How we rank apps
Every app on this site is scored the same way, on the same five things. Here is exactly how, so you can decide how much to trust it.
Five scores, one overall
Each app gets a score out of 10 for five criteria. The overall score is a weighted average, so no single strength can carry a weak app to the top.
How much it does, and how well those features hold up in daily use.
Clarity, polish, accessibility and how quickly you get things done.
Speed, reliability, sync and how kind it is to your battery.
What you get for what you pay, including how useful the free tier is.
What it collects, who it shares with, encryption and the business model.
Features carry the most weight because an app has to do the job first. Value and privacy together make up almost a third of the score, because an app that is expensive or careless with your data costs you more than its price.
What the numbers mean
- 9.0+Outstanding. Among the best apps you can install, with few real compromises.
- 8.5–8.9Excellent. A great choice with a catch or two worth knowing.
- 8.0–8.4Very good. Right for many people, but not everyone.
- 7.0–7.9Good. Useful, with trade-offs that rule it out for some.
- Below 7Mixed. We'd point most people elsewhere.
How we judge each criterion
Features looks at depth and usefulness, not feature counts. Design covers clarity, polish and accessibility. Performance covers speed, reliability, sync and battery. Value compares what you get with what you pay, and a genuinely useful free tier counts for a lot. Privacy looks at what the app collects, whether your content is encrypted, who it is shared with and how the company makes money.
We don't copy app-store star ratings, and we don't publish download counts, benchmark numbers or prices we can't stand behind. Prices change too often; each review describes what's free and what's paid instead.
Reader votes
Next to every app you can vote it up (it deserves a higher spot) or down (it deserves a lower one). Votes never change our scores. They're shown separately, and you can sort any list by Most upvoted to see the readers' order.
- One vote per app per browser, which you can change or remove at any time.
- Limits per network stop anyone stuffing the ballot by clearing cookies.
- “Most upvoted” uses a confidence-adjusted score (the Wilson lower bound), so an app with 40 upvotes and 2 downvotes beats one with a single upvote.
- When you vote an app down you can tell us why. Those reasons tell us which reviews to revisit first.
Keeping it current
Apps change fast. We revisit every category regularly, and each page shows when its rankings were last updated (currently October 2026). If an app adds ads, raises its price, changes its privacy policy or disappears, its score changes or it comes off the list.
Spotted something out of date or wrong? Tell us and we'll look at it.
Money
No app can pay to be listed, to rank higher or to change its review. We don't run ads or affiliate links on this site today; if that ever changes, we'll label it clearly and it will never affect the order.