Weighted Decision Matrix
Compare options against weighted criteria, see the ranking with each criterion’s contribution, and test how sensitive the winner is to the weights you chose.
Last reviewed by the Radiatus Cloud team
Want this done for your business?
Radiatus delivers cloud, security & automation for growing teams.
Making the trade off explicit
Choosing between a small number of options against several competing criteria is the most common structured decision in business, and it is usually made by discussion until someone senior decides. A weighted matrix does not remove judgement; it moves the judgement to a place where it can be examined. Instead of arguing about which vendor is better, the group argues about how much security matters relative to cost, and about what score each vendor deserves on each. Both are more productive arguments.
Weights are the real decision
The scores usually turn out to be less contentious than expected, because most people rate the options similarly once the criterion is defined precisely. The weights are where the disagreement lives, and they encode strategy: a team weighting cost at forty percent has made a different strategic choice than one weighting it at ten, whatever anyone says in the meeting. Writing the weights down before scoring anything is the single most valuable step in the process, because doing it afterward invites reverse engineering toward a preferred answer.
Test whether the answer is robust
A result that flips when one weight moves by five points is not a decision, it is a coin toss with extra steps. This tool reports how much each weight would have to change to alter the ranking, and which criterion is carrying the result. When two options are close, that is genuinely useful information: it means the choice can be made on grounds outside the matrix, such as team preference or relationship, without any loss.
Related tools
- Incident Impact Calculator — Estimate the cost of a security incident from severity, affected users and downtime hours, with a compliance and trust rating and the response actions each severity level demands.
- Third-Party Risk Assessor — Assess vendor risk based on data access and type.
- Data Breach Cost Estimator — Estimate what a data breach would cost from records exposed, cost per record, days to detect and hours of downtime, split into direct and indirect costs.
- SaaS Risk Heatmap — Pick the SaaS apps your company runs, add your own, and get a heatmap ranking each by data criticality times access scope, with the risk each carries.
Frequently Asked Questions
What scale should I score on?
Any consistent one; one to five or one to ten both work. What matters is that the same scale means the same thing for every criterion, and that you define what a high score means before scoring rather than after.
Do the weights need to sum to 100?
Not necessarily, since the tool normalises them, but making them sum to 100 is worth doing because it forces the trade off to be explicit. If everything is important, nothing is weighted.
Should I set weights before or after scoring?
Before, always. Setting weights after seeing the scores lets people tune the weights until the preferred option wins, which produces a matrix that documents a decision rather than informing one.
What if two options score almost the same?
Then the matrix has told you something useful: on these criteria they are equivalent, and the choice can be made on grounds outside it. The sensitivity view shows how close the result is and what would flip it.
Can I use negative or cost criteria?
Score them so that higher is always better, for example scoring a cheaper option higher on cost. Mixing directions within one matrix is the most common way these calculations go wrong.
Privacy & Security
Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
How to Use
Define criteria with weights, score each option against them, and read the ranked result.
Disclaimer: This tool is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. Results are for educational and utility purposes.
Related Tools
Incident Impact Calculator
BusinessEstimate the cost of a security incident from severity, affected users and downtime hours, with a compliance and trust rating and the response actions each severity level demands.
Third-Party Risk Assessor
BusinessAssess vendor risk based on data access and type.
Data Breach Cost Estimator
BusinessEstimate what a data breach would cost from records exposed, cost per record, days to detect and hours of downtime, split into direct and indirect costs.