Vetted

Vetted is a consumer-facing AI shopping research assistant founded by former NASA Ames engineer Stuart Kearney (formerly Lustre, renamed in 2022, acquired by Yahoo in November 2025). Its core positioning is the "shopping research layer" — doing the homework at the deciding-what-to-buy stage: automatically aggregating and analyzing Reddit, YouTube, expert media (Wirecutter, CNET, Tom's Guide), and vast user reviews, scoring and ranking on 10,000+ factors, and giving "why we recommend it" reasoning. The team promises no paid merchant placements and no selling of user data, monetizing mainly through affiliate commissions and the Pro subscription.

Core features: multi-source review aggregation and analysis, AI recommendation rankings, pros/cons summaries with deal-breaker detection, real-time cross-retailer price comparison (Amazon/Walmart/Best Buy), price history tracking and drop alerts, brand reputation analysis, chat-style interaction, and a Gifts recommendation mode. The Chrome extension overlays the research directly on shopping pages like Amazon, and an in-house expert team of about 30 hand-checks the AI's output.

Use cases: rational online shoppers in the US and Canada, buyers in high-stakes categories like electronics and appliances, price-sensitive comparison hunters, busy people short on time, and gift buyers who want a well-reviewed pick quickly. For Chinese-speaking users it mainly serves US-region cross-border shopping research. Not for B2B procurement or localization needs outside the US and Canada.

Pricing: freemium. The free tier already covers core features like product recommendations, review summaries, price comparison, and price tracking; Vetted Pro is $5.99/month or $59.99/year, unlocking advanced insights, ongoing background research, better-alternative suggestions, and an ad-free experience. There is no public pricing page on the site (/pricing 404s) — go by the in-app subscriptions on the App Store/Google Play.

Reviews: excellent app store word of mouth (iOS 4.8 from 864 ratings, Android 4.6 from about 1.4K, Chrome extension 4.4 from 161), backed by a Webby award and top VCs like Insight Partners, with 370,000+ active users and a 70% recommendation-purchase rate — overall recommendation 4/5 stars. Deductions: US/Canada only, extension updates stalled after the Yahoo acquisition with some users reporting account lockouts, thin coverage of niche categories, and lingering doubts about potential bias in affiliate monetization. Also note a high name-confusion risk (Vettedly, Vetted Closet, etc. are unrelated entities).