How the Trust Index score works
The Shades of Grey Vendor Trust Index scores each tracked peptide vendor from 0 to 10 using only two inputs: verified laboratory tests and usage-weighted reviews. This page explains every input that feeds a score. The exact weighting formula is kept private so it cannot be gamed.
Last reviewed July 2026
Verified lab results
Certificates of analysis confirmed through a third-party verification key, which makes a forged COA worthless. Only verified tests count toward the score. A test older than 180 days is treated as stale and decays out.
Usage-weighted reviews
Reviews are weighted by the reviewer's real tracked dosing behavior and account history. A day-old account shouting praise counts for almost nothing next to a long-term user's report.
Freshness decay
Recent verified evidence carries the most weight. As tests and reviews age, their influence falls, so a score reflects what a vendor is shipping now, not what they shipped a year ago.
Exact weighting kept private so it cannot be gamed.
Money
Paid or affiliate relationships give a vendor zero score lift, ever. This site carries no paid or affiliate links at all and takes no vendor money.
Research notes and red flags
The editorial research snapshot (pros, cons, red flags, pricing) is context only and never enters the Trust Index score.
Unverified uploads
A pending COA renders on the page but is excluded from the score until its verification key is confirmed.
Community chatter
Mentions on Reddit or GLP-1 forums never enter the Trust Index. Public chatter is easy to fake and is no substitute for lab data. Shades of Grey monitors these sources to discover and track vendors, and is building a clearly labeled Community Signal indicator that summarizes them for completeness, always shown separately from the score.
Each vendor carries a channel label — how the product is acquired through them. It is a structural fact about the seller, not a judgement of any one vendor: the Trust Index score already measures verified quality, and the channel label is kept separate from it. The label describes the category's general legal standing in the United States; an individual vendor can be better or worse than its category.
- Manufacturer-direct
- The drug's maker selling directly (for example a pharma manufacturer's own program). FDA-approved products through a licensed channel.
- Telehealth
- A licensed telehealth provider that prescribes and dispenses, often via a partner pharmacy. Operates inside the regulated medical system.
- Compounding pharmacy
- A state-licensed 503A/503B pharmacy compounding to prescription. Regulated, but distinct from an FDA-approved finished drug.
- Research-chem retail
- A storefront selling peptides labeled "for research use only — not for human consumption." Gray-market: outside the medical and prescription system, with no FDA oversight of the product.
- Raws reseller
- A reseller or group-buy moving bulk raw material, frequently sourced overseas through chat channels. The least formal channel, with the least independent oversight.
On gray-market vendor pages Shades of Grey shows an editorial review only — the verified score, lab results, reviews, and research notes. It does not link out to those storefronts or list their shipping or payment details.
Gray-market sellers constantly change handles, numbers, and storefronts. The identity graph intelligently combines the signals around each seller: the identifiers they use, the storefronts and payment channels they run through, and what contributors report. Together those recognize the same operator across all of their aliases. It drives the "is this my seller?" lookup and rotation detection, and is kept separate from the Trust Index score.
What a verified test proves (and what it does not)
A verified lab result proves that one specific vial, shipped by one contributor, contained what the report says at the time of testing. It does not prove the vendor's whole batch, future batches, or ongoing supply match that result. Treat every score as evidence, not a guarantee.
Shades of Grey aggregates information only. Nothing here is an endorsement, and no product is ever sold, shipped, or held by Shades of Grey. Research peptides are not approved for human use.