How The Ebike Press is made.

Provenance: where the data comes from

The catalog is ingested from retailer storefronts, normalized, and exported to a committed dataset the site builds from. Each model and offer carries a provenance field naming its source storefront and a confidence grade. The current build reads 1071 live offers across 50 retailers, last seen Jul 14, 2026. Prices refresh nightly; the site is rebuilt from the fresh export.

The density gate

A model only earns its own page once it has at least two verified specs and at least one live offer. Skeleton records are tracked and counted, but never generate thin pages: of 671 raw catalog entries (671 distinct models after cross-listing dedupe), 367 pass the gate today. The rest appear in the database table with whatever is honestly known — an em dash where nothing is.

The index floor

Retailer feeds carry accessories, bare motors, forks, controllers and open-box clearance units alongside complete bikes. Before any row can feed a median, a deals board, THE INDEX strip or a ranking, it must clear the floor: a same-currency price of at least $800 and at least one headline spec (motor W, battery Wh or claimed range). Today 298 CAD rows and 361 USD rows clear it. Rows below the floor stay fully visible in the database tables — they just can't move a statistic.

The Value Score

The index's signature composite, computed within one market at a time — CAD prices are only ever ranked against CAD prices, USD against USD, so a currency never distorts a score. A model qualifies in a market when its best offer there clears the index floor and it carries ≥2 of the three headline specs; 338 models qualify in at least one market right now. Within each category-and-market pool:

Each qualifying model earns a spec score — how its headline numbers (motor, battery, range) stack up, normalized against the field — and a price score from where its best same-currency price ranks in the pool: the cheapest machine scores highest, the priciest lowest. The two combine into a single 0–100 Value Score, weighted toward specs, so a bike earns its rank on genuine capability first and price second.

Scores are comparable within one category-and-market pool, not across categories or currencies. A model sold in both countries carries two scores — its page names the pool behind each. Models that don't qualify simply don't rank — no score is ever invented. The boards — the category rankings' permanent home, formerly at /best/ — and the verdict box on every model page are ordered by this number and recompute on every nightly build.

Deal verification

A markdown is listed only when the retailer's own storefront shows a compare-at (list) price above the current price — the strike-through you'd see on their site, read nightly. We never infer discounts from price history guesses and never write "up to". Today that's 161 genuine markdowns in CAD and 273 in USD, each labeled with the date the price was last seen.

Store types

Every merchant on the stores board carries a computed type, judged on what its floor actually stocks. A store's house marque is the brand run by the same operation (Aventon the store selling Aventon the brand), resolved from the catalog — an explicit override map first, then slug and name normalization. A house floor sells only its own marque; a reseller sells only other makers' machines and has no marque of its own; a hybrid runs both at once — a house shelf and a reseller floor. The type is recomputed nightly and never touches the Store Index score, which is the same arithmetic for every floor.

Markets and currency

The offer's currency is the market source of truth: CAD offers make up the Canada edition (the root site), USD offers the United States edition. The two never mix in a table column, a median, or a deals board. Canada: 298 models, median $2,799 CAD. United States: 361 models, median $1,999 USD. Statistics use medians, not means — one $16,000 Stromer shouldn't move the market.

The editorial desk

The index is half the paper. The other half is a working newsroom: real writers who ride. Reviews are written from time on physical bikes — machines in our hands, ridden on real streets — and features and guides are written by people, not generated from the catalog. The two desks are deliberately separated: opinion lives in the prose and never touches the arithmetic. A glowing review cannot move a Value Score, and no Value Score can buy a good review.

Independence

The Ebike Press is an independent publication. Every brand and store is listed and scored under exactly the same rules — same gate, same score, same deal verification — and no listing is paid or favored. Some outbound links may become affiliate links, always tagged rel="sponsored"; affiliate status never affects ranking, which is pure arithmetic.

Use the data

Machine readers can use the llms.txt for a structured map of the site. A public JSON export of the full dataset is planned for a later phase, once the index is established.