Toilet Paper Math

A small site at https://toiletpaper.app for comparing Charmin, Quilted Northern, Angel Soft and Kirkland Signature (Costco) toilet paper, whose roll names (Mega, Mega XL, Super Mega and the rest) don't say how much paper you get.

Route	Page
/	Deal calculator: pick the packs on the shelf, type the prices, see which costs less, or which is the softest or the best balance
/convert	Roll converter: what one roll equals in every other roll, with a chart of all rolls
/softness	The softness scale: every rated line on a 0 to 10 scale, one long strip of paper, least soft first. A few reference points that aren't products sit on it too: sandpaper at 0, port-a-potty paper at 2, a cloud at 11 just past the end. They live only on this page. Plain HTML and CSS, no JS
/about	How it works, for people: why sheets beat "rolls" in three cards, then a short FAQ (<details> accordion, works without JS)
/data	Data & API: every roll in one table, the sources table, the API with a live example, the link format, and links to llms.txt, llms-full.txt and openapi.json. It sits under How it works: no tab of its own, the About tab shows as current, and the breadcrumb is Home > About > Data & API
/charmin-mega-vs-quilted-northern-mega, /how-many-sheets-in-a-mega-roll, /cheapest-toilet-paper-per-sheet	Short guides that answer one question each and link into the tools
/api/products, /api/compare	Read-only JSON API, described in /openapi.json
/robots.txt, /sitemap.xml, /llms.txt, /llms-full.txt	For crawlers and AI assistants

Both tools compare by sheet count by default. Paper area and area × ply are one click away.

The nav has four tabs in a pill (Best deal, Roll converter, Softness, How it works). Below 1024px the tabs shorten to Deal, Converter, Softness and About. On phones (up to 640px) and small tablets (641 to 699px) the tabs fill a row under the brand, so the phone header stays within 103px. /about links to /data from the "where do the numbers come from" answer and from a "See the data & API" link at the end of the page. test/browser.test.mjs measures it at 320, 360, 375, 390, 768 and 1440px. Every page ends with the same one-line footer, "Not affiliated with any brand · Open source on GitHub", linking to https://github.com/ahatzz11/toiletpaper. It stays on one line down to 320px. The guides are linked from the /about FAQ answers and the 404 page, and listed in the sitemap and llms.txt. Old links to /about#sources and /about#data land on the matching FAQ answer, which app.js opens.

Data

public/data.js holds every number. The rule for sources: manufacturer numbers beat retailer listings.

• When the maker's own site or pack photo (charmin.com, quiltednorthern.com, angelsoft.com and other P&G or Georgia-Pacific pages) gives a number, use that value, and list that page first in the product's sources.
• Retailer listings (Target, Walmart, Kroger and the like) are a fallback for numbers the maker doesn't publish. Say so in the product's source note.
• Label each source link with the numbers it backs, like charmin.com (sheets, claim) or Hannaford (size, pack total), so the sources table shows which numbers came from whom.
• The goal is the most accurate current number, so a manufacturer record that current packs contradict isn't used. It stays listed as a source, with a note saying why. Decided October 2026 for P&G SmartLabel's Charmin Ultra Soft Mega, Mega XL and Mega XXL records: they list 224, 336 and 440 sheets and were last updated in 2022, while current packs print 208, 312 and 416, with square-foot totals that match. The site uses 208, 312 and 416.
• A brand that prints no "= N regular rolls" claim gets regularId: null, and its products get claim: null (and size: null if it has no size names). Its own roll is the unit: the converter shows what one roll equals in the other brands' regular rolls, and the tables say "no claim". Kirkland Signature is the one such brand. Its sheets, sheet size, ply, rolls and pack totals all come from costco.com, and the printed square-foot totals match our math exactly.
• A number computed from other printed numbers is flagged derived. A number we couldn't find printed and borrowed from a sibling product is estimated. Both show as tags on the site.
• Update checked in data.js and UPDATED in src/site/config.mjs when you recheck.

Softness

Softness has no industry standard and no printed number, so data.js has a softness block: one coarse score from 0 to 10 per product line, and each product's soft key names its line. Regular rolls and custom rolls are never rated. The method, as it appears on /softness and /data#softness:

1. Start from TechGearLab's tester-panel softness score (updated 2025-02-13), the one current test that puts a number on most lines, rounded to a whole number.
2. Move a line by one point at most when another independent test clearly disagrees: Good Housekeeping Institute (updated 2026-02-10; a blind tester panel plus an EmTec Tissue Softness Analyzer run by NC State) or Reviewed (updated 2024-05-02; hands-on).
3. Brand tier names (Charmin Ultra Soft vs Ultra Strong, Quilted Northern Ultra Plush vs Ultra Soft & Strong) only order lines within a brand. They never set a score on their own.
4. A line is rated only when a current test covers that line. Tests of discontinued versions, single blog posts, retailer star ratings and paywalled results don't count. Such a line has score: null and shows as "not rated".

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗