How this works

Short version: people compare two sites at a time, the winner gains score, and score orders every board. Money buys appearances, never picks.

How does score work?

People compare two sites at a time. Winning against someone well-rated raises your score more than winning against someone unrated. Your score also rises as we get more certain about you — which is why participating matters even when you win the same amount.

Who can vote?

Anyone can pick between two sites, with no account. Signed-in people count for more. Paid members count for the most. Nobody can buy a bigger vote separately.

Do paid boosts change my score?

No. A boost makes you appear in more matchups. You still have to win them. Every paid placement on this site is labelled.

Why did my rank drop when I did nothing?

Certainty decays. If you stop appearing in matchups, we get less sure about you, and your score drifts down until you are back in rotation.

How do new entries get seen?

For your first seven days you appear in matchups far more often, and you sit on the New board until you have had ten of them.

What stops people from brigading?

Matchups are issued by us and signed; you cannot vote on a pair we did not hand you. One vote per person per pair, ever. And a pair's weight is capped by how many different people voted on it, not by how much those people count for.

Can I be removed?

Yes — if the site is not yours, is broken for a long time, contains illegal content, or exists to impersonate someone. You can also ask us to take your listing down at any time. Removals are recorded and reversible; deletions are not, so we prefer hiding.

The two numbers

There are deliberately two, and they measure different things.

Score comes from head-to-head matchups only. It is a rating with an uncertainty term, so a site with one lucky win does not sit next to a site with four hundred matchups. The number shown is conservative on purpose: it rises both when you win and when we become more certain about you.
Heat comes from up and down votes, decays over about a week, and drives the Trending board. It is popularity, which scales with someone's audience rather than their work — so it never touches the main ranking.

Vote weight

Not every pick counts the same. Signing in counts for more than not. Having a live listing counts for more than that. Reviewing other people's work regularly counts for the most.

The important part is the cap: within one rating period, a matchup between two sites is worth at most as many games as there were distinct people who voted on it. Weight decides which side wins a matchup. Headcount decides how much that matchup moves anything. Buying more weight cannot manufacture more headcount.

What money buys

A boost puts you in roughly three times as many matchups for a week.
A featured slot puts you at the top of one board for a day, labelled as paid.
Neither one touches your score, your matchup outcomes, or anyone else's vote weight. Every paid placement is visibly labelled everywhere it appears.

Everything we charge for, in one page →

What gets a vote thrown out

Votes are never deleted, but they can stop counting. A vote is excluded from scoring if the matchup was not one we issued, if the same person already voted on that pair, if it arrived faster than a human could look at two websites, or if it is part of a sudden burst that looks nothing like the listing's normal traffic. Excluded votes are reviewable and the exclusion can be undone.

Last updated 2026-08-24. Operated by TODO — your full legal name (crackedlist).