No affiliate commissions
We do not run affiliate links. None of the links on this site, in our feed, or in our newsletter pay us a commission when you click them or when you buy a subscription. We don't use App Store affiliate programs, Impact, Skimlinks, Awin, ShareASale, or any other affiliate platform. We don't run cloaked outbound links or redirect domains.
Affiliate compensation is the single most distorting force in app reviewing. The biggest sites in this space depend on it, and the result is editorial shaped — often subtly — by which apps convert best and pay the highest bounty. We removed the source so the pressure isn't there.
No sponsorships
We do not run sponsored content of any kind. App developers do not pay to be reviewed, do not pay to influence rankings, do not buy advertising on this site, and do not sponsor our newsletter. The publication is funded by direct reader support.
No vendor relationships, and how we acquire apps
We hold no equity in, take no consulting fees from, and have no commercial relationship with any app developer or platform we cover. For the apps we review, the rule is simple:
- We download the app the way any reader would, and we pay the retail subscription price out of the publication's funds, through our own accounts.
- We do not accept free "press" or "reviewer" premium accounts that aren't available to the public, because a comped account is a relationship. Where a developer offers one, we decline and pay retail instead, and we would disclose it if we ever could not.
For the calorie-tracking benchmark behind our flagship review, the underlying accuracy dataset is the openly licensed Calorie Tracker Lab 2026 benchmark (CC BY 4.0); we independently re-analysed it rather than relying on any vendor's internal figures.
Authors disclose prior relationships
Where an author has previously worked for, consulted with, or held equity in a developer whose app they are covering, the review carries a disclosure at the top. Where the relationship is recent or financially material, the review is reassigned. Authors maintain a private declaration of interests filed with the editor-in-chief, reviewed annually.
Editorial decisions are independent
Decisions about which apps to review, which conclusions to draw, and how to rank them are the responsibility of the assigned author and the editor-in-chief, and no one else. There is no executive layer above the editor. There is no advertising department. Clinical and statistical claims are checked by a separate reviewer, so verification never depends on the person making the recommendation.
We issue corrections with visible notes
When we make a factual mistake, we correct it inline and add a dated correction note at the bottom of the review. When the correction materially changes our recommendation, we say so at the top with the heading "Correction notice." We do not silently revise reviews, and we keep an internal change-log we will share for a specific review on request via editorial@independent-app-reviews.org.
What we won't claim
We won't claim to be the only independent app-review publication on the web. We won't claim our methodology is beyond critique. What we will claim is that the structural incentives that distort most app reviewing are not present here, that every measurable claim links back to data you can re-run, and that we work hard to keep it that way.
If you spot something that looks like a violation of any of the above, write to editorial@independent-app-reviews.org. We take it seriously.