This page explains how Free AI For That ("FAFT", "we") gives its picks and awards. They are free promotion that can't be bought, applied for or traded. Paying for a listing or a sponsored slot neither helps nor hurts.
1. The Free Score
Every listed tool gets a Free Score out of 100, built only from facts we checked on the maker's pages and from what users tell us.
| Part | Points | How it's scored |
|---|---|---|
| How much is free | 30 | The main free amount we show, compared with tools in the same category that count the same thing (for example images a month). Top quarter 30, second 20, third 10, bottom 0. Fewer than four tools to compare with: 15. No published free amount: 0. |
| The main feature works on free | 15 | Yes: 15. No: the tool can't receive any award. |
| No catches | 15 | Four checks: no watermark on the main output, no low quality cap, commercial use allowed, your content isn't used to train their AI. Each check we've confirmed earns 3.75. Unknown earns nothing. |
| Users like it | 15 | Signed-in ratings, once a tool has at least five: 4.5 or more earns 15, 4.0 earns 10, 3.5 earns 5. |
| Free to keep | 10 | A kind of free with no end date: 10. One that ends: 0. |
| Easy to start | 10 | No signup: 10. No card, confirmed by our own signup test: 7. The maker says no card is needed: 3. A card is needed: 0. |
| Kept its promise | 5 | No cut to its free offer in the last 90 days: 5. |
A tool with fewer than five ratings is scored out of the other 85 points, and that result is scaled to 100. Ratings it doesn't have yet neither help nor hurt it. Every other unknown fact earns nothing.
Before any award, a tool must:
- have been checked in the last 30 days;
- have its main feature working on free;
- have had no cut to its free offer in the last 90 days;
- be in no excluded category.
2. The awards
| Award | Who gets it | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Great free badge | Every tool with a Free Score of 80 or more. It's lost below 75, so the badge doesn't flicker on and off. | Updated daily |
| Pick of the week | The highest Free Score among tools not picked in the last 90 days. One company can win at most once a month. | Every Monday |
| Our picks | Five more tools, the next-highest Free Scores, each from a different category and none picked in the last four weeks | Every Monday |
| Category champion | The highest Free Score in each category with at least five scored tools | On the 1st of each month |
| Most improved | The biggest confirmed improvement to a free offer that month on our Free plan changes page, for example free images going from 10 to 50 a day, or a trial becoming a free plan. No real improvement means no award. | On the 1st of each month |
| Hall of fame | Tools that keep the Great free badge for two months in a row | Permanent, unless the tool is removed for breaking our rules |
Ties go to the higher free value (How we rank, section 2), then the most recent confirmation, then the name (A–Z).
3. Honesty rules
- Every pick and award shows why it was given, using facts we hold and the date we checked them.
- Editors may override a computed pick only with a written reason, shown on the picks page (for example, so that one company doesn't take most of the week's picks). An override must still meet every rule above.
- If we ever earn a commission from a picked tool, its card says so. Commission never counts toward a pick.
- An award is withdrawn at once if the tool's free offer is cut or it's removed, and the cut goes on the Changes page.
- During a news-line takeover, the Pick of the week pauses on the news line. It stays on the home page.
4. Until there's enough data
The Free Score starts once we've checked its facts for at least 200 tools. Until then, picks follow a simpler interim rule:
- the tool is free to keep;
- its main feature works on free;
- its limit is published as a number;
- it was checked in the last 30 days;
- one pick per category each week.
Great free, Category champions, Most improved and the Hall of fame start with the Free Score.
Our other rules: How we find tools · How we check free offers · How we categorize · How we rank. All five are on How we work.
