How we score every repellent
One rubric, published in full, applied to every product in our database — with the evidence behind each number, and honest labels on what we have and haven't worn into the woods ourselves.
Repellent ratings on the internet mostly fail one of two ways. Either they're vibes with a number attached, or they're spreadsheets that treat a 5% "botanical" spray and a CDC-recognized active as the same kind of thing because both say plant-derived on the front. We built this rubric to fail neither way: every score is traceable to evidence you can check, and every judgment call is explained on this page.
The rubric: four weighted parts
Efficacy evidence
How strong is the proof that this active ingredient, at this concentration, actually stops ticks? EPA registration with CDC recognition scores highest; registered botanicals sit mid-tier; ingredients exempted from efficacy review sit at the bottom no matter what the label promises.
Protection duration
Hours of coverage per application (or washes per treatment for clothing products), taken from published label and independent data — the same ranges that power our duration calculator. Longer honest windows score higher; inflated marketing claims don't.
Skin & gear experience
Odor, feel, and whether it destroys your stuff. DEET's plastic-melting habit costs points here; odorless gear-safe formulas gain them. Where we have field notes, they live in this bucket.
Value & practicality
Cost per protected day, availability, and format practicality — a great active in an impractical bottle is still a worse buy.
Evidence tiers: the backbone of the 40%
EPA-registered active at an effective concentration, recognized by CDC guidance for tick protection: permethrin (clothing), picaridin ≥20%, DEET ≥20%, and OLE/PMD 30% and IR3535 20% for shorter windows.
Registered actives at low concentrations, or products whose protection is real but narrow — right active, short window, or wrong pest (a mosquito device does not stop a crawling tick).
Minimum-risk exempt ingredients (no EPA efficacy review), wearables, and candles. Independent testing of this tier repeatedly finds protection measured in minutes, or none.
The worked example: why geraniol 5% ≠ OLE 30%
Some comparison sites score a 5% geraniol spray in the same band as 30% oil of lemon eucalyptus, because both are "natural." That's a category error, and it's exactly what a published rubric prevents.
OLE/PMD 30%: EPA-registered (efficacy data reviewed), CDC-recognized, controlled studies showing multi-hour protection. Tier 1 — scores in the high 7s.
Geraniol 5%: typically sold under the minimum-risk exemption — meaning no efficacy review happened at all — and independent tests of such sprays find protection collapsing within minutes. Tier 3 — scores below 3, and the entry says why.
If a rating system can't articulate this gap, it isn't measuring protection. Ours is built to.
What "field tested" means here — and what it doesn't
TickWise field-tests repellents through the season in Connecticut woods: tall-grass walks, logged trail hours, tick checks, the same routes each time. Products that have been through that rotation carry a ★ Field Tested badge in the database, and their experience scores draw on those notes.
Everything else is scored by Label + Literature review — EPA registration status, active and concentration, published duration data. We mark the difference on every entry because the alternative is pretending, and pretending is how repellent content got so untrustworthy in the first place. Products rotate into field testing over time; badges update when they do.
Money, plainly
We're an independently owned, reader-supported publication. Some database entries carry affiliate links — across every brand we cover, including competitors of our picks — and several carry none at all. The rubric doesn't know which is which: when a non-monetized product earns the higher score, it gets the higher score, because the long game here is you trusting the numbers.
Apply it The scored repellent database → Every product, one rubric, filterable by type, active ingredient, and evidence tier.Common questions
Why does geraniol score so much lower than OLE?
Because the evidence isn't comparable: OLE 30% is EPA-registered and CDC-recognized with multi-hour study data; 5% geraniol is usually exempt from efficacy review entirely, and independent tests find minutes of protection. Same "natural" shelf, an order of magnitude apart — the full breakdown is in the worked example above.
Do you field-test everything in the database?
No — and each entry says which it is. Field-tested products carry a badge and notes; the rest are scored by label and literature review until they rotate through a test season. We'd rather show the difference than blur it.
Do commissions move scores?
No. The rubric is published here, several entries have no affiliate link, and non-monetized products outscore monetized ones wherever the evidence says they should.