How we work

The five steps

1. We read the company’s own website.
2. We write down each fact in the same format, with a link and a date.
3. We build the page from those facts only.
4. Our code checks the page. If a check fails, the site does not go live.
5. We check the facts again over time, and we fix mistakes in public.

1. Read the company’s website

We start on the company’s own website. We read its product pages, price page, help pages and terms. We do not start from top-ten lists, review sites or AI summaries. Those often copy each other, and they are often out of date. Read how we research.

2. Write it down the same way

Each fact goes into our data in the same format. That is what lets you line up two products side by side. Each fact has three parts:

• what we found;
• the page we found it on;
• the date we read it.

Each fact also gets a mark that shows how sure we are. For example, “the company says so, but we could not check it” is a different mark from “we checked it”. See what each mark means.

3. Build the page from the facts

A computer builds most pages from our data. That way, every page uses the same rules. No sentence on a product page may say something our data does not hold.

Some pages are never built. If the data has nothing useful to say, we turn the page down. For example, we don’t build a comparison when the two products show no real difference.

We also hold finished pages back. We are starting with review pages for 50 tools. Comparisons and best lists are still drafts. We will release them a few at a time, so we can check each one with care.

4. Check the page before it goes live

Each time we build the site, our code reads every page. It stops the build if it finds a problem, such as:

• a price with no date or no source;
• a star rating or a quality score, when no product has earned one yet;
• a page in our sitemap that search engines are told not to list;
• a page that is too hard to read. We aim for words a 12-year-old knows.

A person then reads the pages that changed before they go live.

5. Keep it fresh and fix mistakes

Prices and features change. Every fact shows the date we read it. After 90 days, a page drops out of the list we give search engines until we check it again. After 180 days, the page shows a warning.

Anyone can tell us about a mistake, even a company we list. We check the fact again on the company’s own page. If we were wrong, we fix it and log the fix in public. See the corrections log.

Why we go slowly

We could publish thousands of pages. But a page with a wrong price does more harm than no page at all. So we publish fewer pages and check each one. We would rather say “we don’t know yet” than guess.

Read the rest of our rules: how we write, how we make money and how we keep reviews fair.