BSmeter vs The Factual
The Factual answered "how reliable is this article likely to be?" — grading text news stories from 1-100% using signals like author expertise, source diversity, and tone. It was deliberately not a fact-check: the score estimated reliability, it never ruled on whether a specific sentence was true. BSmeter works on the other side of that line and in a different medium: paste a YouTube, TikTok, Reel, or podcast link and it pulls out each main claim, scores it 0-100, and attaches evidence to the weakest one (the 3 weakest on Basic and Premium).
BSmeter vs The Factual: side by side
| Feature | BSmeter | The Factual |
|---|---|---|
| Content it analyzes | Video and audio — YouTube, TikTok, Instagram Reels, podcasts; on the video page via Chrome/Firefox extension | Text news articles from web publishers |
| Unit of analysis | Each individual claim scored 0-100, with evidence linked for the weakest one (the 3 weakest on Basic and Premium) | One credibility score (1-100%) for the article as a whole |
| Checks whether claims are actually true | Yes — every extracted claim is scored, and the weakest one (the 3 weakest on Basic and Premium) gets a live web evidence search | No, and it said so plainly: the score measured signals of reliability, not the truth of any statement |
| Author track record and outlet history | Not offered — BSmeter scores claims, not bylines or publications | Core strength: modeled author topical expertise and site sourcing history across 10M+ graded articles |
| Curated news discovery | None — on-demand only, you bring the link | Graded ~10,000 articles daily and ranked trending topics by credibility, plus a daily newsletter |
| Availability today | Live and maintained — free tier, Basic $3.99/mo, Premium $8.99/mo | Acquired by Yahoo in 2022; team and tech moved to Yahoo News. thefactual.com now redirects to yahoo.com and the standalone extension was delisted in Sept 2025 |
Where BSmeter wins
- Native to video and audio — BSmeter transcribes the media first, so it covers a format a lot of misinformation travels in today. The Factual only ever read text articles.
- Claim-level verdicts. You get a 0-100 score on each specific statement, with sources linked for the weakest one (the 3 weakest on Basic and Premium), rather than one document-level estimate of how trustworthy the piece probably is.
- It's a standalone tool you can use right now — free tier, browser extension, any topic. The Factual's consumer product was folded into Yahoo News.
Where The Factual is stronger
- Author and outlet modeling BSmeter simply doesn't have. Grading 10M+ articles let The Factual judge a byline's topical track record and a site's sourcing history — genuinely useful signal that claim-checking can't replicate.
- Unusually honest methodology. It stated openly that its score was a likelihood of reliability, not a verdict on truth — a distinction most AI credibility tools blur. Media Bias/Fact Check rated it Least Biased.
- Discovery at scale. Scoring ~10,000 articles a day meant it could point you to the best-sourced piece on a topic before you'd read anything. BSmeter can't do that — it only reacts to a link you hand it.
Anyone who needs to know whether the specific claims in a video, Reel, or podcast hold up — and wants sources on the weakest claim (the 3 weakest on Basic and Premium) to check for themselves.
Readers who want credibility signals on written news before they commit to reading. Since the standalone product moved into Yahoo News, that's where its scoring now lives; Ground News or Media Bias/Fact Check cover similar ground for source-level context.
The verdict
These tools were never really competitors — The Factual estimated how well-sourced a written article was, while BSmeter rules on whether specific spoken claims are true. The honest caveat: The Factual's consumer product no longer exists standalone (Yahoo acquired it in 2022 and thefactual.com now redirects to Yahoo), so if you landed here looking for a replacement, BSmeter is only one for the video half of the job. For article-level credibility and author track records, you want Yahoo News, Ground News, or MBFC — and there's no reason not to use one of those alongside BSmeter.
BSmeter vs The Factual: FAQ
Is BSmeter a The Factual alternative?▾
Only partially, and it's worth being straight about why. The Factual scored text news articles on how credible they were likely to be, based on the author, the outlet, and the sourcing. BSmeter checks video and audio, and it rules on individual claims rather than scoring a whole piece. If you want a credibility grade on a written news article, BSmeter won't give you one — try Ground News or Media Bias/Fact Check. If the thing you're skeptical about is a video or podcast, BSmeter is built for exactly that and The Factual never was.
Is The Factual still available?▾
Not as the standalone product it once was. Yahoo acquired The Factual in 2022 (the deal closed in August, announced that September) and its founders and team joined Yahoo News. thefactual.com now redirects to yahoo.com, and its Chrome extension was delisted in September 2025. The technology and the people went to Yahoo News rather than disappearing — but the independent site, extension, and newsletter you may remember are gone, which is why a lot of people end up searching for an alternative.
Did The Factual actually fact-check claims?▾
No — and to its credit, it never pretended to. Its score came from four signals: site quality, author expertise, article tone or level of opinion, and the quality and diversity of cited sources. A well-sourced article by an expert scored highly whether or not any particular sentence in it was accurate. That was a reasonable design choice for scanning thousands of articles a day, but it does leave a real gap: nothing was verifying the claims themselves. That gap is the one BSmeter fills, for video and audio.