How every cost is sourced, dated, and computed

BestPrintOnDemand exists to answer one question honestly: what does it actually cost to fulfill a given product through each print-on-demand supplier, all-in. To keep that answer trustworthy, every figure on the site is tied to a named source, carries a confidence tier, and is stamped with when it was retrieved. This document is the full account of how we source, decide, compute, and refresh, so that no number ever has to be taken on faith.

We rank sources in a strict hierarchy and always prefer the highest available tier. First is a supplier's own pricing data read by machine: Printful's and Printify's public catalogs and Gelato's price API. Second is the supplier's own public pricing page, read directly from the product listing. Third, and only for a few shipping references a supplier does not publish itself, is a reputable secondary report, cross-checked against the supplier before we display it. We never let a lower tier override a higher one, and we never invent a figure to fill a gap: if no real source states a number, we return null and mark it unverified rather than guess.

Three suppliers are read live. Printful publishes every variant's base price through a public catalog API that needs no key (GET api.printful.com/products/{id}). Printify's product pages price every print provider from a public catalog service, also keyless, which gives each provider's price and its US shipping together. Gelato publishes prices to developers through its own API, read with this site's free Gelato account key: a quote for one item to a US address returns the product price and every shipping method (a quote never places an order). Printful and Printify prices are checked in rotating hourly batches and Gelato's quotes at most every six hours; each live price carries its own observation date. Every other supplier's figure is read from its own pricing page and dated; we do not present those as live, and a supplier whose figures are not public stays blank rather than estimated.

Live prices are fetched on a schedule and stored, never on a reader's page view. Printful and Printify are checked in rotating hourly batches within each source's limits, and Gelato's quotes are repeated at most every six hours because its prices change rarely. A request that fails, times out or returns anything incomplete keeps the previous price and its date; only a complete answer from the supplier can replace or withdraw one. Shipping is one item to the US: the rate the supplier publishes with the price (Printify's print provider, Gelato's cheapest standard method), else the supplier's published rate table for that product, else a labeled estimate from the rates other suppliers publish. We do not track live stock.

Every figure carries one of three confidence tiers, shown the same way on every surface. Confirmed means we read it exactly as priced from the supplier's own API, catalog or pricing page. Reported means a figure we could not read exactly as priced (converted from another currency, or a starting price for a range), or one of the few shipping references taken from a secondary report. Unverified means no real page states it, so we show nothing rather than a guess. Color is never used alone to signal a tier; a text label always accompanies it. Alongside the tier, each live figure carries its own fetched_at timestamp and, where the supplier states one, a source_event_at, so a reader can always see how fresh a number is and when the supplier last changed it.

We keep two clocks and never let one stand in for the other. The editorial catalog (product and supplier identity, print methods, the cited base costs, this copy) is code-owned and changes only when the code is edited; it carries a last-verified date and is never presented next to a live number as though it were live. Live data carries its own retrieval timestamp. Ingestion is idempotent and keyed on the exact variant, so re-pulling a price updates the same record rather than duplicating it, and we retain a history row on every change so a product's cost trajectory stays auditable. A figure whose fetched_at has aged past its freshness window is flagged as stale, not shown as silently current.

The site earns revenue through affiliate relationships with some suppliers, and we are explicit about how that works so it never distorts the underlying data. When a reader clicks through to a supplier and signs up or orders, the supplier pays us a referral commission under that program's published terms (the affiliate-network sources in the registry link each program). Estimated affiliate earnings shown in the back-office are exactly that: estimates, derived from published commission rates and benchmark conversion figures, clearly labeled as estimates rather than booked revenue. That relationship also earns an active partner a bounded, disclosed boost in the default Best value ranking, so a genuinely competitive partner can sit just above a slightly cheaper alternative. The boost is bounded (landed cost is always the largest factor, so a materially cheaper option still wins), every partner is labeled 'Partner', and it never changes a base cost or a fact. A 'Cheapest' sort always ranks by price alone, so the lowest verified cost is one click away, affiliate or not.

Refresh runs on a schedule and every run is recorded. A bearer-protected refresh route (called by the platform scheduler) invokes each connected supplier's fetcher, writes any new figures through a guarded ingest path, and logs a feed run with per-supplier status: connected, degraded (for example, a supplier whose key is not set or whose endpoint failed), the number of rows written, and any error. The operator can see, at a glance, which feeds ran, when, and whether each supplier is live. Base costs, shipping, and margins change and vary by size, color, print method, and region, so the site is an informational cost-comparison tool, not a print supplier and not financial or business advice. We always tell the reader to confirm the final price on the supplier's own page before listing a product. That combination (a clear source hierarchy, honest handling of gated prices, tiered confidence, dated retrieval, and disclosed affiliate economics) is what makes the comparison trustworthy.