Why Every "Best Mattress" List is Wrong
(And Most Are an Outright Scam)

Searching Google for the "best mattress" leads to countless results. Unfortunately for consumers, every single one of these lists is wrong — and worse yet, most are an outright scam. Here's why.

Why is every "Best Mattress" list wrong?

The single most basic thing to understand about mattresses is that everyone requires different things from their mattress — based on factors like weight, body shape, predominant sleep position(s), comfort and feel preferences, physical conditions, and more. This means that the best mattress for one person can often be a terrible choice for the next person. By the same token, any generic list of the 'Best Mattresses of 2024,' 'Top Picks,' or the like is inherently wrong and misleading – no list could be remotely suitable for even a majority of people.

Even lists that include a single filter like 'Best Mattresses for Side Sleepers' or 'Best Mattresses Under $1,000' are still far too generic. When choosing a mattress, a single consideration like sleep position or budget will simply not narrow down your options that much. The reality is that mattresses have a variety of characteristics that will make only a minority of them a truly great match for any given person – with the remainder being a poor match by comparison. To provide an idea of how many factors there are to consider, in GoodBed's mattress reviews, we measure and assess over 50 distinct characteristics of each mattress (which we call "Mattress DNA"). When you take the GoodBed Quiz, these factors are then matched against your unique requirements using our proprietary matching algorithm.

Think of mattresses like pants. The best pants for you might be a size 36Wx30L pair of straight-leg khakis, or maybe a size 8 pair of leggings. Either way, you would never assume that the best pair of pants for you would be an equally good fit for your friend. What most people don't know is that shopping for a mattress is just like shopping for pants. Would you ever search for a list of the "best pants"? Would you ever buy a pair of 36Wx30L straight-leg khakis or size-8 leggings just because they were ranked as the "best pants" of the year? Probably not. This is because you intuitively know that the right pants for you are most likely very different than the right pants for someone else. Selecting a pair of pants is first and foremost about your needs in terms of the "fit," and also should incorporate your preferences in terms of the "feel" (and the appearance), and your priorities with regards to the "features." We call these the 3 F's – and selecting the right mattress works exactly the same way.

How does the "best mattress" scam work?

The scam is quite simple. Most mattress reviewers cheat you by following this general formula:

1. Claim to be a mattress expert. Usually this entails boasting about your "chronic insomnia" or calling yourself a "Certified Sleep Science Coach" (a meaningless online certificate that literally anyone can purchase — like going to a website to become an "ordained minister").
2. Sign up as an online affiliate with as many mattress brands as you'd like.
3. Hire some young writers with lots of SEO experience to "review" a bunch of mattresses, and start driving traffic to those articles.
4. Create as many lists of the "best mattresses" as you can think of — for every kind of sleep position, mattress type, ailment, etc. The more spots there are to "win," the more money you can extort from the brands.
5. Auction off the privilege of appearing on these "best mattress" lists, with the top spots going to the highest bidders, who will primarily be online mattress retailers.
6. Load these lists up with as many affiliate links as possible. Make it seem like the links will show the reader more details or take them to your full review — this way lots of people will be tricked into clicking them without realizing that you are actually just claiming credit for any purchase that they may eventually make.
7. Congratulate yourself for becoming one of literally hundreds of spammy mattress information resources on the internet.

Unfortunately, the reason this scam works is because of two fundamental truths about consumers shopping for a mattress. First, most people know very little about mattresses. This makes it hard for them to fact check anything they are being told. Making matters worse, because they're only mattress shopping for a brief period of time, they don't have a good sense of who to trust in this category, let alone that the term "certified sleep coach" is actually code for "snake oil salesman." Second, most people want to spend as little time as possible researching their mattress purchase. They want to "do their homework" before making such a big purchase, but would rather not get too in the weeds. "Best mattress" lists provide an alluringly easy answer — especially since "best" lists work great for many other types of products (more on why this is the case below). Unfortunately, consumers who rely on "best mattress" lists don't don't realize that they actually aren't doing any research at all, since virtually everything they read on a website that has such lists is just cleverly disguised advertising.

Why are there so many "best mattress" lists?

Money, of course! Before 2015, less than 5% of mattresses were purchased online. At this time, GoodBed was one of just a handful of mattress information websites (we were founded in 2008). A search for the "best mattress" would have very likely brought you to GoodBed, where you would have quickly learned that there is no such thing as the universal "best mattress" and that you should really be looking for the "best mattress for you."

Today, online mattress shopping is commonplace. As a result, publishers can make money from referral fees by sending you to various e-commerce sites where you can buy a mattress (this is one of the ways that GoodBed makes money as well). Once this became possible, scammers flooded in to create "mattress review" websites. They had no expertise in mattresses, but did know how to show up highly in Google searches, and also knew how to write content that would make people want to buy – in other words, they knew how to sell. They quickly realized that lots of people were searching for the "best mattress" and yet there were no lists of the "best mattresses" to be found. So they posed as unbiased mattress experts, created websites to tell people the "best" mattresses to buy, and then let the online mattress brands know that in order to be recommended on these lists, they'd have to pay. Hungry for growth, many online mattress sellers quickly obliged. Meanwhile, search engines increasingly served this content to consumers, who unwittingly gobbled it up – hook, line, and sinker – making these lists an increasingly influential marketing tool. As a result, within a couple of years, simply being willing to pay wasn't enough to make the top of these lists – you had to pay the most. Ultimately, the crowning touch was that mattress brands began to create or back review websites directly.

Soon after that, traditional publishers, whose core business of subscriptions and print advertising had been declining since the dawn of the internet, decided that they wanted to get in on this game. They recognized how easy it would be to task a few twenty-something staffers to sleep on some mattresses and/or read some reviews and then write up their very own list of the "best" mattresses. And they quickly realized how lucrative these lists could be for them. Before long, everyone from US Weekly to Popular Mechanics to Merriam-Webster (yes, it's true!) had their lists of the "best mattresses." While these lists are every bit as wrong, the publications behind them are not necessarily evil – they are simply "mattress illiterates" who don't know the harm they are doing to consumers with these lists. As a result, we consider their lists to be equally misleading, but less deceptive than the ones published by "mattress review" scammers who falsely present themselves as unbiased mattress experts.

I see the same brand on lots of "Best Mattress" lists – doesn't that mean it's good?

No. Ever wonder why there is so much overlap between the products you find on "best mattress" lists? It has literally nothing to do with the quality of these products. The brands that appear at the top of these lists are simply the brands that have decided that this is an effective way to advertise their products. Therefore, they have agreed to pay these review sites the most money in order to appear on the top of their "best mattress" lists. 

As explained above, the vast majority of these lists are outright scams, and the rest are written by mattress illiterates. All of them are designed to encourage you to purchase a mattress through the links on that list, which will earn that publisher a commission on the sale. As such, there is literally nothing in the way of quality that can be ascertained from the fact that a brand appears consistently across those lists. The only thing that can be ascertained is that the brand pays those sites a lot of money.

Why doesn't GoodBed have "Best Mattress" lists?

Anyone truly knowledgeable about the mattress industry can tell you that the key distinction between GoodBed and its competitors comes from our expertise and our integrity. This means that unlike our competitors, our top priority is on finding the right mattress for you, and unlike our competitors, we actually have the depth of knowledge and experience to help you do that. For this reason, we have gone 10 full years while steering clear of any information like "best mattress" lists that we think could possibly be misleading for our readers, no matter how many people ask us for it.

Instead, we invested in two unique features of this site that provide far more value to mattress shoppers:

1. The most detailed and accurate mattress matching quiz on the internet – powered by proprietary software, database, and research methodology. This is hands-down the best mattress shopping tool on the internet.
2. The largest database of consumer mattress ratings and reviews on the internet – over half a million unbiased ratings from real mattress owners, each containing critical information about the sleeper who posted that rating so that you can assess how relevant their feedback is for you, and find ratings and reviews from consumers most like you.

That said, in recent years, we have watched the growing legions of people search for "best mattress" only to fall right into the traps set by eager scammers and mattress illiterates. This reality has forced us to acknowledge that we can't help you unless you find us – and if you don't find us, there's a very good chance you'll be scammed. As such, we've had to search for creative ways to provide content that still first and foremost serves the best interests of our readers, but also meets at least some version of what these readers were looking for before they found us and became better-informed about mattresses. This may include articles that at first appear to be "best mattress" lists, but that actually are designed to explain the irrelevance of such a list due to the inherent personal nature of this product.

Are customer ratings a good way to choose a mattress?

Yes and no. On the one hand, customer ratings are honest and authentic, and therefore quite trustworthy. For the most part, they reveal true experiences that people have with a given product or company, which can be legitimately reassuring or genuinely eye-opening.

The challenge with consumer reviews of mattresses tends to be the lack of context needed for the reader to ascertain whether the reviewer's experience is pertinent to them. Most people writing a mattress review don't realize that mattresses are highly personal, and most people reading that review don't either. Therefore, the reviewer tends to say things like "this mattress is way too soft," or "this mattress has no support." These things can be 100% true for the reviewer, but not at all true for the reader. As such, there are many critical details that the reviewer must provide in order to give the reader adequate context. For example, how much do they weigh, in which position(s) do they generally sleep, what are their comfort preferences, do they have any health conditions that affect their sleep, etc. Without this context, it is impossible for the reader to assess how much (if anything) to take from this reviewer's experience. Complicating matters further, most readers don't know that this context is critical, and thus don't know to refrain from drawing conclusions when it is lacking. This is why every consumer review written on GoodBed has always included a series of contextual questions about the reviewer.

An even larger challenge with consumer reviews of mattresses is when they are aggregated. Even when context is provided, it is generally stripped away when reviews are aggregated into an overall star rating. As such, we would generally say that average star rating is NOT a good way to choose a mattress. The only exception would be when the ratings pertain primarily to the service that the company provides, rather than its products, since good or bad service is relevant to any shopper. This tends to be what is captured on our list of the top-rated mattress brands by consumers. By contrast, on every other GoodBed consumer review page (like this one), we always provide detailed filters that allow readers to find and summarize only the reviews that are from people who are like them.

See more on what to look for and watch out for with consumer reviews of mattresses.

If mattresses are so personal, why do I sleep so much better in hotels?

This question typifies the confusion people have about mattress shopping, so we tackled this head-on in its own article. In summary, the reason you sleep better in hotels is most likely because: a) your mattress at home is not (or is no longer) meeting your sleep needs, and/or b) you either are more weary or more relaxed when traveling away from home. Hotel mattresses are purposely designed to be "middle-of-the-road" in order to meet the minimum level of satisfaction for the largest possible number of people. However, when purchasing a mattress for your own bedroom, a mattress that is merely satisfactory shouldn't even be in your consideration set – you can do much better.

Why do "Best" lists work better for other types of products?

Searching for the "best" is a shopping method that most people have used successfully in searching for many types of products – from toasters to wireless routers to washing machines. And for most products, it works great. This is because most products are 'general products' — that is, products from which any given shopper is looking for more or less the same thing.

A good example of a 'general product' is washing machines. We all want one that gets our clothes clean, and does it as quickly, quietly, and simply as possible. Sure, we might have different preferences in a few areas – like color, style, size, etc. And there might be a few features that some of us value more than others – like timers, top-loading, etc. But for the most part, a washing machine that performs really well for you will perform really well for me too. This is what makes washing machines the type of product that is really well-suited for "best" lists.

Mattresses, by contrast, are a 'personal product' — not a general product. With a personal product, any specific model can be absolutely perfect for one person and yet completely terrible for another. Serious runners may recognize running shoes as a good example of a personal product. Another example would be pants — we all know that just because your friend has a certain pair of pants they love doesn't mean you can borrow them and expect them to look and feel just as great on you. What most people don't know is that mattresses are much more like pants than they are washing machines. For more information on the many personal factors involved in choosing a mattress, visit our mattress matching guide.

For decades, Consumer Reports has been a leading authority for in-depth testing on 'general products' — cars, washing machines, grills, vacuum cleaners, and the like. But for the first 80 years of its illustrious history, when they were well-supported by their readers and therefore guided first and foremost by serving the interests of those readers, Consumer Reports never posted a list of the "best mattresses," even though mattresses were the product category that received the second-most reader inquiries (behind cars). The reason, as they themselves explained at the time, was because the engineers there knew that mattresses are a different type of product — one that is highly personal and therefore not conducive to a generic "best" list.

Without "best mattress" lists, how can I choose the best mattress?

To find the best mattress for you, take the GoodBed Quiz. First launched in 2014, our mattress matching algorithm is years ahead and by far the most sophisticated on the internet. In just a few minutes, this quiz will fully assess your needs and preferences across more than two dozen different dimensions. It will then search across roughly 500 different mattresses that we've assessed on more than 50 different characteristics (which we call Mattress DNA™), scoring each bed based on how well its qualities align with your personal criteria.

Your Quiz results — the only honest "best mattress" list, one which is 100% personalized to you — display the mattresses that score highest for you, and are within your budget. From these results, you can click on your Match Score for any mattress to see more details on how we calculated it for you, or click out to see more matches. As you navigate this site after taking the Quiz, you'll see that your Match Scores are automatically populated for you wherever possible.