3. Definitions
Terms used throughout the methodology.
Basket coverage percentage. The share of the comparison basket for which a region publishes a price.
Comparison basket. The fixed set of product categories on which every region of a provider is scored within one data version.
Cost grade. A value from 1 to 5 placing a region's relative cost percentage in a band, where 1 is the least expensive band.
Coverage grade. A value from 1 to 5 placing a region's service coverage percentage in a band, where 1 is the most complete band.
Data version. One complete run of the scoring over one refresh of the provider price data, identified by a version number carried on every row of output.
Jenks natural breaks. A classification method that places class boundaries at the largest gaps in a distribution, minimising variation within each class and maximising it between classes.
On-demand price. A provider's published list price for one unit of a service bought without commitment, reservation, or dependence on spare capacity.
Price ratio. A region's price for one basket product category, divided by the median price for that category across the provider's regions.
Product category. A fine-grained grouping of price list entries representing one comparable item of purchase, for example a single virtual machine type sold by the hour, or a single storage tier sold by the gigabyte-month.
Region. A named geographic location in which a provider sells services and publishes prices for them.
Relative cost percentage. The published cost score for a region, the median of that region's price ratios expressed as a percentage difference from the median.
Service coverage percentage. The published coverage score for a region, the count of product categories the region prices divided by the count priced by the provider's most complete region.