How we compile these figures

Every number on this site is derived from published manufacturer specifications by a repeatable process. This page describes that process, including the parts of it that fail.

Where the data comes from

We collect freezer listings from major US retail catalogues and extract each specification the manufacturer publishes — capacity, external dimensions, weight, shelf count, voltage, defrost type, and any stated suitability for unheated spaces. Nothing is measured by us, and nothing is estimated.

Normalising units

Manufacturers state the same quantity in different units, sometimes within one listing. Capacity appears in cubic feet, litres and occasionally centilitres. Dimensions appear in inches, centimetres and millimetres. Everything is converted to a single internal unit before comparison, and converted back for display.

This step is where the most damaging errors live, because a missing conversion does not look like an error — it looks like a number. A freezer stated as 7 cubic feet, read as 7 litres, becomes a unit twenty-eight times smaller than it is, and it drags the category median down with it. Conversions are therefore tested against known values rather than assumed.

Cleaning the corpus

Search results for freezers contain many things that are not freezers. From the raw set we removed:

• 105 accessories and replacement parts — door gaskets, compressor overload protectors, wire shelves, hinge packs. Legitimate products, but a door gasket in a capacity average is nonsense.
• 105 products that are not freezers — mini fridges with freezer compartments, countertop ice makers, storage boxes.
• 10 units whose listing gave no reliable evidence of form factor or capacity.

Exclusion patterns have to be narrow. An early version matched the word “basket” and removed dozens of genuine freezers whose listings mentioned an included storage basket — an overcount of roughly four times. The rule now matches phrases that identify a part rather than words that can appear in any listing.

Where a listing contradicts itself

A product’s title is a second source for anything the specification table states, and the two sometimes disagree. 4 units published a capacity in their specification table that differed from the capacity in their own title by more than a factor of two. The most extreme was a unit titled as 17 cubic feet whose specification table read 17 centilitres — a figure roughly two thousand eight hundred times too small.

Where the two disagree by more than a factor of two, the title is used. It is written by the manufacturer for a buyer, and in this corpus it was right in every case we checked by hand.

Where physics rules a figure out

A freezer’s exterior must be larger than its interior. 8 units published dimensions implying an exterior smaller than their own stated capacity — one 5 cu ft chest freezer was listed as a twelve-inch cube. In those cases the dimensions are discarded and the capacity kept, because the capacity is generally the sounder of the two figures and discarding the whole unit would lose a real freezer over one bad cell.

How baselines are computed

A baseline is the median of a specification within one form factor and one size class. Both halves matter. Uprights in this corpus run from 1.1 to 74 cubic feet, and a single median across that range describes nothing anyone is shopping for.

Size classes are: under 3 cu ft, 3–7 cu ft, 7–15 cu ft, 15–25 cu ft, 25 cu ft and above. Commercial units are identified and held out of consumer baselines, because a reach-in cabinet sold alongside domestic units distorts every figure it touches.

A class needs at least eight units before a baseline is published. Below that the median describes the sample rather than the market and would move if one more listing appeared. 16 of the 21 form-factor-and-class combinations in this corpus clear that bar; the rest are shown as unavailable.

What we will not publish

• Star ratings and review counts. Not published in any form, including paraphrase.
• Exact prices. Prices change daily; a scraped price is misleading by the time it is read.
• Estimated specifications. Where a manufacturer has not published a figure, the page says not stated.
• Test results. We do not test, so we have none.

Known limits

Specification coverage is uneven and this constrains what can be compared. Capacity is published by most listings; defrost type by a minority. Noise figures are too sparse across this corpus to support any comparison at all, so none is offered — rather than a comparison built on the fraction of units that happen to state one.

The corpus reflects one retail catalogue at one point in time. It is not the whole freezer market, and units sold only through specialist appliance dealers are absent. Figures were last computed on 2026-08-27.