Fair Score

The strongest possible position: nobody but you ever holds a copy of your data, so no jurisdiction, breach, or policy change can expose it.

These jurisdictions enforce GDPR or equivalent protections, including strong safeguards, independent oversight, and real penalties for misuse. It still involves trusting a third-party server, which is why it scores slightly below fully local storage.

Reasonable legal protections exist, but they may be weaker, less independently enforced, or more exposed to government access requests than GDPR-equivalent jurisdictions.

Either the jurisdiction allows broad government access to user data (e.g., the US CLOUD Act, China's National Intelligence Law), or there is no clear information about where data is stored — an information gap that should concern any user.

The provider has no technical ability to read your content, regardless of a breach, insider misuse, or a government request. This is the best protection available.

Your data is protected from outside eavesdroppers and physical theft. However, the company still holds the keys and can access your content if it chooses or is compelled to.

Your content is stored and transmitted with little or no protection. This leaves it exposed to breaches, employees, and anyone who intercepts it.

Your data stays where you put it. Necessary processors, like payment or hosting providers, are bound by contract and handle only what is needed to run the service.

Individual users are not directly identifiable, but anonymization is often imperfect. Aggregated data can still reveal patterns about specific users when combined with other sources.

Your personal information becomes a commodity, traded to advertisers and data brokers, often used to build detailed profiles about you without meaningful consent.

Your content is never used to train models unless you deliberately choose to allow it, with full understanding of what that means.

The default favors the company, not the user. However, you have a real, unpenalized way to withdraw your data from training.

Your content trains the company's models whether you like it or not, and there is no genuine way to prevent it.

Anyone can inspect, audit, and fork the full product. No single vendor holds all the power over its future.

The base is transparent, but key functionality is locked behind a proprietary layer the community cannot inspect or fork.

You can read the code, but licensing terms restrict modification and redistribution. Real transparency without the freedom to act on it.

There is no way to verify what the software actually does with your data or code. You are entirely dependent on the vendor's word.

An independent audit recently checked vulnerabilities; findings are public for anyone to review.

An audit exists, but software evolves quickly. An old review offers little assurance about the current codebase.

No independent verification exists; you must simply trust the vendor's claims about security.

A clear path exists to contribute or influence decisions, reducing the risk that the project's direction serves only insiders.

No visible process exists; the project's direction is decided in private with no accountability to users or contributors.

No payment, no hidden costs; your data is free with no strings attached.

Pay once, own it forever with no recurring pressure and no risk of losing access after you stop paying.

A recurring cost billed infrequently enough to remain predictable and easy to track.

A recurring commitment that's easy to lose track of and keeps constant pressure on the vendor to charge.

You pay with your data instead of money, often invisibly and without control over how it's used.

Real needs can be met for free with no data monetization tradeoff.

A usable path exists, but restrictions may push you to pay or accept worse terms sooner than you'd like.

There is no meaningful way to use it without paying, leaving out anyone unable or unwilling to.

You know exactly what you're paying for and why, with no manipulation or hidden traps.

Pricing is generally understandable, but some ambiguity or friction may cause accidental overpayment.

Costs are deliberately obscured. Canceling or downgrading is made difficult, pressuring you to spend more than intended.

Prices adjust to local economic conditions, making the product broadly accessible wherever you live.

Some accommodation exists, but lack of transparency makes it hard to know if you are getting a fair price.

The same price applies everywhere regardless of local purchasing power. This prices out users in lower-income regions.

You can leave at any time with everything intact, in formats any other tool can read.

You can extract your data, but it is locked in a format only this vendor's tools understand. This complicates any real migration.

Some of your data can leave with you, but you will lose data or structure in the process.

There is no real way to take your data elsewhere. You're stuck.

Entirely under your control, with no dependency whatsoever on any company's infrastructure.

You can run the whole thing on your own infrastructure if the vendor disappears or changes its terms.

Some independence exists, but core parts of the product still depend on the vendor's servers.

Total dependence on the vendor's infrastructure: if they shut down or change terms, you have no alternative.

Full core functionality is available with zero dependency on a connection or the vendor's servers.

Works offline but is designed for eventual reconnection and syncing. Pure offline resilience is more limited.

No connection means no access to your own data or work.

The widest reach with a genuine open-platform option not subject to a single company's app store rules.

Some choice exists, but you remain fully dependent on proprietary app stores and their rules.

Fully locked to one vendor's ecosystem, with no alternative if access is revoked or the platform changes its terms.

A deliberate, verifiable effort to make the product usable for people with disabilities.

Partial support exists, but you can't rely on it because it isn't documented or complete.

No evidence the product considers users with disabilities at all.

No outside investors demanding aggressive growth or an exit — incentives can stay aligned with users.

Independent of the largest concentrations of platform power, though still a for-profit business.

Investors expect large returns, which can eventually pressure the company toward growth or monetization tactics that harm users.

Subject to the priorities of one of the largest, most powerful companies in tech, which rarely align with individual user interests.

The same ownership and incentives that earned your trust in the first place.

Some change occurred, but the fundamental structure and incentives remain intact.

A new owner with different, unproven priorities and no track record yet.

Now subject to the incentives and priorities of a Big Tech parent, regardless of what the original product promised.

Explicit, checkable commitments about how the company will and won't behave.

Some effort exists, but real gaps remain uncovered.

No commitments beyond what the law requires; nothing stops the company from acting against user interests short of illegality.

Zero infrastructure means zero environmental footprint to account for — as good as any commitment could be.

The company has measured and disclosed its footprint, and made real commitments to reduce it.

Some effort is visible, but without a real policy to back it up, it's hard to know whether it's substantive or superficial.

No transparency whatsoever about the environmental costs of running the product.

A long track record of active maintenance and staying power.

Established enough to have shown some staying power, but not yet fully proven long-term.

Too new to have a track record — longevity and stability remain unproven.

Signs of a healthy, ongoing project likely to keep improving and stay maintained.

Still receiving updates but with limited visibility into the direction or health of the community.

Little sign of ongoing maintenance — a real risk that support and updates disappear entirely.