How I test the tools

This page is here so you can decide how much to trust what you read on the rest of the site. It’s the method I follow with every new tool page and every new guide. If a piece doesn’t meet it, that’s my mistake, not an exception I allow myself.

First, I open it

I don’t write about a tool I haven’t opened. I go in, use whatever it offers without an account or on its free plan, and spend some time on what you’re actually going to do with it. That’s where the first-person sentences come from: from having used it, not from having read its homepage.

Prices, with the date next to them

Prices come from the maker’s official pricing page, and every piece says once, right next to them, when I checked them. It’s not a quirk: an AI price from six months ago isn’t a price, it’s a piece of history. These companies raise their rates, split plans in two and invent new tiers at a pace that could be an Olympic sport.

When a maker charges in a currency that may not be yours, I say which one, and I don’t sell you a conversion as if it were a final price: that charge is still missing the day’s exchange rate and, depending on the case, taxes.

What you can try yourself

Some features depend on a paid plan, a business account or your own hardware. I describe those for what they are, features the tool offers, and tell you where to find them so you can try them yourself. I only use the first person for what I’ve actually done. And the maker’s promises for a few months from now don’t get written in the present tense: that’s how half of what you read in this industry sneaks in.

The screenshots are mine

Every image in the new pieces is a real screenshot of the tool’s screen, taken by me, with the area I’m talking about boxed or numbered and a caption saying what you’re looking at and what day it’s from. No AI-generated images and no stock photos: if I show you a pricing panel, it’s that panel.

When a site blocks screenshots, which happens more than you’d think, the piece goes without that image. I’d rather leave the gap than fill it with something that isn’t real.

Every figure gets checked twice

Before anything is published, the facts that can be checked (the price, the free plan’s limit, the plan’s name, the model running underneath) are reviewed one by one against the maker’s own source. For that part I use an LLM that verifies the facts, and whatever doesn’t hold up doesn’t get softened: it comes out of the piece. It’s the boring part, and it’s the part that holds up everything else.

And then it gets reviewed

A published tool page isn’t finished. Tools get more expensive, change their name, change owners, and some simply shut down. When I find out, I fix it on the tool page with the date of the change; and if the tool has shut down, the page says so in the first line and points you to alternatives that are still alive, which is the only thing that helps if you arrived looking for it.

What I don’t do

• I don’t charge to be listed, or to be listed higher. The ads on the site don’t decide what I write or in what order.
• I don’t publish “top ten” lists without saying what they’re ranked by and what date they’re from.
• I don’t make up hands-on experiences, timings or results. If I haven’t done it, I don’t tell it as done.

Who writes all this, and why: about me and this site.