How we score brands

The four checks, the marking scheme and the limits of what a score can tell you.

We score what a brand publishes on its own website. Each check is marked from 0 to 5. The four marks are added and halved to give a score out of 10.

UK shipping

• 0: states it does not ship to the UK
• 1: UK shipping not stated or unclear
• 3: ships to the UK from overseas
• 5: ships from within the UK

Pricing

• 0: no prices shown
• 2: "starting at" prices or unlabelled currency
• 3: clear prices in a foreign currency
• 4: clear prices in pounds with multi-buy savings
• 5: as 4, and the lowest price per mg we found

Refund policy

• 0: none published
• 1: refunds heavily limited
• 2: a guarantee is claimed but no policy page, or a window under 14 days
• 3: generous guarantee claimed, no policy page
• 4: a published policy of 30 days or more
• 5: as 4, covering opened products

Certificates

• 0: none mentioned
• 1: testing claimed, nothing published
• 2: a lab is named or a document is offered, but not tied to a batch
• 4: batch certificate from a named independent lab published
• 5: as 4, verifiable with the lab

Why these four

They are the things a UK buyer can verify in ten minutes, and the things that most often go wrong: parcels that never arrive, surprise costs, refunds that are refused and purity claims with nothing behind them.

What a score cannot tell you

• Whether a product is safe or effective for any animal. None of these products is an authorised veterinary medicine in the UK.
• Whether the contents match the label. We do not lab-test.
• Whether a brand will still look the same next month. Each review shows the date we checked.

Ownership

Puptides is published by the team behind Peps for Pups, one of the brands reviewed here. We score every brand, including our own, on the same four published checks and we link our sources so you can verify them.