Methodology changelog

Version 1.0 — July 12, 2026

Initial methodology released: six weighted categories (clinical safety 25%, pharmacy transparency 20%, pricing transparency 20%, clinician credentials 15%, support 10%, consumer protections 10%), an evidence ledger requirement, and the price-normalisation formula.

The core rule: monthly equivalent = plan total ÷ plan months, and every ranking sorts on ongoing total cost — medication plus any mandatory membership. Introductory and first-month rates are flagged and never used for ranking, because ranking on them systematically favours providers with higher ongoing prices.

Corrections applied to our own published work

These are changes we made against our own earlier conclusions. We log them because a methodology that only ever produces convenient results is not a methodology.

• Provider dataset rebuilt (July 6, 2026). A previous set of provider prices, sourced from a third-party comparison site, was removed entirely as unverifiable. Several of those providers could not be substantiated at all. Any figure we cannot trace to a dated capture or a provider's own page is now excluded rather than labelled.
• Brand pricing corrected (July 12, 2026). We had published LillyDirect Zepbound at $349–$549. The actual programme is $299/$399/$449, with a 45-day refill condition and a penalty to $499–$699. Our figures had gone stale after the manufacturers' late-2025 price cuts, and the error made compounded options look better than they were.
• Provider arithmetic corrected (July 11, 2026). Four NexLife plan figures were corrected where the company's own marketing card disagreed with its own plan totals. We publish the arithmetic, not the marketing — including when the arithmetic is less favourable to a provider we have a relationship with.

What would trigger a version 1.1

Completion of independent pharmacy-licence verification, which would move a substantial number of provider facts from Reported to Verified and would allow us to publish numerical provider scores. Until that work is done, no numerical score is published for any provider, including ones we have a commercial relationship with. A score implies a precision our current evidence does not support.

How this works in practice

A policy that is not operationalised is decoration. Here is what ours actually changes about the pages you read.

Every price carries a status. Verified means we hold a dated capture of the provider's own page. Reported — pending verification means a provider or third party reports it and we have not captured it ourselves. Evaluation in progress means we are not asserting it. We do not upgrade a price to Verified because a comparison site published it — sites in this category contradict each other routinely, and a number repeated by three affiliate blogs is still one unverified number.

Every medical claim traces to a primary source. FDA labels and guidance for regulatory status; PubMed-indexed randomised trials for efficacy; ClinicalTrials.gov for trial design. Reddit and patient forums are never used as evidence of price, safety, efficacy or legitimacy — they may be described as anecdotal sentiment, labelled as such. Animal research is never presented as proof of a human clinical effect.

Every ranking shows its arithmetic. Where a provider we have a commercial relationship with ranks well, the calculation that produced that result is printed on the page. If the arithmetic is wrong, you can see that it is wrong, and tell us.

Commercial relationships and what they do not buy

The publisher and certain principals have financial relationships with some of the telehealth providers listed on this site, and we may earn a commission when readers use certain links. That is how this publication is funded, and we state it in the footer of every page rather than burying it.

What compensation does not do: it does not change a score, a rank, an inclusion decision, or a negative finding. Providers cannot pay for placement, cannot suppress an accurate criticism, and cannot review their own page before publication. Where a commercially-related provider loses a category, we say so — a comparison in which one provider wins everything is an advertisement, and the fastest way to tell the difference is to look for the losses.

Corrections

We publish prices in a market that changes them frequently, and we will get things wrong. When we do, we correct the page, date the correction, and say what changed — we do not quietly edit a number and pretend it was always right. Both readers and providers can submit corrections with evidence, through the same process and to the same standard.

Our own record so far includes removing a set of provider prices we had sourced from a third-party comparison site and could not substantiate, and correcting brand-pricing figures that had gone stale after a manufacturer price cut. Both corrections made the site less flattering to conclusions we had already published. That is the point.