The key to understanding the behavior of semiconductors and insulators is the accurate determination of the electron energy band gap and carrier properties. However, conventional approaches to electron theory have tended to neglect the effects of electron-phonon interactions. The recently developed Fr？hlich (Flory) model has shown great advantages in dealing with polarized systems. However, more attention still needs to be paid to the applicability of the Fr？hlich model to different materials. A team lead by Dr. Pedro Miguel M. C. de Melo from Chemistry Department, Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Science and European Theoretical Spectroscopy Facility, Condensed Matter and Interfaces, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, evaluated the polaron binding energy, or zero point renormalization in both standard and generalized Fr？hlich models for a database of 1260 materials. Lowest order perturbation theory is used for the generalized Fr？hlich model, while both perturbative and all-range formulas are available for the standard model, once the single parameter is defined. In order to apply the standard Fr？hlich expression to complex solids, a set of averaging procedures is proposed, for the effective phonon frequency, mass, and dielectric constant, expanding on a previous work of Hellwarth and Baggio. A broad range of validity is found for both models: 58% of valence bands and 91% of conduction band polarons are in the Fr？hlich limit of weak coupling and large radius. The effective standard and the generalized model ZPR are in good quantitative agreement with fully ab initio spot checks using the Allen-Heine-Cardona theory. The generalized Fr？hlich model ZPR includes a fully coherent directional averaging of the dielectric, phononic, and electron band parameters, whereas the “effective standard” Fr？hlich model averages each parameter separately. The authors benchmark the studies with fully ab initio DFT-based non-adiabatic AHC calculations of the ZPR. The authors focus on outlier materials with different (low, medium, and high) and high ZPR. Both Fr？hlich models follow the ZPR trend of the non-adiabatic AHC quite closely. The residual difference between the Fr？hlich models and the AHC results is a combination of important non-LO phonon modes, and the details of the mode and wavevector distribution of the electron–phonon coupling. The authors wish to stress that predicting a ZPR close to the full AHC value makes the Fr？hlich models useful, but does not mean that all of the physics is captured: the authors show that non-polar modes can even dominate the total ZPR. The standard Fr？hlich model can fail in more than one way: due to essential non-LO phonons modes, anisotropy, or the breakdown of perturbation theory. However, regardless of the Fr？hlich method’s limitations, strong evidence is provided for the ubiquity of Fr？hlich-type large polaron formation, for the range of possible behaviors and parameter space, and the importance of polarons in providing reliable band gaps and effective masses. Interestingly, for a small number of weak coupling cases, the estimated polaron radius is small enough to call into question the applicability of Fr？hlich models.