How "Our Score" works

Two profiles

Products that contain caffeine are scored out of 100 across six parts: Value (30 pts), Amazon rating (20 pts), Amazon Best Sellers Rank (10 pts), Certification (20 pts), declared caffeine (10 pts), and Direct Sale (10 pts). Products that don't contain caffeine skip the caffeine part and Value is worth 40 pts instead, so the total still runs to 100.

Value — price per ounce, within the same group

We convert price to cost-per-ounce of actual product (net weight, never packaging) and compare it only against genuinely comparable products — the same product type and format, e.g. guayusa loose leaf against other guayusa loose leaf. The cheapest cost-per-ounce in that group scores full Value points; others scale down proportionally.

Amazon rating — adjusted for review count

A product's raw star rating can be noisy when it only has a handful of reviews — a couple of unfair 1-star ratings can sink an otherwise good product, while a brand-new listing with five 5-star reviews from friends can look artificially perfect. So instead of using the raw star rating directly, we blend each product's own rating toward the review-weighted average rating across every other product in its same section of the site (guayusa, accessories, supplements, or other teas), weighted by how many reviews it actually has. A product with hundreds of reviews barely moves from its raw rating; a product with only a few reviews is pulled closer to the category average until it earns a larger sample of its own. This adjusted rating, not the raw stars, is what's converted to points: (adjusted rating ÷ 5) × 20.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank

We compare each product's overall (department-wide) Best Sellers Rank — never the narrower subcategory rank — against the other products in its own comparison group. A lower rank number sells better and scores higher; the best-selling product in the group scores full BSR points, others scale down proportionally. BSR is sales context only — it never factors into any other component and never substitutes for quality.

The "sole product" rule

Value and BSR only mean something relative to comparable products. When a comparison group has just one product — nothing else of that exact type and format in this catalog — that product is the group's reference product: there's no comparison to make, so it receives full marks on both Value and BSR rather than being left pending. A group of two or more still needs real data from at least two members before anyone in it is scored on Value or BSR.

Certification

Full certification points if the product discloses at least one real certification on its Amazon listing or official brand page — one certification or five, it's the same points. We don't rank certifications against each other, and we only ever show badges a listing actually discloses.

Caffeine declared

Only applies to caffeinated products. Full caffeine points if the label states a specific mg-per-serving figure, 0 if it doesn't — a higher number never scores higher, we're only rewarding disclosure.

Direct Sale

Rewards a seller of record a shopper can actually hold accountable. We check who's actually selling each listing — "Sold by" the brand itself, or "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com" — and verify it live on the listing itself, never by assuming it from the brand name. Full points go to either a brand selling its own listing directly or a listing sold by Amazon.com: both are traceable, accountable sellers, and this site doesn't treat one as more trustworthy than the other. Zero points go to a listing confirmed sold by an unrelated third-party marketplace reseller — the real risk to a shopper there is a seller with no accountability to the brand, and higher odds of old stock, damaged packaging, or counterfeits. This is checked per individual listing: two products from the same brand can land on opposite sides of this if one is sold direct and the other has picked up a reseller.

When a score is "pending"

If any required input is missing — no star rating on file, no disclosed Best Sellers Rank in a real (2+) comparison group, no verified certification check yet, an unknown caffeine status, an unverified seller of record, or too few comparable products with valid price/weight data — we show pending instead of inventing a number or defaulting to zero. A verified "reviewed, no certification found" is a real 0; "not checked yet" is pending. These are never the same thing.

Ranking

Within each comparison group, products are ranked by Our Score, highest first. Tied scores share the same rank. Pending products are never given a numeric rank.

Our Score is our own editorial index, not a certification or an independent lab test — always confirm current price, rating and disclosures on the Amazon listing itself.