How the Owner Score works

We collect public posts and comments that mention a product from YouTube (comments on long-term review videos), Hacker News and Bluesky. Reddit is being added as our API access comes online. Every quote on OwnedFor links back to the original post so you can read it in context.

New posts are collected every day, and each product's score is recalculated as they come in.

• Posts about a different model. A post about the iPhone 15 Pro doesn't count toward the iPhone 15.
• Comments that aren't owner reviews. Each comment is checked by an AI model for whether the writer describes their own experience with the product. Questions, "just ordered one!" posts, and comments about the video are excluded.
• Likely bots. Brand-new accounts with almost no history are excluded.
• Promotional posts. Posts with sponsorship or discount-code language are kept visible but count much less.

For each credible owner review, we determine whether the owner recommends the product: a happy owner with a minor complaint still counts as a recommendation, and an owner who regrets the purchase or warns others off does not. Where that isn't clear, the review's overall sentiment is used, with mixed reviews counting as half. Comments that express no opinion are left out.

The Owner Score is the share of owners who recommend the product, from 0 to 100. Owners who have used the product for months count more than first impressions, and promotional posts count less.

Products with few reviews are pulled toward a typical score until there is enough evidence, so three glowing comments can't produce a perfect score.

A product needs at least 10 credible owner reviews before it gets a score at all.

• Low confidence (10–24 reviews): the score can still move a lot.
• Medium confidence (25–59 reviews): a solid sample.
• High confidence (60+ reviews): a stable score.

Category rankings only include products with at least 25 owner reviews.

• Recurring issues are problems at least two owners independently report.
• How it holds up compares owners by how long they've had the product, and shows when complaints typically start.
• The claims, and the evidence checks the manufacturer's marketing claims against what owners say about the same feature.

Scores are never paid for, and no brand can change them. Some links to retailers earn us a commission, which never affects a score or ranking. We don't invent reviews, and quotes are shortened only to remove text that isn't about the product; cuts are marked [...] and the full comment is always one click away.