Our method

Everything we show must be checkable: which source, which price, when seen.

1. The ranking: a consensus of tests

We take the current lists of five to eight reputable testers, such as Vacuum Wars, RTINGS, Wirecutter and TechRadar. From every source we note the position of each product and the use it is recommended for, for example "best for pet hair" or "best budget pick".

Our ranking is a consensus of those positions and mentions (a Borda-style point count), never an average of their grades: an 8 from one tester means something different from an 8 from another. A recommendation for a specific use ("best budget model", "best for pets") counts too, at seventy percent of a general recommendation. Only products sold in the Netherlands count. Every source is named with a link and the date we checked the list. We copy no text.

Later we add our own tests and our own score per category. That is one more source in the same system, with the same attribution.

2. Prices: fetched and checked daily

Every day we fetch the price, the seller and the delivery time at every shop, through official connections where they exist, such as bol.com's Catalog API and Coolblue's product feed. Every price shows when we last saw it.

A price that deviates strongly from what we saw last week is marked suspect and not shown until confirmed. A silent read error is how comparison sites lose their credibility. We keep every observation, so the price history and the 90-day low come from our own data.

3. The real price: delivered, and compared like for like

• Delivery cost to the Netherlands counts, also at foreign shops and brand stores.
• Sales by the shop itself and sales by a marketplace seller are kept apart.
• Refurbished offers (Coolblue Tweedekans, bol second chance, Amazon Warehouse) are shown as a separate category, never mixed with new.
• Delivery time is part of the deal: tomorrow or in four days makes a difference.

4. Fake discounts

Since 1 January 2023 a "was" price in the Netherlands must be the lowest price the shop charged in the 30 days before (the Besluit prijsaanduiding producten, supervised by the ACM). Because we keep the list price next to every observed price, we can check and show this: claimed "was € 1,299". The lowest price we saw in the last 30 days was € 1,099. Amazon's reference is a manufacturer's recommended price and is labelled as such rather than judged.

5. Buy now or wait

On every product page: today's price against the range of the last 90 days, how often and how deep this product drops in price, and how long ago the last drop was. Sometimes the honest answer is "wait". That costs us a commission today and earns a reader who comes back.

6. How we make money

Best at Best is free. We earn from shops' partner programmes: buy through a link on this site and we receive a commission from the shop. The price you pay does not change. The commission never influences the ranking, the alternatives or the advice. Those come from the same data for every shop. We sell nothing ourselves and there are no paid placements.

7. What we do not do

• No paid tests (Consumentenbond, Which?) as a source: they are licensed and cannot be checked freely.
• No average of other sites' scores, and no aggregators of aggregators.
• No copied review text. Only positions and labels, with attribution.
• No reselling of products. We are a guide, not a shop.