EDITORIAL METHOD
How we rank robot mowers.
The short version: your yard is measured, every mower is scored against it by the same rules, and the list is sorted by that score. Nothing else moves a mower up.
Measure the yard
From an address we fetch the parcel boundary from public county or state records, building footprints, elevation samples, and a satellite image. A model labels what is in the image; the pixels draw the exact lawn edges. You can correct the outline on the map, and your corrections win.
Score every mower against that yard
Each mower in the catalog is scored by a fixed set of rules: lawn area against rated capacity, maximum slope against the mower’s climb rating, tree cover against its guidance system, the number of separate areas against its ability to cross between them, and passage widths against its footprint. Rules are the same for every mower and every yard.
Sort by fit only
Results are grouped into bands (best fit, good fit, conditional, poor, incompatible) and sorted by score. Price is used only to break ties between equal scores. Commission is never an input.
Show the reasons
Every card lists what fits, what to watch, and any hard failure. A mower that is incompatible for your yard is shown as incompatible even if it is the best seller in the category.
Learn from owners
People who save a report are asked, weeks and months later, how the mower is doing. Their answers adjust our confidence in specific specifications over time and are published as owner-reported findings, labelled as such.
Where the data comes from
- Specifications are quoted from manufacturer publications, dated, and linked from each product page. Unverified figures are labelled.
- Parcel boundaries come from public county and state GIS services. Elevation comes from USGS. Imagery comes from Google.
- Prices are checked daily from retailers that permit it, shown with the date checked, and expire when stale.
- Star ratings, when shown, are the count-weighted average of the ratings retailers publish, on a five-point scale. We store the numbers, never the review text.
Limits
We have not run every mower on every yard. Satellite imagery can be months old, shadows hide edges, and a gate width cannot be measured from space, which is why the advisor asks you to confirm passages. Treat the report as a well-informed starting point, and check the specifics that matter to you against the manufacturer.
See also: how we stay independent and the affiliate disclosure.