How we work
mum.com.au publishes buying guides and explainers for Australian parents, 229 of them so far across 47 product categories, plus category hubs, product price pages and the mum. Spotlight programme. This page explains how that work is done, in plain terms, so you can decide how much weight to give it.
Where topics come from
Every guide starts with what Australian parents are searching for. We look at the questions people actually type in, which pram, which car seat, which formula, whether a product is worth it, and we write the guide that answers them. Brands cannot commission a guide, and a product does not get covered because someone sent it to us. Demand decides the topic; the research decides the answer.
How a guide is researched
Our research is AI-assisted. We use AI research tools to gather, for every product in a category, the specifications, the Australian standards and any recalls that apply, retailer information and what owners report across retailer reviews at scale. That lets us compare a whole category at a depth a single shopper cannot practically reach. Every guide is drafted with those tools, and every guide is reviewed by our editor before it is published and again after. The tools do the gathering; the editor is accountable for what the guide says. We compare and recommend. We do not test products in our guides.
How prices are checked
Prices on mum.com.au come from our own price tracking, not from a brand and not from memory. We take retailer feeds and check retailer product pages on a schedule, in Australian dollars from Australian retailers. Every offer carries a “Price checked” stamp with the date we last looked, so you can see how fresh it is. Where we cannot verify a live price we show an approximate RRP and say so; we never present an estimate as a confirmed price. Prices change quickly, and the retailer’s own checkout is always the final word.
What mum. Approved means
In each buying guide, the top picks we recommend carry the mum. Approved badge: up to three per guide, usually a best overall, a best budget and a best premium. It marks our researched recommendation in that guide. It is earned on merit and never bought, and it is our opinion, not a guarantee that a product suits your particular family. If you see the badge, it means we would point a friend to that product after researching the field.
What mum. Spotlight is
mum. Spotlight is the one place on this site where someone actually uses the product. It is a separately labelled review: a named mum on our team uses a product at home for a stated period, submits her own notes and photos, and approves the exact version we publish. A brand may pay for her time, and the page states what the brand paid for; a brand can never pay for the verdict. Spotlight pages carry a mum. Spotlight badge, never mum. Approved, so you can always tell the two apart.
Who is accountable
mum.com.au (ABN 50 649 952 134) is an independent Australian business. Our founder and editor built the research process described on this page, sets the editorial standards every guide is held to, and reviews each guide before and after publication. If a guide gets something wrong, the responsibility is the editor’s.
How we make money
Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you buy through one we may earn a commission, at no cost to you, and that commission never affects which products we recommend or where they rank. Sponsored content and Spotlight arrangements are always labelled. Brands cannot pay to appear in a guide or to earn a badge. The detail is in our affiliate disclosure and on our how we choose page.
How to tell us we got something wrong
If a price is out of date, a specification is wrong, a product has been recalled, or you think we have missed the pick that should be there, tell us through our contact page. We read every message, and a guide that turns out to be wrong gets corrected, not defended.