Method
How we review
A review site is only worth reading if you can check its work. This page is the rubric, the process, and the rules we hold ourselves to — written down so you can hold us to them too.
The five criteria
Every product is scored 0–10 on each of these, and the weighted total produces the overall score and the ranking position. The weights do not change between products or categories.
Evidence
30%Is there published, peer-reviewed research supporting what this product claims, at the dose and in the population it is being sold to? Independent replication counts for more than manufacturer-funded studies, and a specific weight loss promise with no citation counts for nothing.
Safety & transparency
25%Side effect profile, contraindication screening, quality of medical oversight where relevant, third-party testing, and whether the label tells you what you are actually taking. Proprietary blends are penalised heavily because they make assessment impossible by design.
Sustainability
20%How realistic is it that someone is still doing this at month six? We weight this heavily because adherence, not mechanism, is what separates approaches that work from approaches that theoretically work.
Value
15%The real ongoing cost after introductory pricing expires, measured against what you actually receive and what the alternatives cost. Products that hide the post-promotional price lose points here.
Experience
10%Onboarding, support responsiveness, how the app or service behaves day to day, and how hard the company makes it to leave. Phone-only cancellation and buried unsubscribe flows are scored as the deliberate choices they are.
Evidence carries the most weight because it is the question everything else depends on. A cheap, pleasant, well-supported product that does not work is still a product that does not work.
What the numbers mean
| Score | Verdict | What we mean by it |
|---|---|---|
| 8.5 – 10 | Highly recommended | We would suggest this to someone we know, with the caveats noted in the review. |
| 7.0 – 8.4 | Recommended | Solid. Works for the right person; read who it is not for. |
| 5.5 – 6.9 | With reservations | Real problems alongside real strengths. Buy only if the review describes you. |
| 4.0 – 5.4 | Not recommended | We would steer you elsewhere. Something here does not hold up. |
| Below 4.0 | Avoid | Actively problematic. We carry no affiliate link on anything in this band. |
How a product gets tested
We buy every product at retail price, as an ordinary customer, using a card that is not associated with this site. We do not accept review units, press samples, or free subscriptions, and we do not tell a company we are reviewing them before we publish.
Where a product has a meaningful usage period — a meal service, a coaching programme, a supplement — we use it for at least eight weeks before scoring, and typically longer. The tested duration is printed on every review. Where we assessed something without buying it, the review says so explicitly and the review is labelled accordingly.
For anything involving prescription medication, we assess the service rather than the drug: the quality of the intake screening, whether a clinician actually reviews it, what monitoring exists, and what the programme does about discontinuation. We do not take prescription medication we have not been prescribed for a clinical reason, and where we have submitted test intake forms we cancel inside the refund window and do not use what is sent.
Where the evidence score comes from
We look for published, peer-reviewed research on the actual intervention at the actual dose. Manufacturer-funded studies count for something, but less than independent replication. A single unpublished internal trial counts for close to nothing.
Two distinctions matter a great deal in this category and we apply both strictly. First, evidence for an ingredient is not evidence for a product containing a fraction of the studied dose. Second, evidence for a molecule is not evidence for a service that dispenses it without the supervision the trials included.
Conflicts of interest
We earn affiliate commissions from some of the companies we review. That is disclosed at the top of every page, on every individual link, and in full on our affiliate disclosure page.
The rules we work to: scores are set before any commercial relationship is discussed. We do not accept payment for reviews, for placement, or for a specific score, and we have no sponsored posts. We do not enter affiliate relationships with companies whose products we recommend against. And where we do hold a relationship and later downgrade a product, the review changes and the relationship is what gets dropped.
Corrections
We get things wrong. When we do, we fix the page and note what changed rather than quietly editing it. If you have found an error — particularly a factual claim about a product or a piece of research we have characterised badly — write to corrections@tomsweightlossrankings.com and we will look at it.
Companies are welcome to dispute a review through the same address. We will correct anything factually wrong. We will not change a score because a company would prefer a different one.
What we are not
We are consumer product reviewers. We are not doctors, dietitians, pharmacists or clinicians of any kind, and nothing published here is medical advice or a treatment recommendation for you specifically. Where we describe research, we are summarising published literature as careful lay readers, not practising medicine.