How we rank
A ranking nobody can inspect is a ranking nobody should trust. Here is the whole thing — the weights, the decay curve, the point values, and the parts that are deliberately worth nothing.
The directory
Category pages, search results, “alternatives to” pages and related-tools modules are all ordered by one number.
score = ( 0.40 × E + 0.25 × C + 0.20 × F + 0.15 × T ) × V
- E — Editorial · 40%
- The rating a human gave it, out of five, against a published rubric: 5.0 is best in its category, 4.0–4.5 strong, 3.0–3.5 does the job, 2.0–2.5 listed but not recommended. Below 2.0 we do not list it at all. This carries the most weight deliberately — it is the part a larger competitor cannot generate.
- C — Completeness · 25%
- One hundred points across eight checks, all of them things a vendor can fix themselves. The full table is below and the same checklist appears in the vendor dashboard with the points attached, because a ranking improvement you can earn by doing work is the only kind worth offering.
- F — Freshness · 20%
- Exponential decay from whichever is more recent: the day the vendor last shipped, or the day an editor last re-verified the listing. Floored at 0.05, so a dead listing sinks rather than disappearing and can be revived by a re-check.
- T — Click-through · 15%
- Outbound clicks divided by views over 90 days, measured against twice the median for that category, capped at 1.0. Below 100 views it is a flat 0.5 — see the FAQ for why that gate is not optional.
- V — Verified · ×1.05
- A listing claimed by its vendor, with the details confirmed in the last twelve months. Claiming is free and takes about two minutes. A claim from three years ago that nobody has confirmed since earns nothing, because the bonus is evidence the details are current, not a reward for having once clicked a button.
The completeness checklist, with its point values
| Check | Points |
|---|---|
| Logo, at least 256×256 | 10 |
| Three or more screenshots | 15 |
| Description of 150 words or more | 15 |
| Structured pricing — a model, and either a starting price or a free tier | 20 |
| A public pricing page that loads | 10 |
| Five or more features tagged | 10 |
| Three or more FAQ entries | 10 |
| A demo video | 10 |
| Total | 100 |
The freshness curve
| Since the last update or re-check | F |
|---|---|
| Today | 1.00 |
| 7 days | 0.97 |
| 30 days | 0.88 |
| 90 days | 0.69 |
| 180 days | 0.47 |
| 240 days | 0.37 |
| 365 days | 0.22 |
| 2 years or more | 0.05 |
Ties
Broken in this order, always, and never randomly: higher editorial rating, then more recent re-verification, then higher completeness, then earlier publication, then slug. A ranking has to be reproducible or we cannot answer a vendor who writes in to ask why they moved.
What is not ranked
- “New” — a plain list in the order tools were added.
- Editor's Picks — chosen by a person, not computed.
- Homepage Spotlight and category-top slots — paid, labelled, and outside the ranking entirely.
- Sponsored cards — labelled, and rendered without a rating at all, so the difference is visible rather than disclosed in small print.
What money buys
Review speed, a choice of which week you appear in, and labelled placement. That is the complete list. There is no code path from what a vendor paid to what a page is ordered by; a paid placement is a row in a separate table with an end date, and no scoring function reads it. When a Spotlight ends, the listing's position does not move, because the placement was never part of the position.
Review speed is measured in business hours, and business hours here mean Monday to Friday, 09:00–18:00 IST. A Friday afternoon submission on a 24-hour SLA is due Monday afternoon. Saying “24 hours” and meaning something else is the exact kind of small dishonesty this page exists to make impossible.
The score is public
You see the 0–5 editorial rating on a tool's page, and the composite ToolsPantry Score next to it where one has been worked out. The score is shown as the number the formula produces, so you can check it against the table above. It is never sold, and a tool with no score yet is shown without one rather than with a made-up number.
Common questions
- How does ToolsPantry rank tools?
- Every listing has a score out of 1.05, made of four parts: the editorial rating an editor gave it (40%), how complete the listing is (25%), how recently the product shipped or we re-verified it (20%), and how often people who see the listing click through to the vendor (15%). A listing claimed and confirmed by its vendor in the last twelve months is multiplied by 1.05. Payment is not one of the four parts and there is no fifth.
- Can you pay to rank higher on ToolsPantry?
- No. Paid placements exist — Spotlight, category-top and sponsored cards — and every one of them is labelled and sits outside the ranking rather than inside it. A placement is a row in a different table with an end date, and no scoring function reads that table. There is a test in the codebase that greps the scoring functions for any reference to a payment column, so this stays true rather than being remembered.
- Does paying speed up my review?
- Yes, and that is the only thing it does to your listing. A higher plan moves a submission from a 3 to 5 business day review to a 24 business hour one. Same listing, same categories, same ranking.
- What is the 100-view gate?
- Click-through rate is only used once a listing has had at least 100 views in the last 90 days. Below that it scores a neutral 0.5. Without the gate every new listing would enter at zero and could never earn the views that would fix it — the ranking would be a ratchet against anything new.
- Why does an old tool sink even with a good rating?
- Freshness decays exponentially with a 240-day constant, floored at 5%. A tool nobody has updated or re-verified in two years keeps only a twentieth of its freshness component, which is enough to move it well down a category page on its own. It is how the catalogue stays current without anyone policing it by hand.
- What can I do to rank better?
- Three of the four components are things you control honestly. Complete your listing — the checklist and its point values are published below and shown in your dashboard. Tell us when you ship, which resets freshness. Claim your listing, which is free and worth 5%. The fourth, click-through, you improve by writing a listing people actually want to click.
- Is the 'New' list ranked?
- No. New tools is a plain list in the order tools were added. Editor's Picks are chosen by a person. Featured and Ad slots are paid placements, labelled Sponsored and kept outside the ranking.