Methodology

Prices and specifications

Prices, plan limits and specifications come from each vendor’s own pages. Every figure shows the date an editor last checked it and a link to the source. Prices are re-checked at least every 90 days and specifications every 180 days; anything older is marked “Needs re-check” rather than hidden. We watch the source pages automatically and open a review task when one changes; some vendor sites block automated readers, and for those a person re-reads the page.

Billing basis: monthly and annual prices are never mixed

Most vendors publish two prices for the same plan: one for month-to-month billing and a lower one for annual billing, which commits you for twelve months and is shown per month. We store and show both when the vendor publishes both, label each with its basis, and never convert one into the other or compare an annual price with a monthly one. If a vendor publishes only one basis, we show only that one and say what it commits you to.

Currencies

Prices stay in the currency the vendor shows. We do not convert currencies and we do not rank products across currencies.

Four kinds of statements

• Vendor data — prices and specs from official pages, shown with a verified date and source.
• Cited facts — statements backed by a source listed at the end of the article.
• Our own tests — only when an author actually used the product; the test dates and plan are shown. A calculation is not a test.
• Editorial opinion — our judgement, labelled as such.

Calculators

Our automation cost calculator counts a workflow the way each product counts it (credits, executions, tasks), finds the smallest published plan that covers the count, and shows every step of the arithmetic. It does not equate the three units, does not guess prices a vendor has not published (such as overage rates), does not extrapolate beyond the published sizes, and does not name a winner. Figures you enter yourself, such as the cost of running software on your own server, are kept apart from vendor prices and labelled as your assumptions.

Before anything is published

An editor confirms the facts of the exact version being published: a named person, or an authorised AI editorial agent under the publisher’s time-limited delegation. Our records keep the two apart, and an agent’s check of text it prepared itself is a self-check, not independent review. Automated checks block publication when data is missing, stale or unsourced, when text drafted with AI assistance has not been reviewed, or when an article claims testing that has no test record. These checks catch common mistakes; they do not prove that a statement is true.