How we rank

The Operator Trust Score

Alongside scoring each treatment, we score the company behind it. The Operator Trust Score is a company-level view drawn from the factors that measure the operator itself — legitimacy, clinical oversight, transparency, data privacy, policy fairness, and the like — regardless of which treatment you are looking at. A provider can offer a reasonable product and still be a poor operator: opaque about sourcing, hard to cancel, weak on privacy. Isolating these signals lets you weigh the operator, not just the product.

The Operator Trust Score is computed from the subset of factors below — the ones taggedBoth scores— which apply to the company across every category. It is the same weighted average described above, over that subset only, and always at each factor's usual tier. A company-level factor we could not establish is left out of the division here too.

Where we have published one, it is the headline number on that brand's hub — the brand page that covers the company rather than any one treatment — and it is also the number shown beside that brand on our reviews index, so the two agree by construction rather than by coincidence. Where we have not published one, that page shows no company-level headline at all rather than a placeholder, the index falls back to the brand's primary treatment score, and the per-treatment numbers below are the only scores on the hub.

What it does not do. It is not an average of a brand's treatment scores — blending those would count the company-level factors twice and would move whenever a brand added a category. It says nothing about whether any particular treatment is a good choice: a well-run company can offer a poorly-priced programme. And the two category adjustments described above never apply to it.

• Transparency & Disclosure
  Critical
• Clinical Oversight & Safety
  Critical
• Legitimacy & Accreditation
  Critical
• Policy Clarity & Fairness
  High
• Access & Speed
  Medium
• Quality-under-Growth
  Medium
• Popularity & Momentum
  Medium
• Data Privacy & Security
  Medium
• Support & Care Model
  Supporting

The Treatment Score

The Treatment Score answers the other question: how good is this treatment, from this provider. It is scored per category — a provider's weight-management programme and its hair-loss programme are scored separately and can land far apart, because the price, the sourcing and the clinical specifics are different products even when the company behind them is the same.

It is computed from the universal factors that apply to every provider plus the overlay factors for the category being reviewed — every factor below tagged Both scores or Treatment Score only, for that one category. Same weighted average, same re-normalisation when a factor cannot be established. This is the score the two category adjustments apply to — Pricing Transparency & Value in Hormone Therapy / HRT (menopause), and Legitimacy & Accreditation in Sexual Health / ED, weighted above their usual tier — because those adjustments are statements about what matters in a category, and a category is what this score is about.

Where we have scored a category for a brand, its Treatment Score is the headline number on that treatment's own review page, it appears in the list of categories on the brand's page, and it is what orders every ranked list we publish. A category we have not scored for a brand simply does not appear — there is no provisional or placeholder number anywhere on this site.

What it does not do. It does not measure the company: a brand can price one programme honestly and be opaque about sourcing across all of them, which is the whole reason the Operator Trust Score is computed separately. It is not a safety judgement and not medical advice. And where a factor could not be established we publish the number but withhold the machine-readable rating — the page says which factor and what we searched, and no Rating is emitted for machines to index. A reader sees the score and the reason it is incomplete together.