The Peptide Watch is an independent UK watchdog: we check whether a research-peptide seller's lab testing is real and something you can verify yourself. Lately, sellers have started waving a "Finnrick rating" or a Finnrick "A grade" as proof their product is good. Here is what a Finnrick rating actually is, and why, unlike a genuine Janoshik certificate, you cannot rely on it.
Finnrick Analytics is a real, US-based peptide-testing startup, launched in early 2025 by Michael Carter, a serial technology founder (previously in mobile gaming). It tests peptides and publishes A-to-F vendor "grades," and it has been mentioned as an expert source in mainstream press such as the San Francisco Standard. It is not anonymous and it is not a fake operation. We say that up front, because what follows is not "Finnrick is a scam." It is something more useful: a Finnrick rating is not something you can verify, and not independent in the way it looks.
This is the big one. A real Janoshik certificate carries a unique code you type into janoshik.com/verify to confirm the result on the laboratory's own website, so nobody can fake or edit it. Finnrick gives you none of that: no link to the actual lab, no verification key, no way to check the result anywhere except on Finnrick's own site. Its "Verify a COA" button just checks a Finnrick document against Finnrick. They test it, they grade it, and they run the "verification," all inside the same company. You simply have to take their word for it.
On a Finnrick result the lab is shown only as a letter, "Lab E," "Lab A," and so on. In the page's own underlying data the real lab name is stored in a field literally marked "privileged" (hidden). So you are not even told which laboratory tested the vial. A certificate that will not tell you who tested it is the opposite of transparency.
Finnrick's own labs page lists seven laboratories and how many tests each has done. About 60% of all its testing goes through one lab, "Krause Analytical," and only about 2% (around 195 tests) through Janoshik, the one lab you can actually verify. An independent tester (Gray Market) found Krause read a sample about 15% lower than Janoshik on the very same batch. None of Finnrick's seven labs holds recognised ISO 17025 accreditation, and only Janoshik offers public verification, which Finnrick barely uses and never links.
Finnrick sells the very sellers it rates a range of paid programs, including a roughly $279/month membership and a paid "Launch with Finnrick" scheme (reported at $220 to $680 per product). In that scheme, per Finnrick's own page, the vendor sends its own samples and gets a "tentative rating" it "can review and approve before publishing." A tester that is paid by the companies it grades, tests the samples those companies choose to send, and lets them approve results before publication, is not independent in the way the word implies. Finnrick publishes no conflict-of-interest policy.
Finnrick posted a real job ad for a "Community Engagement Lead, Gray-Market Whisperer" (the listing) to be "Finnrick's voice inside every peptide tribe" across Reddit, Telegram and Discord, to "translate lab reports into shitposts," and to write "emails that feel like DMs from a trusted plug, not a newsletter." In plain terms, it set out to manufacture the appearance of organic, trusted, peer recommendations. When a company that rates trust also hires someone to fake trust, its own ratings are worth less.
We are not saying Finnrick fakes its lab numbers or sells good grades. There is no proof of that, and there is real evidence against it: Finnrick does publish bad grades, even for big and paying vendors; it has retracted results for a confirmed fraudster; and it states plainly that it will not take payment to change a rating. Nobody has shown a score that rose because a vendor paid. The honest verdict is narrower and more useful: a Finnrick rating is conflicted and unverifiable, not a proven fraud. It is a paid, closed, lab-hidden number you cannot check, marketed by a company that advertised for an astroturfer. That is simply not the same thing as proof. (The sharpest critical write-up, from Peptide Protocol Wiki, comes from a site in the same space, so we weigh it accordingly.)
Trust what you can verify. A genuine Janoshik certificate of analysis names the seller itself as the client and can be checked, by you, on Janoshik's own website in under a minute. That is the standard. If a seller offers a Finnrick grade instead of a verifiable own-name Janoshik COA, treat the Finnrick grade as marketing, not proof. See the UK sellers that publish a verifiable Janoshik COA, or check any certificate free with our COA Checker.
The Peptide Watch is independent and states observable facts, with sources linked above. The documented points (the paid programs, the hidden lab, the lab split, the job ad) come from Finnrick's own website and named sources; where something is an allegation rather than a proven fact, we have said so. Finnrick is welcome to request a correction.