How we measure, and what we will not print
Read this before you trust a number on this site. If it does not convince you, do not trust the numbers.
Where the figures come from
Prices are pulled directly from each panel's public service list on a fixed schedule and stored with a timestamp. Delivery times are observed: we place real orders, at our own cost, and record the interval between submission and completion. We never reprint a panel's advertised delivery speed as if it were a measurement.
Every report carries the exact rows it was written from, printed above the article, including the sample size and the capture date. If the sample is small, the table says so and you should weight the report accordingly.
The rules, and where they are enforced
None of these are promises. Each one is a check in the software that runs before an article can be published.
Six reports a month, hard cap. The publish button returns an error past the limit. A site that ships a hundred articles a month is not measuring anything.
A human clears every report. Drafts are written by a language model and land in a review queue. There is no code path from the model to this page. The editor's name goes on the article.
No number without a measurement. A check rejects any price appearing in the prose that is not in the evidence table. The model is handed the rows and nothing else.
Paid links are labelled and cannot be bought clean. Any link to a paying panel, or to a site we own, is forced to rel="sponsored" automatically. Buying a link here does not buy you a ranking or a figure.
Blocked claims. Guaranteed, 100% real, permanent, non-drop, undetectable. A draft containing them fails automatically, regardless of who supplied the copy. Platforms remove purchased engagement; anyone telling you otherwise is selling.
Real bylines. We do not invent authors. The editorial team writes under one name and the editor who cleared the piece is named on it.
Who pays us, and what that buys
SMM Panel Index is published by SMMRates, the price index this magazine reads its figures from. Panels indexed on SMMRates can pay for a monitored (verified) or featured (sponsored) listing. Both are labelled wherever they appear. Neither buys a rank, a better figure, or a removed one — every number below is written by the scraper before an editor sees it.
Panels can pay for a labelled listing. It buys a sponsored tag and a rel="sponsored" link. It does not buy a ranking, a favourable figure, a removed figure, or a mention in a report. The figures are written to the database by the scraper before any human sees them, and the published table is a frozen copy — so changing a number after the fact would mean editing the record, not the article.
Corrections
If a figure is wrong, we correct the report, leave a dated note at the foot of it, and do not quietly edit the history.