Our methodology

This page explains how the rankings, profiles, and comparisons on CIAM are actually produced. It exists so the results can be checked rather than taken on faith. It is the companion to our neutrality charter, which sets out what sponsorship can and cannot buy.

How we research and verify vendors

Every vendor profile is built from primary sources first:

• The vendor’s own documentation, pricing pages, and product changelogs.
• Independent analyst positioning (Gartner, Forrester, KuppingerCole), cited by name where used.
• Public company records for ownership and funding.

At-a-glance facts such as founding year and ownership are confirmed against the vendor’s own materials before a profile goes live. Where a fact cannot be confirmed, we mark it unknown rather than guess. We aggregate and cite. We do not copy vendor copy.

How the matcher scores

The vendor matcher takes your answers and scores every active vendor against them. The scoring is deterministic and the same for every visitor.

Must-have features are a hard gate. If you mark a feature as required and a vendor does not have it, that vendor drops out, no matter how strong it is elsewhere. Every vendor on your shortlist meets all of your must-haves. This keeps the shortlist honest.

Vendors that clear the gate are then ranked on how well they fit the rest of your answers, in this order of importance:

1. Whether they fit your segment (fintech, B2B SaaS, healthcare, and so on).
2. Whether they support your deployment model (cloud, self-hosted, hybrid).
3. How many of your nice-to-have features they cover.
4. A tilt toward developer-first vendors, when you asked for that.

The weights are fixed and applied the same way for every visitor. We do not publish the exact point values, because the order of importance above is what matters and exact numbers only invite gaming. Ties break by overall fit first, then by a rotating order seeded per session, so two vendors with an identical fit do not always appear in the same place.

Sponsorship is never an input. A vendor’s tier (free, featured, charter) does not enter the ranking at all. A paying sponsor can and does come second. We store the full scored result so any ranking can be audited later.

How we write comparisons

A head-to-head comparison (“X vs Y”) is editorial. It draws on the same verified vendor data, the feature matrix, hands-on testing where we have it, and a stated point of view. The verdict reflects fit for a described buyer, not who pays. If a comparison names a winner for a use case, that judgment is ours and is not for sale.

The sponsored and editorial firewall

Paid placements carry a visible Sponsored label. Anything without that label is editorial, and no one paid for it. The full rule, including what sponsorship can buy, is in the neutrality charter.

Corrections

Vendors change and we get things wrong. If a profile, score input, or comparison is out of date, tell us and we will fix it or date it in the open. Corrections are logged, not made quietly.