping for small personal loans send one request to a network of lenders and lending partners. We are not a lender. Our job is to make the search for a $500 to $5,000 personal loan clearer, faster and easier to understand before anyone signs anything.
Our mission
Westside Lending exists to make small-dollar personal loan shopping clearer for everyday borrowers. Too many people take the first offer they see because comparing lenders feels confusing, slow or stressful.
A borrower facing a $1,200 car repair or a surprise medical bill rarely has a free afternoon to fill out five separate applications. We built a single request form that reaches multiple lenders at once, and we pair it with plain-English guides that explain APR, fees, terms and credit checks. The goal is simple: help you understand an offer well enough to accept it or walk away with confidence.
What Westside Lending is (and is not)
Westside Lending is a free connector service, not a lender. We pass your loan request to lenders and lending partners in our network, and those companies decide whether to make you an offer.
- We do: collect one loan request, share it with participating lenders, and publish educational content about personal loans.
- We do not: make credit decisions, set interest rates or fees, fund loans, or collect payments.
- You decide: there is no cost to submit a request and no obligation to accept any offer you receive.
Every rate, fee, repayment term and approval decision comes from the lender you choose. Before you accept, you review the lender's own loan agreement on its website. You can read the full details of our business model on our advertiser and lending disclosure page.
How the team works
The Westside Lending team splits its work between running the request platform, supporting borrowers, and writing the guides you read on this site.
Our operations staff keep the request form working, watch for errors, and review which lenders participate in the network. Our support advisors answer questions by phone and email about how the service works and what happens after a request is sent. Our editorial team researches and writes the educational content, from loan-amount pages to articles about debt consolidation and bad credit. If you want the step-by-step version of what happens to a request, see how it works.
People who search for west side lending or west side lend options often land on our guides before they ever fill out a form. We treat that content as a resource in its own right, written to be useful whether or not you submit a request.
Our editorial team
Three editors write and review the guides on this site, and each article is checked for accuracy and plain language before it is published.
- Maren Ostrowski, Senior Consumer Credit Writer — spent nine years as a loan servicing analyst at a regional credit union and now writes about credit scores, debt consolidation and borrowing with fair or poor credit.
- Calvin Rourke-Delgado, Auto and Household Costs Editor — a former repair-shop service advisor who covers surprise costs such as car repairs, funeral arrangements and urgent household bills.
- Tessa Lindqvist-Hale, Personal Finance Writer — a former bank branch operations lead who writes the foundational personal loan explainers, comparison guides and family travel budgeting articles.
Our editors do not accept payment from lenders to write about them, and lender compensation does not decide what our guides say.
What we value
Westside Lending is built on two commitments: plain-language disclosures and zero pressure to borrow.
- Plain-language disclosures. We explain APR ranges, representative examples and our own compensation in words most people can follow without a dictionary.
- No pressure. We never push you to accept an offer. Borrowing is a personal decision, and sometimes the right decision is not to borrow at all.
- Honest expectations. Approval, rates and funding speed depend on each lender and on your situation. We do not promise outcomes we cannot control.
- Respect for your data. We share your information only as described in our privacy policy.
Contact Westside Lending
You can reach the Westside Lending team by email, phone or mail, Monday through Friday, 8am to 6pm Eastern.
- Email: [email protected]
- Phone: (888) 245-7685
- Mailing address: 6300 Poplar Drive, Suite 307, Charleston, WV 25301
For more ways to get help, visit our contact page.