We never seed or invent votes, ratings, clicks, or views. Organic order comes from a weighted blend of editorial picks, verified freshness, optional real listing dates, and recorded community activity. Sponsored placements are labelled separately and are not inputs to this score.

Each signal is log-scaled and compared to other tools in the same category (or site-wide when a category is small). As more trusted events arrive, we rely less on editorial weight and more on real usage. Trending appears only after a tool collects enough recent trusted events.

• Freshness (F) — 1.0 when verified within 7 days, tapering to 0.5 for older or unverified listings; 0.3 if the pricing link is dead; 0 if the free tier is gone.
• Editorial (E) — Curator picks from catalog data; "Tool of the week" comes from these picks.
• Ratings (R) — Bayesian average with a site-wide prior when data is sparse.
• Upvotes (U) — Trust-weighted with a 30-day half-life.
• Try free clicks (C) — Smoothed click-through rate from real outbound clicks and detail views.
• Velocity (V) — Last 72 hours vs a 28-day baseline.
• External (X) — Optional Product Hunt / GitHub fields in data; capped so it cannot dominate.
• Newness (N) — Only when a real addedAt date exists; we never guess listing dates.

Spot an error? Submit a correction.