Mumsnet Best | Mumsnet

What is Mumsnet Best?

At Mumsnet, our mission statement is to make parents' lives easier. Whether you're planning your first child or you've done this before, the amount of products available can be overwhelming. How can you be sure that a product really is as good as it says? How do you decide which pushchair or car seat is right for you?

With our reviews section, we aim to make these decisions simple. Our Best awards focus on particular lifestyles and needs — so whether you're looking for a pushchair that will work in the city, a breast pump that you can work around, or a changing bag that can hold enough for twins, we've got you covered.

How do you decide what's Best?

Each Mumsnet Best winner has been tested against at least 10 competitors, in standardised and real-world situations, by experienced parents.

For each category you see onsite, we spend hours trawling the Mumsnet forums, reading product reviews and speaking to experts to put together a shortlist of the best products on the market. We then send between 10-15 of the top products to a parent tester who puts each item through its paces. By using the same tester across a category, we are able to compare products like-for-like, making our reviews fair, informed and nuanced.

During our testing, the products are pushed to the limit. Buggies and travel systems cover 50km, highchairs are dropped 20 times, and anything involving washable fabric must endure “the bolognese test”. You can read more about product-specific tests on our How We Test pages, linked at the bottom of each category.

At the end of the testing period, the products are scored on six criteria: Safety and Stability, Assembly, Day-to-Day usage, Cleanliness and Hygiene, Aesthetics, and Value for Money. These scores are collated, and the five highest scoring products are awarded a Mumsnet Best badge and reviewed in detail on our website.

We want to make sure that everything we recommend adheres to the highest safety standards, so we also speak to a number of experts including the Lullaby Trust and the International Hip Dysplasia Institute.

Do brands pay you for reviews?

Put simply: no. None of our product reviews are paid for, and there is no fee to enter a product into our testing process.

Once a product wins Mumsnet Best, the brand have the option to pay a licensing fee to use the badge in their marketing material. Sometimes, we earn revenue through affiliate (click-to-buy) links in our articles.

Our First Look pages are paid-for content. You can read more about this here.

How can I trust that your reviews aren't biased?

Our testers are not aware of which brands we have affiliate relationships with, and have no contact with any marketing or sales teams. This means their reviews and scores are based on performance only and are not influenced by any other motivators.

We strive to present an honest view of each product, and will never publish anything we do not believe to be true. However, if we do get something wrong, we want to know. At Mumsnet our users always come first, and we want to know that what we’re recommending lines up with your experiences. We will always encourage feedback from Mumsnetters.

I am a brand that would like my product to win Mumsnet Best

Our Best winners are featured on our Reviews site with a full product review, which is promoted across Mumsnet. Brands that are awarded a Mumsnet Best badge can then pay a licensing fee to use it on any offline or online marketing material for that particular product, for a period of 12 months.

If you'd like to find out more about how your product could win Mumsnet Best, please email [email protected].