How Lounge Frog ratings work: fifteen metrics, one average, no weights

A lounge rating is only useful if you know what went into it. Ours are simple on purpose. Every lounge in the directory is scored by our editors on a 1-to-5 scale across up to fifteen metrics. The overall number you see on a lounge page is the average of whatever has been scored. There are no weights, no secret adjustments and no reader votes mixed in. This explainer walks through the system with real lounges as examples.

The fifteen metrics

The metrics are seating and comfort, quiet, space (how crowded it gets), food, drinks and bar, coffee, Wi-Fi, power outlets, workspace, showers, restrooms, cleanliness, staff and service, views and light, and exclusivity. Each is scored from 1 to 5, and each has a plain definition of what a 5 means. For quiet, a 5 is calm enough to work, read or nap. For space, a 5 means you will find a seat at peak time without hunting. Exclusivity is the odd one out, because it measures how hard the lounge is to get into rather than how pleasant it is, and it is the metric most often left unscored.

Not every lounge is scored on every metric. A lounge with no showers gets no shower score rather than a 1, and a lounge our editors have not yet visited at peak time may have no space score. The lounge page shows how many metrics the average is built on, and unscored metrics are listed under "Not yet rated" rather than guessed.

How the overall is calculated

The overall is an unweighted average of the scored metrics, rounded to one decimal place. Wi-Fi counts as much as food, and coffee counts as much as showers. The number is recalculated every time the page is read, so when an editor updates a single metric the overall moves with it. Our methodology page states the rule in one line: there are no weights.

Take The Club MDW at Chicago Midway. It has nine scored metrics: coffee 3, space 1, drinks 4, exclusivity 2, food 3, power 5, seating 2, views 4 and workspace 3. Those add up to 27, and 27 divided by 9 is exactly 3.0, which is the overall on the page. The 1 for space is doing real damage, and you can see it.

Why a lounge can score 4.9 with no bar

The drinks metric scores what the lounge serves, not whether a bartender serves it. The Turkish Airlines Lounge Business at Istanbul is listed as self-serve, with no staffed bar, yet it scores 4.9 across fourteen metrics. It earns a 5 for drinks because the self-serve selection is broad and well kept, and 5s for almost everything else, including twenty showers and 24-hour opening. Its only 4 is for workspace. The bar type is a fact we record so you know what to expect; it is not a penalty.

The same logic explains Qantas's Domestic Business Lounge in Melbourne, a 4.9 with fourteen 5s and a single 4 for drinks. A domestic lounge with no first class dining room can outscore a flagship if it does the basics perfectly.

Photos on lists

Our editorial lists, including the top-five lists by metric, show each lounge with a photo. Editors add photos and credit each one to its source, and signed-in readers can vote on which photo represents a lounge in listings. A lounge without a usable photo may be left off a list even when its score qualifies, because a list entry without a picture tells you very little about the room. The score itself never depends on a photo.

Reader reviews are separate

Signed-in readers can leave one review per lounge, with a 1-to-5 star rating and an optional write-up, and they can edit it later. Reviews have their own average, shown separately on the page, and they never change the editorial scores. The star ratings that search engines display for a lounge page come only from reader reviews, so a lounge with no reviews shows no stars there, even if our editors gave it a 4.9. If you want to influence the visible rating, write a review; if you think an editorial score is wrong, use the report link on the page.

How to read the Top 100

The Top 100 page ranks lounges by overall rating by default, with a tab for each of the fifteen metrics. Pick showers and you get the hundred best lounges for showers, scored on that metric alone. Only lounges scored on the selected metric appear, so a lounge with no shower score is left out rather than counted as zero. Ties go to the higher overall rating, then to alphabetical order. A lounge with an announced closing date is marked as closing until that date passes; after that it leaves the rankings, although its page and its old scores stay online.

Two habits help. First, check the metric count before trusting a high overall; a 5.0 built on one metric is a placeholder, not a verdict. Second, use the metric tabs for the thing you care about. If you need to sleep, rank by quiet. If you need to work, rank by workspace and power. The overall is a summary; the metrics are the review.

Related reading

The full rules are on the methodology page. The Top 100 is the quickest way to see the scoring in action, and every lounge page shows its metric grid under the overall number.