# Criticaster

> Criticaster aggregates professional product reviews from established publications and calculates unbiased Critic Scores to help you find the best products to buy.

Criticaster solves a real problem: buying products is easy, but figuring out *which* product to buy is hard. Every item seems to have 4.5 stars, knockoffs are rampant, and even AI assistants give confident but poorly-researched recommendations. Criticaster cuts through the noise by aggregating scores from professional reviewers at outlets like CNET, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, RTINGS, and Wirecutter — then normalizing everything to a consistent 0–100 scale.

Products are organized into categories (e.g. headphones, drones, robot vacuums) with three tiers — budget, value, and premium — so you can find the best option at your price point. Each product page shows the aggregated Critic Score, the number of reviews it's based on, consensus pros and cons, and links to all source reviews.

Criticaster does not accept payment from brands to feature or boost products. Scores reflect only what professional critics think.

For a single file with all content inlined, see [llms-full.txt](https://criticaster.com/llms-full.txt).

## Key pages

- [Home](https://criticaster.com/): Browse products by category and price tier. Spotlight categories and recently analyzed products.
- [How It Works](https://criticaster.com/how-it-works): Full methodology — how sources are selected, how scores are normalized to 0–100, how the final Critic Score is calculated, and how pros/cons are extracted.
- [Where Reviews Come From](https://criticaster.com/where-reviews-come-from): Source criteria — professional publications only, quality filters (min. 500 characters of analysis, editorial independence, product relevance), equal weighting across publications.
- [Limitations of Aggregated Scores](https://criticaster.com/limitations-of-aggregated-scores): Honest caveats — score compression, normalization imprecision, uneven review coverage, reviewer bias, timing delays.
- [About](https://criticaster.com/about): Who Criticaster is and what's next (AI-powered features: ask the critics, personalized scores, smart comparisons).
- [Author Rewards](https://criticaster.com/author-rewards): Criticaster shares 50% of affiliate revenue with the authors and publishers whose reviews contributed to each product's analysis.
- [Search](https://criticaster.com/search): Search for specific products.
- [Categories](https://criticaster.com/categories): Browse all product categories.
- [Product Requests](https://criticaster.com/product-requests): Request a product to be analyzed.
- [Product pages](https://criticaster.com/products/{slug}): Each product page includes a form to submit a review URL that the team may include in future score calculations.

## APIs

- [OpenAPI spec](https://criticaster.com/openapi.json): Machine-readable OpenAPI 3.1 spec covering all public endpoints.
- [API Reference](https://criticaster.com/api.md): Human and LLM-readable API docs — endpoint specs, response shapes, and recommended workflows.

## Contact

- General / future features: future@criticaster.com
- Publishers / review sources: reviewers@criticaster.com