Run by 99 Developers Ltd. Listings and Crash Tests pay for it. Money never buys a score or a place on the list. What money cannot buy
Money
Every site in this category is funded by vendors rather than buyers, including this one. Pretending otherwise would be the dishonest part. What matters is where the line sits, whether it is specific enough to hold you to, and whether it is enforced in the product rather than only in a policy page.
This list does not change by negotiation, by contract size, or by who is asking. If someone tells you they were offered any of it, we want to know.
Revenue by stream
Enforcement
The code that computes Crash Test and community scores is not allowed to import offers, payments or vendor records. A lint rule refuses the import, and a separate check in every build fails if one appears.
The function that orders a category hub takes tested scores and review data and nothing else. Whether a vendor bought a Listing or a Crash Test is not one of its inputs.
A payment upgrades a listing automatically and does nothing else: it cannot edit a test report, a score or a review. Our testers are named on every report they run and cannot take money, hardware, hospitality or consulting work from a vendor we cover.
Listings, specifically
A listing puts a product on Launch500: a page, a link, and with the £49 Listing a fortnight in the Featured spots, labelled Sponsored. It never puts a product on the annual list, and it does not buy a score, a review or a followed link. Listing free is always available, so nobody can say we only cover the people who paid us.
Crash Tests and the list, specifically
A passed Crash Test is the entry barrier to the Launch500 list. The fee buys the test: the report publishes whatever it says, and a pass makes a product eligible, not selected. The February editorial weighs the test with reviews, customer feedback and our engineers’ view of how useful the product is.
We have no affiliate links. If we ever add one, the button says so and the page discloses it at the top.
What we will not do to make this work
We will not sell buyer-intent data that identifies an individual. We will not offer a vendor advance notice of a test result. We will not run a “sponsored category”, a paid inclusion tier, or an award that a vendor can buy. If the business does not work without those, the business does not work, and we would rather find that out than quietly cross the line.
Offered something on this list?
If any vendor, agency or reseller has told you they can get a score changed, a review removed or a placement in an editorial list here, tell us. We will publish what happened.