Method
How we score a deal
Every deal on this site gets a score out of 100. The number is not the point — the reason behind it is. Here is exactly what goes in.
Four inputs, four weights
They add up to 100. Two measure the price, two measure how much we trust it.
01
Discount vs typical street price
We keep a reference price for each item — what it actually sells for on a normal day, not a made-up list price. The further below that a deal sits, the higher this part scores. It carries the most weight because “is this cheap for this thing?” is the first question worth answering.
Weight
33
02
Discount vs the 90-day low
Where we have 90-day price history, we check the low: if today's price matches or beats the lowest we have recorded, it scores full marks; if it sits well above, this part scores low — a deal that has been cheaper recently is not the best time to buy. Where we don't have that history yet — a first-tracked item — the component is withheld and the remaining weights renormalized, and the deal says so rather than inventing a low.
Weight
22
03
Merchant and price confidence
Not every price source is equally solid. A big-box listing with stock and a clear return policy is worth more than a marketplace listing from a seller we have never seen. We rate each source high, medium, or low, and it moves the score.
Weight
27
04
How recently we checked
A price we verified an hour ago is worth more than one from last week. Prices move, and a deal is only as good as the check behind it. Old checks lose points, and we say so on the deal.
Weight
18
What the number means
78–100
Strong
A genuinely good price, from a source we trust, checked recently. If you need the item, this is the moment.
58–77
Fair
A real discount with something holding it back — maybe it has been cheaper, or the source is thinner. Worth a look.
0–57
Mild
Discounted, but not by much, or not from a source we would vouch for. Noted, not recommended.
A worked example
This is a real deal from the archive, scored by the same function you see on every deal page — the inputs below are its actual values, not a mock-up.
19135 · Tiny Land(R) Play Kitchen Accessories - Children's Coffee Maker: Wooden Kids Play Coffee Maker Set
Inputs
- Price today
- $29.99
- Typical price
- $49.99
- 90-day low
- Not enough history yet — component withheld
- Source confidence
- high
Those four values go into the scorer, which returns the score and the four reasons you see on the deal itself.
What we check before anything posts
A deal does not go up because it is discounted. It goes up because it survived this checklist — the same list, every day, in this order.
01
The merchant's own page, fetched where we can.
We read the product page the buy button lives on. When a site blocks the fetch, we say the figure came from a captured search result rather than pretending we browsed it — and that shows up in the confidence rating, not in silence.
02
Price and reference agree on the same page.
The price we post and the price we compare it to must both come from the item we checked — a sale price against a reference price that lives somewhere else is not a deal we can stand behind.
03
The buy path is live at check time.
In stock, add-to-cart present, at the moment we looked. We record when we looked — every deal carries its check time, and stale checks lose score until someone looks again.
04
The source gets a confidence rating.
High, medium, or low — based on who is selling it, how the price is anchored, and what we know about the merchant (below). The rating is part of the score, not a footnote.
How we judge merchants
Before a merchant's price can score highly, the merchant gets checked. The standard is the same for everyone, and it looks at three things:
- Complaint record — Better Business Bureau standing and what the unresolved complaints are actually about (returns that stall, orders that never ship).
- Customer review base — Trustpilot-style aggregate scores, weighted by volume; a big base at “average” reads differently from a small base at “great.”
- Enforcement history — regulator recalls, consumer-protection actions, or class actions. These are the strongest signal we look at, and they cut against a merchant regardless of ratings.
The lookup lands in one of three verdicts. Reliablemerchants' prices carry full confidence weight.Mixed ones carry a moderate cap with the complaint themes recorded. Cautionones are capped low and flagged — a cheap price from a merchant we do not trust is not a deal. The confidence rating on each deal reflects where its merchant landed; we do not publish the full dossiers, but the rating on the deal never hides them.
One honest limit: we have checked the merchants we have deals from. A merchant appearing here for the first time starts at medium confidence on the strength of its own page alone — not on a verdict we have not had the track record to make yet.
What we will not do
- We will not make up a reference price to make a discount look bigger.
- We will not show a countdown timer to hurry you into a decision.
- We will not list something as a deal if we cannot check it.
- We will not let a commission change a score. Paid links are marked.