How We Evaluate Brands and Products
Our selection criteria, our evaluation process, and what happens when a product stops meeting them.
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We partner with brands in the parenting and baby-care industry and recommend products on this site. Those relationships are commercial, and we think you should be able to see exactly what standards a product had to meet before it appeared here.
Selection criteria
Before a product or brand is considered for coverage, we look at:
- Reputation and credibility of the product and the brand
- The company's track record and how long it has been operating
- Any product recalls, safety notices or regulatory action
- Any controversies involving the company or its products
- Publicly available information, including independent testing where it exists
- Whether the product is appropriate for the age group we would recommend it for
Our evaluation process
Every product and brand goes through the same assessment, regardless of whether there is a commercial relationship attached:
- Safety first. For anything used with or near an infant, we check for recalls, applicable safety standards, and alignment with current paediatric safe-sleep and child-safety guidance. Products that conflict with that guidance are not recommended, at any price, under any commercial arrangement.
- Claims must be supportable. Health and developmental claims are checked against the evidence. Where a claim is marketing rather than science, we say so in the article.
- Compliance. We check for relevant certifications, applicable standards, and any FDA, FTC or equivalent warnings.
- Honest framing. We do not recommend products that work by manufacturing parental anxiety, and we do not present developmental ranges as deadlines.
- Clinical review. Anything with a health claim is reviewed by a member of our medical review team before publication.
Rankings and commercial relationships
Commercial relationships do not determine rank order. Our evaluation criteria are set before testing begins, and the drawbacks we find are published alongside the strengths — including for products we have a financial interest in.
Where a commercial relationship exists, it is disclosed in the article itself, not only here. See our advertising disclosure for how those relationships work.
Removal and review
We re-check recommended products periodically. A product is removed from our recommendations if it:
- Is subject to a safety recall or regulatory warning
- Changes its claims in a way we cannot support
- Is involved in practices we consider misleading to parents
- No longer meets the criteria above
We aim to act quickly, but we cannot always act immediately, and not every brand mentioned on this site has been through the full evaluation process. Where that is the case, the article will say so.
Telling us we got it wrong
If you think a recommendation here is unsafe, out of date, or wrong, email editorial@thebabyinsider.com. Corrections are made openly, with the change noted on the article.