About
An honest guide to what actually keeps bugs off
BugRepellent.Guide exists to answer one question well: which insect repellents work, why, and which brands are being straight with you.
The insect repellent aisle is one of the most confusing in the store. Concentrations are hidden, “natural” is used as a safety claim, protection times are quoted without evidence, and fear sells more product than data does.
We built this site to cut through that: a research library of peer-reviewed studies, an ingredient encyclopedia, protection-time estimates with stated confidence, and a fully published scoring system that rewards transparency and punishes hidden formulas.
Why this site exists
This guide started as our own homework. We're the team building Notch, an insect repellent brand (not yet launched), and to make something we'd actually trust we had to read the studies, decode the EPA labels, and work out which actives hold up and for how long. We ended up with a research library and a scoring system far more useful than any one product. It didn't feel right to keep that to ourselves, so we're publishing all of it.
We want to be upfront about what that makes us: not a neutral third party. We have a financial interest in a repellent brand, and we won't pretend otherwise. What we can promise is that the work is checkable. The scoring rules are published in full and applied by code to every product identically, and every score expands into per-pillar arithmetic on the product page. When Notch is on the site, it's scored by those same rules and labeled as ours, so you can weigh it accordingly.
Editorial standards
Evidence before opinion
Every protection claim on this site traces back to a published study, an EPA label, or an explicitly-labeled model with a confidence level attached. When the evidence is thin, we say it is thin.
Transparency is a feature we review
A repellent's formula is consumer information, not a trade secret. Products that disclose every active ingredient and concentration are rewarded; proprietary blends and vague "essential oil" statements are penalized visibly, with a letter grade.
Honesty about natural products
Many plant-based repellents genuinely work, but only for a short time. We publish the real numbers (often under an hour of complete protection) rather than pretending botanicals match DEET or dismissing them entirely. The goal is honesty, not advocacy in either direction.
No pay-for-placement, ever
Rankings come from the scoring rules on our methodology page, applied by code to every product identically. Retail commissions never touch a score, and no brand can buy a recommendation, including Notch, the repellent brand our own team is building (see “Who's behind this site” above).
We show our work
Every score expands into per-pillar arithmetic on the product page. Every study in the research library links to its source. If you think we got something wrong, you can check.
How we make money
Two ways, and you should know about both. Some links to retailers (Amazon, Walmart, brand stores) earn us a commission when you buy through them, which keeps the site running. And more directly: we make Notch. When you buy a competitor through one of our links we earn a small affiliate cut; when you buy Notch, we keep the full margin. That is a real incentive, and we would rather name it than have you discover it.
What that money cannot do is move a score. Rankings come from the published rules on our methodology page, applied by code before any link is attached, and a product's score, Notch's included, is identical whether or not we earn a cent from it. The full arithmetic is on every product page, so you can check.
Corrections
If a study is mischaracterized, an ingredient list is out of date, or a score looks wrong, we want to know. Every page shows when it was last updated, and the underlying data is versioned so corrections are traceable.