Editorial policy

Last updated

This page states the rules we hold ourselves to. It is deliberately specific enough to be checkable.

Independence

Rankings are not for sale. We do not accept payment for inclusion, for a higher position, for a better score, for a "featured" slot, or for the removal of a drawback. There is no rate card, because there is nothing to buy.

Commercial relationships do not touch scoring. Whether a tool has an affiliate programme is invisible to the scoring process. Tools with no affiliate programme are listed, scored, and recommended on the same terms as tools that do. Several tools recommended as "best for" picks pay us nothing.

Vendors get no pre-publication approval. Companies do not review, approve, or preview their pages before publication. We will correct factual errors on request; we will not soften a sourced criticism because a vendor objects to it.

No reciprocal-link or guest-post trades. We do not swap links, sell placements inside articles, or publish vendor-supplied copy.

Sourcing rules

  1. Prices come from the vendor. The vendor's own pricing or plans page is the only acceptable source for a price or plan limit. Never another directory, never a press release, never a screenshot of unknown vintage.
  2. Every price has a date. Each tool page shows the month we last read the source. Unverifiable prices are recorded as not disclosed.
  3. Criticism is sourced. When we say users report a problem, we link where that report came from, a review platform thread, a public forum discussion, a vendor status page or changelog.
  4. Dead products stay, marked. When a tool shuts down we mark it deprecated with a dated note and point to alternatives instead of deleting the page, so people searching for it find out what happened.
  5. No copied text. Descriptions are written from primary sources, vendor docs, pricing pages, changelogs, APIs. We do not lift marketing copy or paraphrase competitors' listings.

Our use of AI

We use AI tooling in research and drafting, which would be an odd thing to hide on a site about AI tools. The limits we hold to:

  • No number reaches a page without being checked against a primary source. Model-recalled prices are treated as unverified until a human confirms them on the vendor's page.
  • No tool is listed unless its site and product were confirmed to exist and be reachable. "It sounds like a real product" is not evidence.
  • Judgements, scores, drawbacks, "best for" verdicts, are made and signed off by people.

Corrections

We publish a lot of numbers about products that change them often, so some of ours will be wrong. When a factual error is reported and confirmed, we fix it, re-stamp the verification date, and where the change is material to a ranking, we adjust the ranking too.

Report an error: corrections. Anything else: contact.