Ember & Main exists to make that comparison legible. For every candle people search for, we document what it actually smells like, what the closest alternatives are, and what an hour of burn costs from each. Then we burn them ourselves and publish the number.
We are not trying to convince you the expensive candle is a scam. Sometimes it is worth it. The point is that you should be able to see the trade you are making before you make it, which today takes an afternoon of reading forum posts.
How we make money
Two ways, and we would rather say so plainly than bury it. Some links to other retailers earn us a commission when you buy, at no extra cost to you. And we sell our own candles, which appear in comparisons alongside everyone else’s and are measured by the same protocol.
Selling a product we also review is a real conflict, so the guard is procedural: our candles get no ranking advantage, the winner of any comparison is whichever candle has the lowest cost per hour, and when ours loses we leave it losing.
Who writes this
Robert Christos Nelson runs the site and does the testing. Corrections are welcome and get made on the page, with the change noted rather than quietly edited.