How the value score works
Formula v1.0, approved 2026-07-31. The scoring spec lives in one versioned file; this page and the catalogue render from it — they cannot drift apart.
| Axis | Weight | Points | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Credential | 35 | exam cert: 35 · cert: 20 · none: 0 | proctored, verifiable certifications are the ones employers actually check |
| Access cost | 25 | free: 25 · freemium: 15 · paid: 10 | RXed house position: free-first; a credential you can earn at zero cost is worth more to more people |
| Demand signal (pending — first data refresh) | 40 | log-normalized job-posting mentions of the credential (Adzuna) | demand signal, never a salary promise |
While the demand axis is pending
Scores are renormalized over the live axes (credential + access cost, /60 → ×100) and the catalogue is labelled provisional. The demand signal will be log-normalized job-posting mentions of each credential — a demand signal, never a salary promise. Listicle salary claims without sources are exactly what this guide exists to replace.
Deliberately not scored
time, level, difficulty, delivery — a 4-month specialization is not worse than a 6-hour badge; these are filters and facts, not value axes They are filters and displayed facts. Facts, measurements and judgments are kept visibly separate on every entry.
Where the data comes from
Hand-curated entries verified against the provider's own pages, plus structured feeds (Microsoft Learn Catalog API today; course-platform feeds next). Feeds are a legal data source only: published links are always clean — no affiliate tags, no tracking parameters, no paid placement, ever. New and changed entries pass a human promote gate before they appear here. Every cell carries its as-of date; anything we could not verify recently says so rather than pretending.
Your progress data
A course tracker with optional passkey accounts is coming. The rule it will ship under: progress data is yours — never shared, never used to gate anything, never fed to training providers.