How we review

We want our reviews to be useful the day a tool drops and a year later. That means being clear about what's fact, what's opinion, and where every claim comes from. Here's exactly how we work.

1. Two layers, never mixed

Every review separates two things:

• The factual layer — pricing, specs, capabilities, platform support, license. These are not our opinions. We source each one to the vendor's own site, the provider's API, official documentation, or a primary repository, and we record the date we verified it.
• The editorial layer — our verdict, our score, our pros and cons, our "is this worth it" take. This is our judgment, and we label it as such.

If a claim is a fact, you can click through to its source. If it's an opinion, we own it.

2. We source the facts, we don't invent them

For models, we read the provider API and the project's own repository, paper, and hosting page — not our memory of a press release. For tools, we read the official site, docs, and pricing page, and where we can, we try the product. When a vendor's own pages disagree (it happens — pricing pages and FAQs drift apart), we say so and cite both rather than picking a number and pretending it's settled.

If we can't verify something, it doesn't go in the review.

3. Scores are earned by hands-on testing — otherwise it's a "first look"

We only put a number on a review when we've actually used the thing — run the model, installed the tool — and we record what we did and when. When a review is a number out of 10, it reflects how good the thing is for the people who'd actually use it, weighing capability, value, ease of use, and how it stacks up against the current field — not a checkbox tally.

When we haven't gone hands-on yet, we don't invent a number. We publish a clearly labeled first look: an honest read from the documentation, the provider API, and the official samples, with a verdict and pros and cons — but no score pretending to be a hands-on rating. A fabricated number helps no one, so we'd rather tell you it's a first look.

Either way, our take is about what you actually need to decide: is this worth your time, who is it for, and what's the catch. A high score (or a positive first look) is not an endorsement to buy — read the verdict and the cons. Reviews change as we test more and as the field moves; when they do, we update the review and the verification date.

4. Freshness, honestly labeled

We tag each review with how fresh it is. A genuinely new release gets a "just dropped" badge; an older but still-relevant tool is marked as an evergreen review. We won't dress up a two-year-old model as today's news.

5. Independence

Our verdicts are ours. A vendor being popular, well-funded, or friendly doesn't move the score — the facts and the experience do.