How RumX ratings are made
Every score on RumX is the median of the ratings given by members who tasted the rum, on a scale from 0 to 10. A 7 already means “Good”: buy a bottle and recommend it to your friends. 4.3% of rated rums reach 9 or more. Shops and brands do not give scores.
310,000+ ratings ·
53,000+ members ·
26,000+ rums catalogued
As of October 30, 2026.
What does a 7 mean on RumX?
The bands are fixed thresholds. They say what a score means for your purchase, not where a rum ranks. The last column shows the share of rated rums in each band.
| Score | Band | What it means | Share of rums |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9.0–10.0 | Excellent | Put aside as many bottles as you can afford. | 4.3% |
| 8.0–8.9 | Very good | Buy it and put a second bottle aside. | 46.3% |
| 7.0–7.9 | Good | Buy a bottle and recommend it to your friends. | 35.2% |
| 6.0–6.9 | Pleasant | Solid. Worth trying, no need to buy it again. | 10.0% |
| 5.0–5.9 | Average | Fine, but no reason to seek it out. | 2.6% |
| 4.0–4.9 | Drinkable | No complaints, no excitement. | 0.9% |
| 3.0–3.9 | Poor | Drink something else instead. | 0.4% |
| 2.0–2.9 | Very poor | Little speaks for it. | 0.2% |
| 1.0–1.9 | Unpleasant | Give it a miss. | 0.1% |
| 0.1–0.9 | Inedible | Pour it out. | < 0.1% |
Share of 11,234 rums with at least 4 ratings, calculated on October 30, 2026.
Why is the middle at 8.0 and not at 5?
Half of all rated rums score 8.0 or higher. Most likely this is selection: members mostly taste rums that interest them. The numbers suggest this but do not prove it. That is why it helps to read a score together with the price.
Score and price
The same score means something different depending on price. Up to €50 the middle is 7.2, and only 15% of rums reach 8 or more. Over €250 the middle is 8.7.
| Price class | Rums | Median | 8 or more | 9 or more |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| up to €50 | 2,784 | 7.2 | 15% | 0.1% |
| €50 to €100 | 2,798 | 7.9 | 50% | 0.1% |
| €100 to €250 | 2,477 | 8.3 | 81% | 2.5% |
| over €250 | 1,205 | 8.7 | 94% | 28.8% |
Price class from the database price indicator: shop offers, auction results or members’ purchase prices. 1,970 rated rums have no price class.
How is the score made?
A rum’s score is the median of all ratings members have given it, on a scale from 0 to 10. We use the median rather than the average so that extreme single ratings carry less weight. With few ratings, the score can still change noticeably.
Every rating counts equally: one member, one vote. Public tastings count. One-tap quick ratings (for example during onboarding) only count once text, aromas, taste sliders or a photo are added. Which write-ups you see first depends on selection and sorting. That does not change the score.
We show a score once a rum has at least 4 ratings, on the website and in the app. Below that you see the individual ratings and the note “Few ratings”, but no score. The bands (Good, Very good, Excellent) are fixed thresholds, not rankings.
Who rates, and how are ratings checked?
On RumX, members rate rums they have tasted: from their own bottle, from a sample, in a bar or at a festival. A rating does not require a purchase from us, and we cannot prove for every single rating that someone actually drank the rum. Instead we check whether it is plausible:
- Automated checks. Every new rating runs through checks that look for things such as unusual bursts in a short time, a consistent bias for or against a single brand, and machine-generated text.
- Reports. Any member can report a rating in one click. Our team and volunteer moderators review reported ratings by hand.
- Moderation. Volunteer moderators review tastings and forum posts and remove anything that breaks the rules. Anyone who deliberately deceives is removed from the platform.
The median is not an authenticity check. It only gives extreme single ratings less weight. A missing photo is not a sign of a false rating.
How is RumX funded?
RumX earns money in three ways:
- Commissions. When you buy through our marketplace, the shop pays us a commission.
- Partnerships. Brands and auction houses can become partners and then appear with their own content, labelled as advertising.
- Own bottlings. Together with distilleries we bottle our own rums (RumX co-bottlings).
The same rules apply to all three: partners cannot change scores, cannot delete or reorder ratings, and only appear in top lists if the community rates them there. This also applies to our own bottlings. There are no paid ratings, and a negative rating alone is no reason to remove it.
Data and limits
A score says how the members who tasted a rum rate it. It does not say whether you will like it: for that we show the aromas members name and their write-ups. Rums with few ratings move more, which is why the count always sits next to the score. All figures on this page are as of their date and change with every new rating.Community data vs. our editorial
Four kinds of content live on RumX, and we keep them clearly apart:
- Community data: the ratings, tasting notes and flavour tags members log. This is what every score is built from.
- AI summaries: the summaries on rum pages (description, verdict, strengths and weaknesses) are written by an AI from this community data and our product data (distillery, age, ABV) alone. The overview texts on brand, country, distillery and bottler pages without their own RumX Guide are AI-written too. AI text never changes a score.
- RumX editorial: guides and articles we write and check ourselves (the RumX Guide on origin and brand pages, the blog). These are our words, labelled as such, and they never change a score.
- Commerce: prices, offers and the marketplace. These sit alongside the data but never feed into it.
When we write “the community rates this at”, that is the data. When we write a guide, that is us.
Definitions
- Community score: the median of all member ratings for a rum, 0 to 10, shown from 4 ratings.
- Rating: a single member’s score for a rum, optionally with text, flavour tags and a photo.
- Write-up: a rating with text.
- Flavour tags: aroma and taste descriptors members attach to a tasting; we show their frequency per rum.
- Member: a registered RumX user who can log tastings and rate rums.
- Fair price: a reference price for a rum derived from current and historical offers across partner shops.
RumX 2026 Community Data Snapshot
A frozen, dated record of the headline figures, so a citation does not rot as the live numbers grow. These values do not change after publication.
- 301,986 ratings
- 52,149 members
- 25,541 rums catalogued
- 441,855 bottles tracked in collections
Captured on June 16, 2026. These figures are fixed and will not change.
How to cite this data
Writers, researchers and editors are welcome to use RumX community data. Please link to this page and cite the dated snapshot rather than a live count, so your reference stays accurate over time. Suggested wording:Source: RumX 2026 Community Data Snapshot, https://rumx.com/en/methodology/ (figures as of June 16, 2026).Transparency and the community score
Transparency tracks with how the community scores a rum. Take all rums with enough ratings and sort them by how much they disclose, distillery, age, vintage and cask strength: the most opaque sit at a median of around 7.4/10, the fully transparent ones at around 8.6/10. That is a stable 1.2-point difference (June 2026). We do not reward disclosure in any way; the community simply tends to score transparent bottles higher. The same sort is reproducible on the platform.Three prices, three questions
A rum page can show three prices. Each answers a different question, so we never blend them into one figure.
- Shop offers show what the bottle costs today at the shops that deliver to your country. They appear under “Offers & prices”.
- Auction results show what buyers paid at auction over the last 24 months, including the buyer’s premium. They appear under “Offers & prices” when no shop delivers, and in full in RX+.
- Community purchase prices show what members say they paid, unverified and often years ago. They appear on the “Community shelf”.
How the market value is built
The market value is a research indicator, not a forecast and not financial advice. It is the median of the hammer prices leading auction houses achieved for the same bottle over the last 24 months. We publish it only from two sales onwards, and always as a range: even two identical bottles sold in the same auction on the same day differ by 8 % at the median. A figure precise to the euro would claim an accuracy that does not exist. The prices include the buyer’s premium: they show what a buyer pays, not what a sale nets the owner. The algorithm removes outliers and flags suspicious cases, including manipulation attempts, which the team then reviews. Members’ self-reported purchase prices are NOT part of the market value: what someone paid years ago says nothing about what a bottle costs today. Where we show them, they stand under their own name. We only show historical data and how a bottle’s value has moved, including the rise through 2021 and 2022 and the correction since. We do not predict where a price will go.What members, app stores and the press say about RumX — collected in one place.