How we work
How we research, and how we make money
Cupindy publishes buying guides and safety explainers about home and kitchen products. This page explains how that work is done and how the site makes money, including our limits.
- We sell nothing. Cupindy is free to read.
- Some links are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.
- Google shows ads on our pages. We do not choose them.
- No brand pays to be included, ranked or described. When one pick pays us more than another, the guide says so.
Where our judgement comes from
Cupindy grew out of a home and kitchen retail business. That business worked directly with traders and suppliers: we went to them, handled the product, measured it ourselves, photographed it, and read what was printed on the box. Hundreds of items across cookware, appliances, food storage and cleaning.
It also gave us years of customers asking the same questions and repeating the same mistaken beliefs. Most of what we publish exists because a real person asked, not because a keyword tool suggested it.
Which plastics are safe to heat. Whether granite differs from ceramic. Why a stainless pan sticks.
What a check looks like
One real example, from our slow cooker guide.
The Prop 65 limit for lead is 0.1 ppm, which is ten times stricter than the FDA limit of 1.0 ppm.
The FDA has no single lead limit for ceramics: its Compliance Policy Guide 545.450 sets five action levels by item type, in micrograms per millilitre. Proposition 65 sets daily doses, in micrograms per day. Two different units, so one cannot be ten times the other.
“Meets Prop 65” is a weaker statement than “tested with no leachable lead”, and the two are often presented as the same. Check which one a brand is actually making.
What we do not do
We do not run lab tests, such as browning fifty slices of toast or putting a pan through a thousand heat cycles.
Our readers are mostly in the United States and buy through Amazon. Where we recommend something we have not held, our assessment comes from manufacturer documentation, regulatory disclosures, retailer listings and published specifications, and we say so.
We earn from advertising and affiliate commission. Neither changes a verdict.
How we make money
Some links to retailers are affiliate links: we may be paid a commission if you buy through one, at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Advertising on our pages is served by Google.
Bonus rates. Commission rates are not the same on every product. Occasionally a brand funds a temporary bonus rate on one item, so one pick can pay us several times what another pays. When that is true of something we recommend, we say so in the guide itself, next to the recommendation, not only here.
- No brand pays us to be included, ranked or described in a particular way
- We do not accept payment for coverage or send drafts to manufacturers for approval
- Some guides conclude you should buy nothing. Those pages earn us nothing; we publish them anyway
- Prices change constantly: check the current price on the retailer’s own page before buying
AI and images
We use AI tools to help draft and structure our articles, and to create some illustrations. We say so because readers are entitled to know.
Choosing the topics, checking the documents, knowing what customers actually get wrong, and deciding what a guide says. A person decides what is published and is responsible for it.
Some images on our guides are AI-generated illustrations, not photos of the products we recommend. Product photos come from the retailer.
Not every sentence on this site has been checked against a source. The ones we treat as non-negotiable are our rules, below.
Our rules
Five rules we hold every guide to.
- Claims about chemicals, regulations and safety are checked at source
Any sentence naming a brand alongside a chemical, a regulation or a safety claim is verified against the primary document before it publishes.
- Missing information is reported, not hidden
If we could not find a manufacturer’s disclosure, the guide says so, including when that brand is one of our picks.
- Every recommendation names a drawback
A pick with no downside is an advertisement.
- We say what we have and have not handled
No guide implies hands-on testing that did not happen.
- Corrections are made on the page and dated
We do not quietly edit an error out of existence.
Corrections
If something on this site is wrong, we want to know. Send us the page and what is incorrect. If you are right, we correct the page and note the change and the date on it.
This page describes our standards as of October 2026. If we change how we work, we will change this page.
We read the filings so you don’t have to
One short email when a recall, a label rewrite or a filing changes the answer. No sponsored picks.