The Playbook
STACKED SCORE
How Stacked grades peptide vendors. Eight weighted categories, one score from 0 to 100, published weights. No pay-for-placement. No secret thumb on the scale.
The Eight Categories
Each vendor is scored 0–100 in every category. The final Stacked Score is a weighted average. Weights listed below are the working draft and may shift before summer.
- 0120%
Purity Testing
Third-party Certificates of Analysis (COAs) — frequency, independence, and batch coverage. Janoshik Analytical and Finnrick results carry extra weight because they are the gold-standard independent labs for peptide HPLC / mass-spec verification.
- 0215%
Community Reputation
Sentiment across r/Peptides, longevity / biohacking communities, and independent vendor review threads. Weighted by recency and volume.
- 0312%
Shipping & Fulfillment
Median domestic transit days, tracking visibility, international options, and reliability during disruptions.
- 0410%
Payment Security
Payment options, chargeback policies, and transaction security posture. Crypto-only vendors weighted accordingly.
- 0510%
Customer Service
Response times, refund / reshipment behavior, and public evidence of dispute resolution.
- 0610%
Catalog Depth
Breadth across research categories — healing, longevity, GLP-1 class, GH secretagogues — and availability of meaningful size options.
- 0710%
Price Competitiveness
Price per milligram benchmarked against the tracked market, adjusted for purity evidence.
- 0813%
FDA / Regulatory
Warning-letter history, cease-and-desist record, and how the vendor has responded to regulatory pressure.
Total weight · 100%
Pipeline Sources
The Stacked Score is assembled from six pipeline sources. Every rating is traceable to the evidence that produced it — published on each vendor profile.
Reddit (r/Peptides)
Community threads, long-form reviews, and recurring complaints. Recency-weighted.
YouTube
Independent reviewers, unboxing videos, and vendor comparison channels.
Trustpilot
Public review volume and trajectory, filtered for obvious incentivized activity.
Janoshik Analytical
Heavy weightIndependent HPLC / mass-spec lab — a primary signal for Purity Testing. Weighted heavy.
Finnrick
Heavy weightIndependent third-party testing partner — also weighted heavy inside Purity Testing.
Web / FDA
Direct FDA warning letters, news coverage, regulatory filings, and vendor responses.
Why Janoshik + Finnrick
Independent lab results are the hardest signal to fake and the cleanest evidence of actual product purity. Both labs are weighted especially heavy inside the Purity Testing category — the single biggest lever in the Stacked Score.
Marketplaces (Why They're Listed Differently)
The Stacked Score is built around single-storefront retail vendors — operators who hold inventory, ship under one brand, process payments through standard processor rails, and own the customer-service relationship end-to-end. Every category above (Purity Testing, Shipping, Payment Security, Customer Service, etc.) assumes that single-operator accountability.
Marketplaces — platforms that aggregate independent suppliers under a unified checkout — sit outside that frame. The platform itself doesn't hold stock, doesn't test compounds, and doesn't ship anything; it brokers across eight or more independent suppliers per peptide, each with its own batch quality, shipping origin, and dispute history. Applying a retail Stacked Score to a marketplace would compress eight different supplier realities into one dishonest number.
What we do instead: marketplaces appear on the directory in their own section with a MARKET badge in place of the Stacked Score circle. Their per-supplier prices are intentionally not indexed in our price tracker — manufacturer-tier $/mg is not directly comparable to retail vendor $/mg, and dropping it into the same comparison table would mislead price-shopping researchers more than it would help them. Each marketplace profile surfaces the platform features that actually matter for that decision: supplier count, COA repository, escrow + dispute mediation, and shipping origins.
Marketplaces and retail vendors are not directly comparable. Read both kinds of profile before deciding which tier of the supply chain matches your research budget, risk tolerance, and timeline.
What We Do Not Do
- We do not accept payment for ranking placement. Affiliate commissions do not influence scores.
- We do not hide FDA warning letters. They are surfaced on the affected vendor profile and factored into the Regulatory score.
- We do not make medical claims. The Stacked Score measures vendor operations — not the safety of peptides for human use.
Status · April 2026
The methodology is in active review. Category weights, data sources, and scoring bands are being finalized ahead of the Summer 2026 launch. Scores refresh weekly and on-demand as new evidence lands. Vendors rated before methodology freeze will be re-scored under the final version.