Sources and method for comparing LinkedIn and its alternatives
Comparison pages should say where their information came from and what they left out. This page does that, including the parts of the method that are weakest.
How sources were ranked
Information was taken preferentially from primary sources and used from secondary ones only when no primary source existed. Where a figure could not be traced to something checkable, it was left out rather than softened with a qualifier.
Prices, plan contents, feature availability, free tier scope
Primary
Regulator and government publications
Pay transparency rules and legal deadlines
Primary
Company announcements and help documentation
Product launches, closures, feature descriptions
Primary, with interest
Contemporaneous news reporting
Acquisitions, market exits, ownership changes
Secondary
Vendor performance claims
Cited as claims only, never as findings
Marked, not relied on
What was deliberately excluded
Untraceable statisticsWidely repeated figures with no identifiable original measurement were omitted, however often they appear elsewhere. Repetition is not verification.
Monthly active user estimatesThird-party estimates for platforms that do not publish this figure were left out, because different providers produce materially different numbers using undisclosed methods.
Vendor outcome claims as evidencePercentage improvements published by companies selling a product appear only where explicitly labelled as vendor claims, and never as a basis for a recommendation.
Testimonials and user quotesIndividual accounts describe one person's circumstances and cannot support a general claim. None appear anywhere in this comparison.
Rankings and overall scoresNo platform is scored against another, because the criteria that would produce a ranking differ by field, region and career stage.
Affiliate linksNone are used. No link on any page in this comparison earns a commission.
Where the method is weakest
On judgement: where a classification was borderline, the more conservative option was chosen and the reasoning was published alongside it. Someone applying the same criteria independently would produce a slightly different result, and that variation is a property of the approach rather than an error in it.
On timing: pricing in this category changes faster than anything else described. Cohort-based pricing during 2026 means two people can be quoted different rates for the same plan, so every figure should be treated as a reference point rather than a quote.
On outcomes: no independent dataset links platform choice to hiring results. Any page in this category claiming otherwise is either citing a vendor or extrapolating from individual accounts.
How to correct something here
Errors in this category are usually one of three kinds: a price that has moved, a feature that has changed tier, or an ownership detail that is out of date. All three are worth correcting, and the provider's own current documentation is the authority in every case.
Where a claim on any page conflicts with what a provider publishes today, the provider is right and this comparison is out of date. That is the expected failure mode for a snapshot, not an unusual one.