Derbee vs your own spreadsheet

What a spreadsheet gives you

Full control. You pick the features, the weights, the cutoffs. You can backtest against any window you want. When something doesn't work you can tinker. Some of the best independent analysts in racing have built lifelong edges this way.

What it costs you

• Time, every day. Pulling data, cleaning it, regenerating the sheet for tomorrow's cards. Usually 2-4 hours.
• Maintenance debt. When a data source changes its format or a track joins/leaves the circuit, your pipeline breaks. Always.
• Survivor bias on your own backtests. Anyone who has tuned a spreadsheet has at some point picked the weights that "would have worked." Hard to avoid.
• No coach. Spreadsheets don't read your bet record and tell you what your blind spot is.

What Derbee adds

• A maintained model with public test results we cannot quietly re-tune after the fact.
• Sam — a weekly coach who reads your selections and tells you the pattern.
• The research workspace for the deep dives you used to do in a sheet.
• Two hours a day back for actually watching races.

When your spreadsheet still wins

If you have a specific edge — a track, a class condition, a trainer angle — that you've tested rigorously and want to keep proprietary, keep your sheet. Derbee is a strong complement: model picks + your edge layered on top. Many of our most engaged subscribers run both.