How we measure
Every number on this site carries the date we checked it. This page explains what that date means and what happens once it gets old.
What "checked" means
A field marked with a date was verified by opening the vendor's own pricing or docs page on that date — not copied from a review site, not estimated. Where we could not verify a number, we leave the field blank and say not measured rather than guess.
How numbers age
A checked number does not stay accurate forever, so it degrades in three steps as it ages:
- Under 60 days — shown normally, with a plain date stamp.
- 60–210 days — the stamp turns grey and a note points to the vendor's current pricing page.
- Over 210 days — the figure is withdrawn from the page entirely and replaced with a link to check the current number yourself. The tool stays in the table; only the stale number is pulled.
What "data export" means
The Data export column describes how much of your own content you can take out of a tool, not the file format. We use one scale across every category, from a full export with API access down to no export at all — a tool with no export path is not listed here, whatever else it does well.
How comparisons get chosen
Comparison pages are not generated for every possible pair of tools. A pair is only built once someone has manually reviewed it and confirmed the two tools differ on at least 4 of 8 measurable criteria — otherwise the page would not tell you anything a single tool page doesn't already.
How "best for" gets written
Every "best for" line starts as a draft generated from the numbers we measured — never from the vendor's marketing copy. An editor rewrites or approves each one before it is published.