Methodology & limitations

Wrist League publishes community-reported statistics. This page explains exactly how they are produced. Version 1.

What we measure

• Wrist checks — the watch a participant reports actually wearing on a given day. Not a vote for a favourite.
• On Your Mind — a separate, optional answer about a watch someone is thinking about. Interest is not a purchase commitment.
• The Great Watch Debates — permanent opinion polls. These are community opinion, not expert reviews.

Reporting periods

• All periods use UTC. A day runs 00:00:00–23:59:59 UTC; the reporting date is assigned by our server, never by your device.
• Week = ISO-8601 week, Monday to Sunday (UTC). Month and year are UTC calendar periods. All time starts at launch.
• Rank movement compares with the previous complete period of the same kind. Because the current period is still in progress, we compare ranks and shares, not raw counts.

One wrist, one daily vote

• Each participant has at most one primary wrist check per UTC day. This is enforced by a database uniqueness rule, so retries, double-taps and simultaneous requests cannot create extra records.
• Changing your answer moves your check-in: the old brand loses one and the new brand gains one. Participation does not increase.
• “No watch today” is counted in total check-ins but not in brand shares.
• Brand share = brand votes ÷ all counted watches (one per watch check-in, plus counted second-wrist watches).
• A model is optional. A model always counts toward its brand (a G-Shock counts for Casio). Watch type (automatic, quartz, digital…) is only known when a model is given; we never infer it from the brand.

Two watches, swaps and the official vote

• After checking in, you can add up to three extra watches for the day — one on your other wrist, or ones you swapped to later.
• Wearing two at once counts twice. A watch on your other wrist at the same time is a second vote — at most one per person per day, so the most anyone can add is two votes.
• Smartwatches: if one of the two is a smartwatch, we ask whether it counts as a timepiece for you. If not, it's logged but not counted.
• Swaps never add a vote. If you changed watches during the day, the one with more wrist time is your vote; the other is logged in your rotation and in swap statistics.
• Extras count only when the check-in they belong to is accepted.
• Auto check-in (members): members who wear one watch most days can set a daily watch that is checked in for them at the start of each chosen day. It is still one check-in per person per day, they can change it any time, and it pauses automatically after 14 days without any activity from the member so inactive accounts never keep voting.
• Which wrist you wear a watch on is optional and only reported as an aggregate.

Brands and models we don't list yet

• If your brand isn't in our catalog, you can type it. We first check it against known names and spellings; otherwise it joins a moderation queue.
• Your check-in is saved but not counted until a moderator adds the brand (or matches it to an existing one). It then counts automatically, on the day you reported it. If the suggestion is rejected, the check-in is not counted. Dated snapshots taken before approval are not rewritten; live results update.
• A typed model on a listed brand counts for the brand straight away; the model is attached once approved.
• The public can never create catalog entries directly, which keeps duplicate and joke brands out of the rankings.

Check-ins are not people

Weekly, monthly, annual and all-time totals are sums of daily wear reports. Someone who checks in on seven days contributes seven check-ins. We report distinct signed-in members separately. We never describe totals as unique people, and we cannot count unique guests.

Who is counted

Only participants who choose to take part. Results describe Wrist League participants — not all watch wearers, not any country's population. Our audience arrives largely through social media and watch creators, which skews the sample.

Integrity and its limits

• Guests are identified by a random, first-party cookie. Clearing cookies, using another browser or another device creates a new guest. No anonymous system can guarantee one person = one vote, and we don't claim to.
• We use bot challenges (Cloudflare Turnstile, verified on our server), rate limits by guest, account and network prefix, and burst detection. We do not use invasive device fingerprinting.
• Every submission is logged. Only records with status accepted are counted. Suspicious records are held as provisional or under review and shown as “pending review”, never silently counted.
• Signed-in members form a more trustworthy subset, which we report separately where meaningful. Guest check-ins later claimed by a new account remain classified as guest activity.
• Administrators can change the status of suspicious records through an audited process. There is no mechanism to add votes. Sponsors and advertisers can never buy or influence rankings.

Freshness and history

Live rankings are recalculated from the underlying records and refresh about every 30 seconds. At the end of each day, week, month and year, results are frozen into dated snapshots so historical figures stay stable. Every published figure can be reconciled against its source records.

Small numbers

When few people have taken part, rankings can swing on a handful of check-ins. We label early results and don't generate headlines or social posts until minimum sample sizes are met.