What this site is
MowerIndex publishes independent rankings and comparisons for robot, battery and gas lawn mowers, built on one transparent scoring rubric.
Every model on the site is scored on the same five factors, by the same weights, from sources we cite on its page: 78 sources across 10 models so far, 29 of them owner threads. Every tag says when to walk past it, because the mower that fails on your lawn is the one bought without checking the lawn first.
Nobody pays for a score. No brand can buy a rank, a badge or a place on the page, and the same rubric applies whether a model is sold through Amazon, a big-box store or the brand's own site.
How we score
Manufacturer ratings, not our measurements.- Reliability · 30%
- Does it keep working after year one? We weight recurring failure themes from long-term owner reports on Reddit, forums, and multi-month videos above anything a launch-week review can measure.
- Performance · 25%
- Does it do the core job well? Manufacturer specs are checked against category norms and validated against owner-reported and long-term reviewer results.
- Usability · 20%
- Setup, app quality, daily friction. App-store rating trends, setup complaints, and support-ticket themes all count.
- Value · 15%
- Price versus what the tier actually delivers. Running costs — filters, blades, subscriptions — count too, not just sticker price.
- Support & ecosystem · 10%
- Warranty length, parts availability, firmware update cadence, and how the brand responds when things go wrong.
Each factor is scored from 5 to 10 in half points; the total is the weighted sum. On every tag the five strips of lawn are cut as far as their score, the weakest factor is drawn as a dry patch (anything under 6.5), and the accent stake marks the median of the model's type so a 7.0 reads differently among robots and among gas mowers.
The plots are drawn from the spec sheet, never measured by us: the rated lawn size to scale, the ground tilted to the rated slope, the lanes at the real cut width, the route in the style of its navigation. Where a spec has no primary source behind it the page says n/v rather than guessing, and the plot leaves that number out.
How this site makes money
As an Amazon Associate, MowerIndex earns from qualifying purchases. MowerIndex is reader-supported. If you buy through links on this site, we may earn an affiliate commission at no cost to you.
8 of the 10 models here link to Amazon; the rest link direct to the brand or a retailer (Sunseeker), and we may earn a commission either way. Amazon does not let us show its prices outside its own feed, so an Amazon-routed tag shows the manufacturer's MSRP and says so; a direct link shows the price we saw and the day we saw it.
Commissions never touch a score. The full statement is on the affiliate disclosure page.
What we don't do
- No hands-on testing. We don't run the machines. We read the owners, manuals, long-term videos and hands-on reviews that do, and cite them.
- No paid placements. No sponsored ranks, no paid badges, no brand-supplied copy.
- No live prices from Amazon. MSRP only on Amazon-routed tags; the checkout price is the one that counts.
- No stock claims. A discontinued or superseded model is labelled with the fact and the year, nothing more.
- No product photos we did not take. Until a real photograph exists, a product's picture is its plot, drawn from its own numbers.
Images
The scenes behind the headline, the type headers, the finder tiles and the guide openers are generated illustrations of lawns and yards, never of a product, and every one carries the caption "generated scene, not a product photo". 16 of 16 slots carry an image today; the rest show a drawn stripe field.
When a real photograph arrives, it is credited where it appears and replaces the generated scene in that slot.
Contact
Corrections, a spec we got wrong, an owner thread we should read: [email protected]. We answer, and we fix the page.