These are the rules we hold ourselves to. They exist so that a reader can tell the difference between something we verified, something a brand told us, and something we are unsure about.
Independence
- Rankings and scores are set editorially. They cannot be bought, and they are not negotiable with brands.
- Brands and cafés do not get to review or approve coverage before it is published.
- Advertising, affiliate links and sponsorship never influence rank order or score. Where they exist they are labelled.
- We will decline coverage rather than accept conditions attached to it.
Evidence and sourcing
- We separate what we observed from what a brand claims from what a third party reported, and label which is which.
- Unverifiable fields stay explicitly unverified. We do not fill in an origin, cultivar, harvest date or café detail with a plausible guess.
- We do not reproduce manufacturer marketing copy as if it were our finding.
- Where we cite research, we link to the study or a systematic review rather than to another blog summarising it.
Health and science content
Health-adjacent content is where trust is easiest to lose, so it gets stricter treatment. Every material claim on our health pages is labelled well supported, promising but limited, or not established. Widely circulated figures that do not survive checking, the “137× EGCG” claim and the “35–43% thermogenesis” claim among them, are corrected on the page rather than repeated for traffic.
- We do not make claims about preventing, treating or curing disease.
- We avoid absolute promises such as “no jitters”, “no crash”, “detoxes” or “burns fat”.
- We note risks as well as benefits, including caffeine content and trace heavy metals in whole-leaf tea.
- Health pages carry a last-reviewed date and state that they are not medical advice.
Use of AI
- AI tools may assist with drafting, structuring and code. Editorial judgement, scores and tasting notes are human and come from actual testing.
- We do not mass-generate pages to fill keyword gaps.
- We do not use AI-generated imagery as evidence that a product or café was tested or visited.
Accuracy over time
- Prices, availability and café details go stale quickly, so they carry a last-verified date.
- Ranked products are reviewed at least annually.
- Closures and menu changes are corrected as soon as we learn of them, reader reports are welcome.
Corrections
We publish corrections rather than quietly editing pages when a substantive claim was wrong. The process is set out in our corrections policy.
Conflicts of interest
The editor of Know Your Matcha has no ownership stake in, and no paid role with, any matcha brand or café covered on this site. If that ever changes, the relationship will be disclosed on every page where the entity appears, and we will consider recusing from scoring it. Personal or professional relationships with anyone we cover are disclosed in the relevant piece.
Scope
We cover matcha sold and served in India in full depth, and notable cafés and brands elsewhere in the world, plus the education needed to buy it well. Coverage that has not been tested to our standard is labelled as such on matcha around the world. We do not accept guest posts, and we do not sell links.
Last reviewed 15 August 2026 · Report an error