About Tan List

Why Tan List exists

Self-tanner advice often begins with a universal winner even though the real decision changes with skin tone, body area, timing, format, scent tolerance, transfer tolerance, and budget. Tan List turns those variables into a visible decision system.

The site is an independent desk-research publication. We compare public product information, retailer snapshots, structured review-text signals, and consistent editorial criteria. We publish the scorecard, the evidence status, the drawbacks, and the date each page was reviewed.

What our reviews are, and are not

How the evidence is handled

The source capture contained 1,684 rows and 1,175 unique review URLs. One standalone applicator-kit listing contributed 58 captured rows and 49 unique URLs; those rows are disclosed but excluded from formula findings. The formula subset contains 1,626 captured rows, 1,126 unique URLs across 29 listings, and 1,116 rows marked verified.

The scraper intentionally combined recent-all reviews with rating-stratified helpful-review slices. After deduplication, 866 of 1,126 formula-review URLs appeared only in helpful slices, 92 appeared only in recent-all or validation slices, and 168 appeared in both. Theme tags are lexical mentions, not sentiment, complaint rates, or a representative rating distribution.

Read the review-study note for the corpus counts and the methodology for how editorial scores are assigned.

Commercial policy

• No sponsored ranking positions. Payment does not enter the rubric.
• Affiliate links are disclosed. A retailer may pay a commission after a qualifying purchase, at no added cost to the shopper.
• No invented testing. Free or purchased samples do not become evidence unless a documented test protocol appears on the page.
• Corrections stay visible. Material changes advance the page's modified date and belong in the editorial update record.

How to challenge a page

If a formula, price, retailer, score input, or source boundary is wrong, send the exact page and supporting source. We review evidence, correct confirmed errors, and do not promise a predetermined outcome or score.