Why This Page Exists
The promise of this site is a verified cost ledger. That is a claim about method, not about confidence — so it needs to be written down where you can hold it against the numbers.
This page covers one thing only: where the money figures come from and how much you should trust each one. The rules for reviewing a product and ranking it — scoring, fit, what gets recommended — are on the How We Test & Rank page.
The short version: every price in a hu-qian.com cost table is read from the vendor’s own pricing page on a stated date. If I cannot do that, the number is not published.
1. Where a Price Comes From
There is exactly one acceptable primary source for a price: the vendor’s own pricing page.
| Order | Source | How it is used |
|---|---|---|
| Primary | The vendor’s own pricing / billing page | This is the number that goes in the table. Nothing overrides it. |
| Cross-reference | A second source that is not the vendor (a reseller, an official help-centre article, a rate sheet PDF) | Used only to catch a reading error. Must be labelled as a cross-reference, never published as the price on its own. |
| Not a source | Search-result snippets, AI-generated summaries, cached price trackers, affiliate roundups, YouTube reviews | Never used to establish a figure. At most a lead that sends me to the primary page. |
Two consequences worth stating plainly:
- A vendor’s own help centre counts as the vendor. When OpenAI’s pricing page will not load but its help centre states the plan price and the billing terms, that is a primary source and it gets cited as one.
- When two vendor pages disagree, the vendor is wrong, not the method. I cite the page that governs billing and note the conflict rather than silently picking the nicer number.
2. What Every Cost Table Must Carry
A dollar figure on its own is not verifiable. Every table on this site carries four fields, and a row missing any of them does not ship:
| Field | Why it is mandatory | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Price | The number itself | $59 |
| Billing cycle | The rate is often only real under annual billing | per seat, billed yearly |
| Read date | A price is a fact with an expiry date | 2026-09-15 |
| Source | Where it was read, so you can re-check | jasper.ai/pricing |
Two more attributes travel with every table even when they are not their own column:
- Currency — stated explicitly. USD anywhere a regional price is not the vendor’s own.
- Region — stated when a vendor prices by country, because a US list price is not a global price.
The worked example is the pricing table on Best AI Writing Tools — four tools, one row each, all four fields populated.
3. Three Confidence Labels, and How You Can See Them
Not every number on a cost page has the same standing. Rather than blur them together, I label them, and the label is visible in the table:
| Label | Meaning | Visible marker |
|---|---|---|
| Verified | Read from the vendor’s own page on the date shown, with the URL attached | verified · 2026-09-15 · <source URL> |
| Estimated | Calculated by me from verified inputs, using a stated formula | estimated · <formula or basis> |
| Assumed | A working assumption with no vendor confirmation — a usage pattern, a seat count, a scenario | assumed · <basis> |
A figure with no label is not published. If a number cannot be assigned to one of these three buckets, it is cut from the table instead of softened in the prose. “Around $60” is not a label.
Estimates and assumptions can carry a whole verdict — a TCO projection is mostly estimated and assumed by nature. That is fine. What is not fine is presenting one as a vendor list price.
4. How Often Prices Are Re-Checked
- Scheduled pass: every quarter, every cost table is re-read against the vendor’s live page and the read dates are refreshed.
- Event-driven pass: when a vendor publishes a price change, the affected rows are re-read and corrected within 7 days of the change becoming public.
- On report: if a reader emails a correction, that specific figure is re-checked immediately, ahead of either schedule.
The read date in the table is the honest one. A table whose newest read date is three months old is a table that is three months old, and it says so.
5. What Happens When a Number Is Wrong
- Re-read the primary source. A correction starts by going back to the vendor page, not by patching the number from memory.
- Fix the figure and its read date. Both move together. A new number with an old date is a worse defect than the original error.
- Log it in the Editorial Changelog. The correction is dated and described, so the record shows what changed rather than quietly looking correct.
- Say so on the page when the error affected a verdict, a ranking, or a total.
Silent edits are the thing this section exists to prevent. If a price was wrong on Tuesday and right on Thursday, the changelog says so.
6. Affiliate Relationships Do Not Change a Number
Some links on this site are affiliate links. No price in a cost table is affected by that. The rules are the same for a vendor that pays a commission and one that does not:
- The number in the table is the vendor’s own price, read from the vendor’s own page.
- A renewal trap, a hidden overage, or a punitive exit cost is written down whether or not the vendor pays anything.
- No platform can pay to be ranked higher, removed from a limitation, or given a friendlier billing note.
The full statement — what an affiliate link is, how it is labelled, and what is refused — is on the Affiliate Disclosure page.
7. What I Do Not Do
- No tax, legal, or financial advice. Cost tables describe what a vendor charges. They are not advice to buy, and they are not a substitute for your accountant.
- No vendor copy approval. Vendors do not get to review, edit, or approve a page before it is published. A correction is made because a figure was wrong, not because a vendor disliked the tone.
- No paid placements, no sponsored ranking, no “as seen in” slots.
- No invented experience. If I have not tested something hands-on, I do not write “I tested it”. Analysis of public data is labelled as analysis of public data.
- No unlabelled numbers. Covered in section 3, and it is the rule the other six depend on.
Questions or a Correction
If you want the source behind a specific number, or you think one is wrong, email [email protected] or use the Contact page. Corrections get answered and, when they change a figure, they get logged.
