This page is the technical reference for how a Neur score is produced. It is kept current with the production engine; the date at the bottom is the last time it was checked against the code.
Scoring model
- Five pillars (Market, Competition, Location, Financial, Personal), each scored, then weighted by industry category and summed to a 0–100 overall score.
- Thresholds for market inputs are state-relative where possible, so a city is judged against its own state's medians rather than only national ones.
- A demand signal from the industry's local employment trend feeds the Market pillar.
- Household income is used once, in the Location fit, and is not double-counted in Market.
- The Competition pillar combines a distance-weighted count of competitors within the trade radius, their average rating, the share of unrated listings, and saturation per resident.
- The Financial pillar compares the stated budget with the industry's startup cost planning range (table below).
- The Personal pillar is built from the questionnaire: industry experience, prior ownership, partners, commitment and timeline.
Pillar weights by industry category (percent)
| Category | Market | Competition | Location | Financial | Personal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Food & Beverage | 20 | 20 | 25 | 20 | 15 |
| Retail | 20 | 20 | 25 | 20 | 15 |
| E-commerce | 25 | 20 | 5 | 25 | 25 |
| Technology | 30 | 15 | 5 | 20 | 30 |
| Professional Services | 20 | 15 | 5 | 20 | 40 |
| Fitness | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| Health & Wellness | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| Childcare | 25 | 15 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| Construction | 25 | 20 | 10 | 25 | 20 |
| Home Services | 25 | 20 | 15 | 20 | 20 |
| Beauty & Personal Care | 20 | 20 | 25 | 20 | 15 |
| Education & Tutoring | 25 | 15 | 15 | 20 | 25 |
| Real Estate | 25 | 15 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| Hospitality | 20 | 20 | 25 | 20 | 15 |
| Entertainment | 20 | 20 | 25 | 20 | 15 |
| Automotive | 25 | 20 | 20 | 25 | 10 |
| Finance | 20 | 15 | 10 | 20 | 35 |
| Transportation | 25 | 20 | 15 | 25 | 15 |
| Agriculture | 25 | 15 | 20 | 25 | 15 |
| Manufacturing | 25 | 15 | 15 | 25 | 20 |
The current engine version shifts up to 5 points from Personal to Market for every category, so a category listed with Personal 15 is scored with Personal 10 and Market +5. Any category not in the table uses 20/20/20/20/20 before that shift.
Verdict thresholds
80 and above: Strong Opportunity. 60–79: Promising. 40–59: Proceed with Caution. 20–39: High Risk. Below 20: Not Recommended Now.
Startup cost planning ranges (USD)
These are the industry-level ranges the Financial pillar compares against your budget. They are planning figures, not quotes.
| Category | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| Food & Beverage | 50,000 | 300,000 |
| Retail | 25,000 | 150,000 |
| E-commerce | 2,000 | 25,000 |
| Technology | 5,000 | 50,000 |
| Professional Services | 5,000 | 30,000 |
| Fitness | 30,000 | 200,000 |
| Health & Wellness | 15,000 | 100,000 |
| Childcare | 30,000 | 150,000 |
| Construction | 25,000 | 200,000 |
| Home Services | 10,000 | 50,000 |
| Beauty & Personal Care | 20,000 | 100,000 |
| Education & Tutoring | 5,000 | 50,000 |
| Real Estate | 10,000 | 100,000 |
| Hospitality | 50,000 | 500,000 |
| Entertainment | 20,000 | 200,000 |
| Automotive | 50,000 | 300,000 |
| Finance | 15,000 | 75,000 |
| Transportation | 10,000 | 100,000 |
| Agriculture | 20,000 | 200,000 |
| Manufacturing | 50,000 | 500,000 |
Seed industries carry a more specific three-tier estimate (derived from typical ticket size and volume) that the report shows in its financial section.
Data vintages
- Census ACS: 5-year estimates via the Census API. National reference medians in the engine are from ACS 2022.
- BLS QCEW: latest available quarters, county level.
- BLS CES: latest monthly national series.
- Google Places: fetched at report time; competitor results are cached per business keyword and location.
Known limitations
- ACS 5-year estimates smooth over recent change in fast-growing areas.
- QCEW suppresses some small-county industry cells for confidentiality; where a cell is missing the engine falls back to broader geography and says so.
- Google Places may omit very new businesses or include closed ones.
- Online businesses skip the Competition and Location pillars in favour of a search-market analysis.
- Scores are estimates. See Why Neur for the full list of caveats.
Infrastructure
- Application: Next.js on Vercel. Database and authentication: Supabase. Payments: Stripe. Transactional email: Resend.
- Sign-up and sign-in are protected by Cloudflare Turnstile.
- Public endpoints for machines:
/llms.txt,/llms-full.txt,/docs/neur.json,/sitemap.xml,/robots.txt.
Last checked against production code: 2026-09-07.