Fernando Meyer1, 2, Andreas Bremges1, 2, 3, Peter Belmann1, 2, 4, Stefan Janssen1, 3, 5, 6, Alice C. McHardy†1, 2Email author and David Koslicki†7Email author Genome Biology201920:51 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-019-1646-y © The Author(s) 2019 Received: 8 August 2018 Accepted: 31 January 2019 Published: 4 March 2019 Abstract The explosive growth in taxonomic metagenome profiling methods over the past years has created a need for systematic comparisons using relevant performance criteria.