New · AI judge
Rate My Christmas Tree
You spent hours on that tree. Time to find out what it's really worth. Upload a photo and the judge scores it out of 100 — lights, ornaments, topper, skirt, the works — with one loving roast and a few tips to push the score higher. Then send it to the family and make them beat it.
The guide
What the judge actually looks at
The judge is an AI vision model told to score trees the way a friend with good taste would from across the room. It weighs six things: how evenly the lights are spread and how deep they sit in the branches, how the ornaments are spaced and whether they vary in size, the topper, what is happening at the base, how full and well shaped the tree is, and whether all of it reads as one picture.
Most decorated trees land between 55 and 85. Scores of 90 and up are kept for trees that could run in a magazine. The judge is told to be a little generous, because this is for fun, but it is not told to flatter. A tree with a bare stand and lights bunched on the outside will hear about it.
Real or artificial makes no difference to the score. Neither does size. A well-dressed four-foot tree beats a crowded nine-footer.
How to take a photo that gets a fair score
Turn the tree lights on and the room lights down, but not off. You want the glow to show without the branches disappearing into black.
Get the whole tree in the frame, topper to skirt. The base counts, and a cropped photo cannot be scored on it. Stand about eight to ten feet back and hold the phone at roughly the middle of the tree, not above it. A vertical photo fits a tree better than a wide one.
One tree per photo, and move anything that sits in front of it. The judge scores what it can see, so a laundry basket beside the tree is part of the composition whether you meant it or not.
Using the tips to push the score up
Every result comes with two or three specific fixes based on your photo. The most common ones are worth knowing before you start. Lights score better woven in toward the trunk than wrapped around the outside, because you see glow instead of wire. Ornaments look intentional in small groups rather than one per branch, and the biggest ones do the most work tucked deep into gaps. A skirt or a collar finishes the base; a bare plastic stand costs points on almost every tree.
Make the change, take the same photo from the same spot, and run it again. You can rate up to ten photos a day.
Questions about the tree judge
- Is Rate My Christmas Tree free?
- Yes. There is no account and no email. You can rate up to ten photos a day, which is plenty for a before and after.
- Do you keep my photo?
- No. The photo is shrunk in your browser, sent to the AI model to be scored, and not saved by us. The share link carries only the score, so nobody who opens it sees your tree unless you send the photo yourself.
- Why did my score change when I rated the same tree twice?
- An AI judge is a little like a human one: it can land a few points apart on the same tree, and a different angle or lighting changes what it sees. For a fair before and after, use the same spot and the same lighting both times.
- It said my photo is not a Christmas tree. What happened?
- The judge needs to see a tree clearly. Very dark photos, extreme close-ups, and shots where the tree is a small part of a big room are the usual causes. Step back, turn a lamp on, and try again.
- What score is good?
- Anything over 70 is a tree people will compliment. Over 85 is the top tier. Under 60 usually means one fixable problem, most often lights or the base, and the tips will say which.
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