Our Methodology
How products get into the directory, how we benchmark them, and how we stay transparent about money and relationships.
Selection Criteria
A product must pass all of these before it gets a directory entry:
Commercially available
We only list products that can be bought or signed up for today. No crowdfunding, pre-orders, or out-of-stock placeholders.
Fits our verticals
The product must belong to AI hardware (The Rig), crypto mining (The Mine), or autonomous trading tools (The Ledger).
Verifiable specs
We list manufacturer or retailer specs, with a source URL where possible. Specs without evidence are removed.
Working link
Every entry needs a functioning product page. Broken links trigger an automatic weekly review and fallback replacement.
Benchmarking & Scoring
We keep scoring lightweight and reproducible. Each product gets a rating out of 5 based on:
- • Performance: throughput, compute, efficiency, or hashrate relative to peers.
- • Value: price-to-performance, total cost of ownership, or fees relative to alternatives.
- • Fit: how well the product matches its stated use case (local LLMs, mining, automated trading).
- • Reliability: brand reputation, return policy, support quality, and community feedback.
Note: We do not run lab benchmarks ourselves. Scores combine manufacturer specs, publicly available third-party benchmarks, and real-world community reports. We state the source for every claim.
Affiliate & Referral Disclosure
We participate in affiliate and referral programs where available. This means we may earn a commission when you click a link and make a purchase or sign up — at no extra cost to you.
Our editorial picks are independent. We do not accept payment for placement in the directory. Sponsored placements are labeled separately on the advertise page.
Active programs include Amazon Associates, TradingView Partner Program, Ledger Affiliate, Coinbase Affiliate (pending approval), and Interactive Brokers Publisher Program (pitch sent).
Maintenance & Freshness
- • Prices are checked weekly against live retailer pages.
- • Product images are validated every Monday; broken images are replaced with verified fallbacks.
- • Each entry shows a "Last verified" date when data was last confirmed.
- • Stale entries are archived, not deleted, so citations remain resolvable.
Questions or corrections?
If you spot an outdated spec, broken link, or undisclosed relationship, email us. We update corrections within 48 hours.
Send a correction →