Crowd-voted "best of" lists with evidence-backed pros and cons, but by its own help pages the ranking is community opinion, not hands-on testing, and the site is now winding down to read-only.
What it's really for A community recommendation site (now read-only); the rankings are shared opinion, not testing.
What our grade covers The grade on this page is about its community-ranked 'best ___' lists with pros and cons, not everything the site does.
Medium Scoring Confidence Mostly sourced, but a detail or two still needs a primary source, so the grade could shift slightly.
Revenue comes mainly from affiliate commissions when readers click out to buy via "Get it Here" links; its help policy bars product-affiliated users from voting on or editing their own or competitors' options, so placement is not openly sold.
Source →- Operating since
- 2012 (14 years) · source
- What it costs you
- Free to read The reviews are free to read.
- How they make money
- Earns affiliate commissions on "Get it Here" purchase links plus traffic-based ad income.
- What they do
- A community Q&A site where users ask "What are the best ___?" and upvote options ranked by shared, evidence-backed pros and cons.
- What to watch for
- Rankings come from community votes and opinions rather than independent hands-on testing, and many top lists are outdated; some users say the ratings look stale or "probably paid."
- Composite score
- 2.20 / 5.00 → grade C
How the grade was reached
Does the site take money from the very entities it ranks? Pay-for-placement, vendor-funded data, and affiliate commissions all pull this down. The less the ranking can be bought, the higher the score.
What is the ranking actually built on? Hands-on testing scores highest, then verified first-hand reviews, then opinion or popularity surveys and self-reported figures, then pay-to-rank, which scores lowest.
Is the methodology published, specific, and reproducible? Can a reader see how a given rank was reached, or is it a black box?
Are commercial relationships, sponsorships, and affiliate arrangements disclosed clearly and near the rankings themselves, rather than buried?
How hard is it to game? Controls against fake reviews, solicited reviews, and vendor gaming raise this; an open box anyone can stuff lowers it.
Evidence
- Slant's own help/policies describe a community model: users click thumbs-up/down on options and add shared, objective Pros and Cons backed by evidence ('Pros and Cons should contain objective evidence to back any claims made'), with subjective views confined to comments or 'My Experiences' — i.e., crowd opinion rather than hands-on lab testing. Affiliated users 'may not add their product ... add recommendations ... or interact in any way with their options or those of direct competitors,' and are asked not to solicit others to manipulate rankings. Source: Slant Help / Policies →
- Slant (Information Services) was founded in 2012 and is based in San Francisco; PitchBook and Crunchbase profiles corroborate the 2012 founding and the 11-50-employee product-recommendation community led by Stuart Kearney, Tim Etler and Tom Raleigh. Source: PitchBook — Slant company profile →
- AlternativeTo notes Slant 'has been discontinued ... transitioning it to read-only format' to focus on successor Vetted, and observes the page itself displays an affiliate link (e.g., Proton VPN), indicating affiliate monetization. Slant's homepage now headlines 'The Slant team built an AI' pointing users to Vetted. Source: AlternativeTo — Slant about page →