TG4G Rating Methodology

TG4G rates overseas resources across 5 dimensions: Overall rating (1-10) / China accessibility (0-3 stars) / Information-gap value (1-5) / Affiliate program / Price baseline. The underlying data comes from AI crawling + user feedback + hands-on editorial testing. This page explains our scoring workflow, data sources, transparency statement and conflict-of-interest disclosure.

📅 First published: 2026-05-30 · 🔄 Last recalibrated: 2026-06-11 · 👥 Author: TG4G Editorial Team

1. The 5 Rating Dimensions (5 Dimensions)

Every overseas-resource entry in our database carries 5 independent rating fields, so you can read the overall score or sort and filter by any single dimension:

Dimension	Range	Meaning
Overall rating `rating_avg`	1 - 10	The weighted total of 5 sub-dimensions: Performance 25% / Value 20% / China accessibility 20% / Reputation 20% / Support 15%. A score of ≥ 8.5 enters the "Top 10 Picks", ≥ 7.0 enters the "Full Directory", and < 7.0 is recorded for reference only and not actively promoted.
China accessibility `cn_friendly`	0 - 3 stars	★★★ = direct connect across all three Chinese ISPs with no IP blocking / ★★☆ = direct connect but occasional packet loss / ★☆☆ = needs a relay, or severe packet loss during evening peak / ☆☆☆ = unreachable or IPv6-only.
Information-gap value `info_value`	1 - 5	How little-known the service is within the Chinese-speaking community. 5 = almost no Chinese coverage (no Chinese tutorials findable outside DeepSeek), 1 = already widely known (e.g. RackNerd / Cloudflare). High info_value is at the core of what TG4G offers.
Affiliate program `has_affiliate`	0 / 1	Whether the provider runs a public affiliate program. 1 = yes (our "Buy" button may carry tracking parameters), 0 = no (a plain official-site link). This field does not affect the rating; it exists purely for transparency.
Price baseline `price_monthly_usd`	USD / mo	The monthly price of the cheapest currently purchasable plan (USD) — not a promotional price and not an annual-plan monthly average. We also record `price_yearly_usd` so you can work out the annual discount. For services with no fixed price (e.g. proxies billed by traffic, virtual cards billed by transaction volume) we keep the original wording in the `price_display` field.

⚖ Note: Ratings are for cross-comparison reference only and do not constitute a purchase recommendation. The same provider's rating will change over time (e.g. acquisitions, policy changes, exit-scam risk); please rely on the "Last recalibrated" date at the top of the page.

2. The 5 Weighted Sub-dimensions Behind the Overall Rating (Weighted Sub-dimensions)

The overall rating of 1-10 is derived from the following 5 weighted sub-dimensions, totalling 100%:

Sub-dimension	Weight	Primary data sources
Performance / Features (Performance)	25%	Third-party benchmarks + official SLA commitments + our own Playwright monitoring
Value for money (Value)	20%	Cross-comparison of plans at the same tier / category (e.g. comparing the same 1C1G NVMe config across 5-10 providers)
China accessibility (CN Friendliness)	20%	Multi-location probing + user feedback + real packet-loss / latency data
Reputation (Reputation)	20%	Summaries from LowEndTalk / Trustpilot / G2 / Reddit / Chinese communities (V2EX / hostloc)
Support / Refunds (Support)	15%	Official policies + public refund cases + customer-service response records on Trustpilot

Ratings are recomputed automatically every Monday morning, pulling the latest data sources at the same time. If multiple independent users report that a provider's situation differs significantly from what we show, the editorial team triggers a manual review and updates within 7 business days.

3. Data Sources (Data Sources)

TG4G's rating data comes from 3 main channels, listed in increasing order of trustworthiness:

🤖 AI crawling layer (low latency, high coverage)

Vendor pricing scraping — daily Playwright + IPv6 proxy pool crawls of the / + /pricing + /about pages of 49,000+ providers, extracting prices, specs and affiliate links
Google AI Mode retrieval — cross-comparison Q&A to obtain real ratings (e.g. Trustpilot 4.9/5), user complaints and Reddit thread popularity
DeepSeek synthesis — feeding both the scraped pages and the Google AI Mode results into DeepSeek, which outputs structured JSON (18 fields)
RSS / API monitoring — tracking 20 sources such as LowEndTalk / WHT / Product Hunt / G2 / Capterra / V2EX, with incremental syncing of new products and new deals

💬 User feedback layer (medium coverage, high authenticity)

Forum comments — registered users can comment on every /listing page, published after moderation (user submissions require review; anonymous reading is fully open)
Feedback inbox — submissions via the /en/contact form, including provider corrections, price changes and exit-scam warnings
Telegram Chinese-channel intel — metadata from 11.17 million channels / groups plus first-hand feedback from Chinese channels

👤 Hands-on editorial layer (low coverage, highest authenticity)

Hands-on testing of top providers — each month the editorial team personally orders from the Top 20 providers on the rankings to test latency, support response and the refund process
Exit-scam warnings — for example, when Dupay was blacklisted on 2026-05-24, we updated that provider's badge to "Exit-scam warning" across the board within 24 hours
Fast review of new entries — newly added providers have 100% of their fields manually reviewed by editors within the first month

Each record's data_source field shows its primary source label: manual manually curated by editors / hybrid_scan automated crawl / google_ai_mode AI Mode retrieval / public public datasets.

4. How We Score (Scoring Workflow)

From the moment a new provider enters the database to its appearance in the rankings, it goes through a 6-step workflow:

Discovery→ RSS / Telegram / user submissions / Product Hunt API / editorial discovery

Crawl→ Playwright + IPv6 proxy pool crawl the official homepage + /pricing + /about, extracting title / meta / price hints / affiliate links

Classify→ DeepSeek automatically classifies the entry into one of 17 main categories plus a second-level sub_category, with the editorial team reviewing 100% of new entries

Score→ the 5 sub-dimensions are scored independently and weighted into the overall rating; China accessibility uses multi-location probing; information-gap value is assessed subjectively by the editorial team

Review→ the editorial team spot-checks entries, and before anything enters the rankings we manually re-verify the affiliate links and price accuracy

Publish→ the entry enters the /en/listings full directory → a rating ≥ 7 enters the category Top 10 → a rating ≥ 8.5 enters the /en/best-2026 annual picks

Ratings are recomputed automatically every Monday, and the /best-{year} rankings are regenerated by cron on January 1st each year and on the 1st of every month, with a 5-minute cache in between to keep the experience responsive for visitors.

5. Transparency Statement (Transparency)

TG4G is an independently operated directory site, not owned by any specific provider or group. We have a single revenue source: affiliate commissions. This means:

✅ Our commitments:

All affiliate links are marked rel="sponsored nofollow noopener", in line with W3C and Google recommendations
Whether you use an affiliate link or visit the official site directly, the price you pay is exactly the same
Whether a provider has an affiliate program (the has_affiliate field) does not affect its rating, nor whether it makes the rankings
The rating dimensions are public, the scoring formula is public (this page), and the raw rating data can be requested via /en/contact
Editorial team members hold no equity in any provider and do not accept private paid promotion (with the exception of sponsored slots, see below)

⚠ Conflict-of-interest disclosure:

Affiliate commissions — when a user signs up or buys via a "Buy" button on /en/listings, TG4G may earn a commission (typically 10-30%); this does not affect the final price you pay
Sponsored Slot (paid placement) — the top 1-3 positions in a category may be paid placements; when they are, a Sponsored label is shown and the affiliate link is marked separately. A Sponsored Slot does not affect the overall rating; it only affects ordering within the category
Provider self-nomination — providers can apply for inclusion via /en/contact, but the TG4G editorial team retains final say over whether to include and whether to rank them; self-nomination does not affect the rating
Handling user feedback — if a provider finds a negative rating to be incorrect, it can submit evidence via /en/contact to request a review; the editorial team responds within 7 business days, and a negative rating will not be unilaterally removed because of a provider complaint — it will only be corrected where the facts are wrong

All methodology and disclosures on this page are reviewed quarterly; the revision log can be found at /en/about. This methodology will also be adjusted as Google's E-E-A-T standards evolve.

6. Feedback & Corrections (Contact)

Spotted an error in a rating or in our data? Has a provider exit-scammed or made a major change? Please reach out through any of the following channels:

Email: [email protected] (add [Methodology Issue] to the subject line)
Feedback page: /en/contact (with category tags "Rating dispute" / "Data error" / "Exit-scam warning")
Response time: a first reply within 48 hours on business days; rating reviews resolved within 7 business days

This page is the complete reference document for TG4G's rating methodology (an E-E-A-T signal) and complements the /en/about project overview. The two pages are kept in sync — a revision to either is mirrored to the other.