Editorial standards
The short version
- Every recipe shows where it came from: Tested by DupeEats, Community dupe or Untested.
- Votes and ratings come from real people: one per device, never bought, never removed for being negative.
- Rankings are math on real votes, not our opinion.
- Photos are real, freely licensed or made with AI, and anything that isn’t a real photo of the dish is labeled.
- Prices and savings are estimates.
- No brand pays for coverage.
- Found a mistake? Tell us and we’ll fix it.
Recipes and where they come from
Every recipe on DupeEats carries one of three labels, so you always know how much to trust it before you start cooking.
- Tested by DupeEats
- A real person cooked the recipe and compared it side by side with the original before we published it. We only use this label when that has actually happened. Right now, no recipe on DupeEats carries it.
- Community dupe
- Shared by a home cook, checked against our rules before it went live and credited the way the cook chose. We haven’t cooked it ourselves, so the ratings of the people who made it are the real test.
- Untested
- A starting point written with AI help and checked against our recipe rules. Nobody has cooked it yet. See How we use AI.
The Clone Score is the average of ratings from people who say they made the recipe, on how close it gets to the original. It appears only once enough people have rated it, and we never estimate or fill it in. Taste stars are a separate rating, so a recipe can taste great without being an exact clone.
We don’t publish health, diet or nutrition information: no calories, no nutrients and no health claims, on any recipe.
Votes and ratings
- One per device. Each device gets one vote per debate and one rating per recipe. You can change a debate vote a limited number of times.
- Real people only. Automatic checks stop bots and repeat votes. When a vote or rating looks like a duplicate, we discard it. We never discard one because of what it says.
- No rewards. We never pay for, reward or ask for a particular vote or rating, and brands can’t take part in our results in any special way.
- Nothing hidden. We never remove or hide a vote or rating because it’s negative. Nobody who runs DupeEats votes or rates to push a result.
- No purchase check. We can’t check whether you bought the original or cooked the recipe. A rating means someone told us they made it, and we don’t label any rating as “verified”.
- Enough votes first. A debate shows percentages only once it has enough votes. Below that, you see vote counts, so a handful of votes can’t look like a landslide. To see the result of an open debate, you vote first.
Rankings
Our rankings are built automatically from votes in finished debates, using a published statistical method, the same for every table. A table appears only after it passes minimum numbers of votes, products and debates. Small tables are marked “Provisional”. Monthly tables don’t change once published. If one ever has to be corrected, it says “Revised” with the date. Read exactly how we count.
New menu drops
Our stories about new, returning and departing menu items are short, written in our own words and based on public sources that every story links. We never copy articles or use brand photos, and we don’t add prices or opinions the sources don’t give. Here’s how we cover new menu drops.
Photos
- Real photos come from home cooks who share them under our Community content license, or from us. Location data is removed from every upload.
- Illustrative photos are freely licensed photos of a similar kind of food, used when we don’t have one of the exact item. They’re labeled “Illustrative photo” and credited on our Photo credits page.
- AI-generated images appear only on Untested recipes and are always labeled. See How we use AI.
We never use official or press photos from restaurant chains, or photos copied from the internet. Community photos must not show logos, branded packaging, other people without their permission, or anyone under 18 who can be identified.
The Fast Food Wrapped quiz
The quiz is for fun. Your result comes from fixed scoring rules, and no personality is named after a chain. We show what share of people got each result only once enough real people have taken the quiz.
Prices and savings
When a recipe shows what it costs to make and how much you save compared with buying it, those numbers are estimates based on typical prices. Real prices vary by store, area and time, and we label every figure as an estimate. If we don’t have enough price data, we don’t show a saving.
Independence
DupeEats is independent. We don’t accept money, free food or free products in exchange for coverage, and no brand gets to see or approve what we publish before it goes live. Ads and affiliate links pay for the site, but they never decide what we publish, a recipe, a vote, a Clone Score or a ranking. See How we make money.
DupeEats is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of the restaurants or brands mentioned. See Trademarks and non-affiliation.
Automation
A lot of DupeEats runs automatically: software publishes rankings, checks sources and checks what people send us, following the standards on this page. It’s set up to be careful. When an automatic check isn’t sure, nothing gets published. See How we use AI.
Corrections
Spotted a mistake? Use the “Report” link on the page, or email dupeeats@gmail.com with the link and what’s wrong. If we got it wrong, we fix it or take it down. When a correction changes a published result, such as a monthly ranking, the page says “Revised” with the date. We don’t change a result because a brand asks us to.