How We Test and Rate

Last updated: 8 August 2026

This page explains where the numbers in our reviews come from.

Where our numbers come from

Every review draws on four kinds of evidence, and we never present one as another:

• Our own testing. We buy or request access under ordinary customer terms and measure the product ourselves, stating the test date and conditions beside the figure.
• Vendor material. Pricing pages, documentation, logging and privacy policies, read at the primary source and dated.
• Third-party tests. Independent audits and benchmarks, credited to the tester by name with the date of their test.
• User feedback. Reviews on public platforms and forums, de-duplicated and screened for fabricated entries. We aggregate this feedback; we do not host reviews of our own.

How we label it

Each figure is marked as measured by TechToLead, verified from the vendor’s page, vendor-reported, third-party tested or user-reported, so you can see how much weight it deserves. A figure with no date is not a measurement, and we do not publish one.

Scores

A proxy network and a password manager cannot be judged on the same checklist, so there is no single score across categories. Each category has its own criteria, and each review prints the scorecard it was rated on. We score out of 10.

Awards follow one rule: one per vendor, one dimension each, decided on verified numbers rather than marketing claims.

Prices and updates

Every price is taken from the vendor’s own pricing page, re-verified on a stated date, and checked again on the publication date. Prices are re-checked every 90 days after that, performance is re-tested every six months, and policies are re-read whenever they change. Each review shows the date of its last update.

Independence

We earn commission on some links. It pays for the accounts and test time this work needs, and it buys nothing else. No vendor can pay for a listing, a ranking, an award or a score. Writers are not paid on how positive a review is. No vendor sees a review before publication. We publish unfavourable findings about vendors we earn from, and recommend products we earn nothing from when they are the better answer.

Corrections

If a number is wrong, email admin@techtolead.com with the page URL and the figure. Vendors are welcome to use the same address. We reply within two working days, correct the page and date the change where we agree, and explain ourselves where we do not. We do not remove accurate findings on request.

What our testing cannot show

We test from a limited set of locations on specific dates, so your results will differ from ours. Infrastructure changes between the day we test and the day you read. Some claims — what a provider stores internally, for example — leave no trace from the outside, so we report the audit, the auditor and the audit date instead, and say plainly when no audit exists.