A full breakdown of how we calculate Value Score, how often prices refresh, and exactly which retailers we monitor, so you know where every number on the site comes from.
The Value Score Formula
Sticker price is the worst way to compare protein powders. A $25 tub can be terrible value and a $65 tub can be the cheapest protein you've ever bought: it all depends on how many grams of protein you're getting per dollar. That's why every product on ProteinPrice.com is ranked by Value Score.
Total protein grams is calculated as protein per serving × servings per tub. We then divide by the lowest current price found across all retailers. This rewards large tubs, high-protein formulas, and competitive pricing: the things that actually make a product good value.
Value Score is normalized to a 0–100 scale for easy comparison. The raw g/$ figure is always shown alongside it.
How We Track Prices
Our automated trackers fetch live prices directly from each retailer's website. No prices are self-reported by brands. Here's the full pipeline:
- Trackers run on a schedule and request live product pages from each retailer.
- The current price, size, and availability are extracted and timestamped.
- New data is written to our product catalog, replacing the previous snapshot.
- Value Scores are recalculated immediately based on the latest best price.
- The site rebuilds and deploys within minutes: data is never more than a few hours old.
We run this cycle daily, so prices reflect real-time availability including flash sales, subscription discounts, and bulk pricing.
The 12 Retailers We Track
We monitor prices across these 12 US retailers, covering the full range from mass-market to specialty supplement stores:
Not every product is available at every retailer. When a product isn't stocked at a given store, that retailer simply doesn't appear in the price comparison for that product: it never inflates or deflates the Value Score.
Affiliate Links & Rankings
Affiliate relationships have no effect on rankings. Products are sorted by Value Score only. No brand or retailer can pay for better placement, and no ranking is ever manually adjusted.