Editorial policy
How we decide what goes on the page
Anyone can publish a price and a paragraph about a medicine. This page sets out where our facts come from, what a review label means when you see one, what our commercial relationships are not allowed to touch, and what happens when we get something wrong.
Who writes this
Content on PenCompare is written and maintained by the PenCompare Editorial Team. Guides go through the sourcing and review process set out below before they publish, and a page carries a named reviewer only where a healthcare professional has signed it off.
Where our facts come from
Every clinical statement on this site traces back to a document you can open yourself. We do not paraphrase other comparison sites, and we do not treat a provider’s marketing copy as a source of fact.
What we read
- The Summary of Product Characteristics and the patient information leaflet held by the MHRA for the specific product
- Guidance from NICE on who a treatment is offered to, and under what conditions
- Peer-reviewed journals and published clinical trial data
- Public information from the NHS and established patient organisations such as Diabetes UK
- The GPhC register in Great Britain and the PSNI register in Northern Ireland, for pharmacy registration
Where a claim rests on one of these, we link to it, so you can read the original rather than our summary of it.
What we do not treat as evidence
- Provider advertising, which describes a product rather than assesses it
- Other comparison sites — a figure copied from an aggregator is not a price we have checked
- Forums, social posts and testimonials, as evidence of what a medicine does
- Anything a commercial partner would like us to say
The distinction matters most on price. A number on this site should come from the provider, and carry the date we read it.
Review, and what a review label means
Medicine moves. A page written against last year’s guidance can become wrong without anyone touching it, so our clinical guides are re-read against their sources on a schedule rather than left to age quietly.
We are deliberate about the word reviewed. A page carries a reviewer’s name and a review date only where a named healthcare professional has read it and signed it off. Where a page carries no such line, it has not had that review — it has been written against the sources above and edited, and we would rather say so than decorate every page with a badge that means nothing.
Neither case changes the standing position: our guides are background reading. They are not advice about your case, and they are no substitute for a conversation with a GP, a pharmacist or a prescriber.
Independence
Some links on this site earn a commission. That is stated plainly wherever it applies, and it is walled off from the editorial side structurally rather than managed by good intentions.
- Commission, click-through rate and sponsorship are not inputs to the ranking query. The organic order is lowest complete total, then most recently checked, then alphabetical
- Paid placement sits in a separate, labelled area — kept apart, not mixed in with a badge
- No commercial partner sees, approves or edits a guide before it publishes
- No provider can pay to have a mandatory fee left out of the total we show, or to have a correction dropped
The full detail is in funding and affiliates.
Plain English
People read this site while deciding whether to spend several hundred pounds a month on a medicine. Writing that is hard to follow is not a neutral failure — it moves the risk onto the reader.
- Technical terms are explained where they first appear, or linked to the glossary
- Totals are shown in full, with the fees that make them up, rather than as a headline figure with conditions underneath
- We avoid urgency, scarcity and countdowns, and we do not write copy that shames anyone about their weight
- Warnings never rely on colour alone — there is always an icon and words
We hold the site to WCAG 2.2 AA, and treat a failure against it as a defect rather than a preference.
When we get it wrong
We will get things wrong. What matters is whether a mistake is easy to report, and whether the fix leaves a trace. Corrections here are logged, not quietly overwritten.
A price looks wrong
Prices change without telling us. If a figure here does not match what a provider is charging, we would rather hear it than have it sit there.
A guide looks wrong
Errors of fact in our written guides, and anything that reads as advice where it should not, go to the editorial side.
A price looks old
Every price carries the date it was last checked and ages through defined states. A figure with no date attached is a memory, not a price.
Where this policy stops
A policy describes intent. It cannot make a page correct, and it should not be read as a warranty. Checking a pharmacy against a public register tells you it was registered on the day we looked — nothing about the quality of care, and nothing that stays true indefinitely.
The same applies to everything written here. Our guides describe medicines in general terms. They cannot account for your medical history, what else you take, or whether a treatment is appropriate for you at all. That is a conversation with a prescriber, and there is no substitute for it.
Have feedback?
We welcome your input to help us improve. Tell us what is unclear, what is missing, or what we have got wrong — it is the cheapest way for this site to get better.