Methodology
Every number on this site is derived from the same small set of rules, applied the same way to every company. This page is the whole rubric — nothing in a verdict happens for a reason that isn't written here.
1. Everything starts with a quote
A verdict has no unsourced claims. Every tier either quotes the company's own published policy — verbatim, under 300 characters, dated, scoped to a plan and jurisdiction, linked to an archived copy — or it doesn't make a claim at all. The build fails if a quoted clause is longer than 300 characters or doesn't appear, character-for-character, in the archived snapshot it cites. We don't summarize and we don't paraphrase.
2. The grading scale
Seven grades, one axis: how hard is it to stop this specific plan from training on you. A is easiest, F is hardest, and UNCLEAR means the policy doesn't say either way — a finding in its own right, not a placeholder for a grade we haven't gotten to.
- A
- Cannot train on you. Your content is not available to the company in usable form.
- B
- Off by default. Training happens only if you opt in.
- C
- On by default, and the product tells you so. One switch, in settings, on every plan.
- D
- On by default. An opt-out exists, but you have to go looking for it.
- E
- On by default. The opt-out is real but sold — it arrives with a higher plan. Privacy paywall.
- F
- On by default, with no way out on the plan you are on — and nothing short of reading the terms would have told you.
- UNCLEAR
- The policy does not permit a determination. A finding, not an omission.
E exists as its own letter, not a footnote on D or F, specifically for the plan structure this site is built to track: an opt-out that's real, but arrives bundled with a more expensive plan. "The opt-out exists" and "the opt-out exists if you pay" are different findings and get different grades.
3. One company, one grade — from the plan most people are on
A company's overall grade is the worst grade among its consumer-reachable tiers — the plans an ordinary individual can sign up for with a credit card, not a plan that requires a sales call and a signed contract. An Enterprise tier that's off by contract doesn't rescue a company whose Free plan trains on you with no opt-out; a contract-only tier that we can't determine anything about (UNCLEAR) doesn't drag down a company whose actual consumer plan is clearly graded, either — see the tier matrix on any verdict page for the full, ungeneralized breakdown plan by plan.
4. What counts toward the homepage counters
"Train on you by default" counts a verdict once if its most-reachable consumer plan's default state istrains_with_optout ortrains_no_optout. "Puts the opt-out behind a paid plan" counts a verdict with any tier marked privacy_paywall: true. Nothing here is inferred from a company's reputation or category — only from what's marked on a specific, cited tier.
5. Verdicts go stale
A verdict whose most recent check is more than 180 days old renders visibly stale on its own page and is excluded from every homepage counter and the scoreboard's default sort — it doesn't disappear, and it isn't quietly kept in the count. A company doesn't get graded better by us falling behind on checking it.
6. UNCLEAR is a finding, not a shrug
When a tier is UNCLEAR, the verdict page shows exactly what was searched: which documents, which terms, how many true matches came back. If a real word match exists but isn't about AI training — "training" meaning a paid certification course, say — we say that explicitly rather than letting a raw hit count imply we found nothing at all. See every UNCLEAR verdict for real examples.
Corrections
If a clause is wrong, out of date, or missing context, tell us. A correction is published beside the original finding, not in place of it — the record shows what we said and when we said it, and what changed.