How We Review Kratom Vendors
Every vendor review on this site is produced the same way, by the same person, against the same published criteria. This page is the methodology. If a review ever contradicts what's written here, tell us — we'll fix the review or the methodology, publicly.
What we score, and how much it counts
Published lab testing 30%
Does the vendor publish third-party Certificates of Analysis (COAs), and are they recent, batch-specific, and from an identifiable lab? Vendors that publish nothing can't score above average on quality, no matter what their marketing says. Our guide to reading COAs is here: How to Read a Kratom Lab Report.
Pricing & value 20%
Price per gram for plain powder across sizes, checked against the current market on a stated date. We record the exact product, size, and price we saw so you can verify it yourself.
Shipping & logistics 15%
Shipping cost, free-shipping threshold, dispatch speed claims, and whether the vendor ships across all provinces.
Transparency 20%
Is it clear who runs the store, where product is sourced, and how to reach support? Are claims specific and checkable, or vague superlatives?
Customer feedback 15%
Sustained patterns in public customer feedback — community forums, review platforms, and complaint histories. One-off complaints don't move a score; repeated patterns do.
What our reviews are based on
Our reviews are desk research, done honestly: we verify everything that can be verified from public evidence — published lab reports, live pricing, shipping policies, and sustained customer feedback — and we say so plainly when something can't be verified. We do not claim hands-on product testing unless a review explicitly documents it (with order dates and photos). If a vendor's quality claims rest entirely on their own marketing, the review says that too.
The current pricing, shipping, and lab-testing data for all reviewed vendors lives in the vendor comparison table, with a "last verified" date on every row.
Affiliate links and independence
Some outbound vendor links are affiliate links, and they're disclosed on every page where they appear. Here is the rule that keeps that honest: affiliate status has no effect on scores, rankings, or whether a vendor gets reviewed at all. We review vendors we have no relationship with, and several of our reviews are critical. A vendor cannot pay to be reviewed, to improve a score, or to have a review removed.
Re-verification
Prices, shipping policies, and lab-report pages change. Comparison-table data is re-verified periodically and each row carries the date it was last checked. Reviews are updated when a vendor's offering materially changes — and the "updated" date on a review only changes when the content actually does.
For vendors
If we've reviewed you and you believe something is factually wrong, or you've started publishing batch-specific COAs since our last check, contact us with evidence and we'll re-verify. That's the only way to change a score.