Research notes
Why the ranked list is not a price sort
A list sorted on price is a price list. The ranked page here is a commercial publisher ranking: the publisher chooses each score and position, and the sourced price sits beside the row as a separate fact.
The ranked page is the one place in this publication where order is an opinion. The publisher sets every score and every position by hand, and compensation, advertising relationships and publisher ownership may influence them.
The four fields beside each row are not opinions. The charge as billed, the billing interval, the derived monthly figure and the required fees are read from a provider page, dated, and corrected only when that page changes. They are never adjusted to fit the order.
That separation is what makes both halves usable: the ranking is clearly a commercial judgement, and the numbers are clearly arithmetic with a source.