About espresso.compare

espresso.compare helps people choose an espresso machine based on how they actually make and drink coffee — using published specifications, honest pressure and cost numbers, and side-by-side comparison. It currently covers 67 machines from 12 brands sold in the United States.

Why it exists

Espresso is unusually badly served by product content. The headline specification most sites repeat — the bar rating on the box — is the one that matters least, and almost nobody explains that it describes the pump rather than the coffee. Meanwhile the specifications that decide whether you will still be using the machine in ten years (boiler material, portafilter standard, whether the brew group comes out, whether it can be backflushed) are buried or absent.

So this is a database rather than a blog. The specifications are transcribed from manufacturers' own published sheets, each machine page links to its exact source, and the scores are arithmetic applied to those specifications by a formula we publish in full.

What we deliberately do not do

• We do not test or taste machines. No page here claims a hands-on impression, a blind tasting or a measured extraction. Everything is computed from published specs and labelled as such.
• We do not estimate missing specifications. If a manufacturer does not publish a figure, we show an em dash. Silence is data.
• We do not use review sites as sources. Specifications come from manufacturers only.
• We do not sell placement. Rankings are computed and cannot be bought.
• We do not run advertising. The site is funded by affiliate commissions only.

Who it is for

People deciding between two or three machines and unable to work out what actually separates them; people who want to know what a machine will cost to run rather than to buy; and people who already suspect that the 20 bar on the box is marketing and want the real number. If you want a hands-on impression of how a machine feels to use, this is not that site, and we would rather say so.

Corrections

If a specification here disagrees with the manufacturer's published sheet, that is a bug and we want to know. Get in touch and include the model and the source URL.