What happened to Fakespot
Mozilla acquired Fakespot in 2023 and shut it down on 1 July 2025. The website, the mobile apps and the browser extensions all stopped working on that date. Mozilla's stated reasoning was that it was not a sustainable business for them.
That detail matters more than it first appears. Fakespot was not a hobby project that ran out of steam — it was owned by a well-resourced organisation that concluded the economics did not work. Any replacement you pick should have an answer to the question of how it pays for itself.
What happened to ReviewMeta
ReviewMeta went dark in early 2026. It had been run largely by one person, and nobody took it over. It had been the tool of choice for people who preferred its more statistical approach to Fakespot's letter grades.
Why they really stopped working
There is a technical reason underneath the business one, and it is the single most useful thing to understand when picking a replacement.
Amazon does not serve review pages to servers. If a tool tries to fetch a product page from its own infrastructure, it gets a bot wall or a sign-in page rather than the reviews. We tested this directly while building our own tool: a plain request returns a 404 bot wall, and even a real browser driven from a data centre is redirected to an Amazon sign-in page instead of the review list.
This means any checker built on the model of "give us a product link and we will go and look" is fighting a losing and expensive battle. That is why "paste a URL" tools became flaky, then slow, then unavailable.
The one thing to check before you trust any replacement
Does it read the page in your browser, or does it fetch the page from its own servers? Browser-side tools are unaffected by Amazon's blocking, because the page has already loaded for you, in a session you are already signed into. Server-side tools are permanently at odds with it.
The options now, honestly
| Option | What it is | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon's own "Customers say" | AI summary at the top of the review section | Free and already there, but it summarises the reviews rather than questioning them. It will not tell you the reviews look manipulated. |
| Reading reviews yourself | Sort by most recent, read the 2- and 3-star ones | Genuinely effective and costs nothing. Slow, and easy to skip when you are in a hurry. |
| Listicle "alternatives" | Roundup articles naming several tools | A lot of the names in these are pages about a tool rather than a working tool. Click through before trusting the list. |
| Prime Reviews Pro | Free browser extension, this site | Reads the page in your browser, so Amazon's blocking does not apply. 10 checks a day free, no account. Our own tool — judge it accordingly. |
We have listed the free options that are not ours first, on purpose. If reading the 2-star reviews yourself answers your question, do that — it is the most reliable method there is.
What our extension does
It reads the reviews already rendered on the Amazon page you are looking at, and scores them for the patterns associated with manipulated reviews: generic phrasing that would fit any product, five stars with nothing specific said, missing Verified Purchase badges, and emotional boilerplate. You get a percentage, and the reason for each flagged review.
It reports signals, not proof. A high score means be careful, not that anyone is guilty. We would rather say that plainly than imply a certainty no tool can have.
Ten checks a day are free with no account and no email address. Unlimited checks for 30 days are $9.99, delivered as a licence key — still no account, and nothing renews on its own. That is the answer to the sustainability question that closed Fakespot: it is paid for by the people who use it heavily.
Questions
Is Fakespot really shut down for good?
Yes. It ended on 1 July 2025 and has not returned. Any page still offering "Fakespot" is either out of date or is not Fakespot.
Is there a Fakespot alternative for Firefox specifically?
Yes — our extension has a Firefox build. Worth noting that Fakespot was the Mozilla one, so a lot of the people looking for a replacement are on Firefox.
Do I have to make an account?
No. That is deliberate. Nothing is gated behind "create an account to see your result".
What do you do with the review text?
It is sent to our server to be scored, only when you click the button, and only from Amazon product pages. No cookies, no login details, no order history, no browsing history. It is spelled out on the extension page.