Welcome to the index. Seventeen platforms. Seventeen scorecards. One consistent question: who's actually paying for those stars?
We've grouped them by type so you can find the one that's currently judging your business, your dinner or your job.
The blue-and-green giant. Open invitations, paid tiers, and a moderation policy worth a read.
The polished UK challenger with Google integrations and a B2B sales motion.
Closed-loop verified reviews, sold mostly to the businesses being reviewed.
A widget company that calls itself a review platform.
German-engineered reputation marketing in a trust-badge wrapper.
The most consequential review platform on Earth, attached to a map.
Where the product, the seller and the reviewer all share a parent company.
A social graph pretending to be a review system.
Owls, rankings, and an industry of Certificate of Excellence wall plaques.
The American original. Aggressive about its algorithm. Litigious about its critics.
Membership-based directory. The badge on the van is also a marketing budget line item.
Smaller, similar shape, fewer adverts.
The closest the UK has to a vetted, brand-backed scheme.
Lead-generation marketplace. Tradespeople pay to even bid.
Same shape as Rated People, slightly different paint.
Anonymous employer reviews. Useful, messy, and a source of ongoing legal arguments.
Indeed's quieter cousin to Glassdoor, attached to the world's largest job board.
Five criteria, each scored out of five. Transparency, verification rigour, consumer usefulness, independence from paying parties, and plain-English fine print. Add them up, divide by five, that's the Racket Score. The full methodology lives in our editorial policy.
There is no single answer. Each platform is built around a different incentive structure. The right question is "trustworthy for what?" — booking a hotel, hiring a builder, or judging an employer are three different problems.
Most major review platforms charge businesses for additional features such as invitation tools, widgets and dispute support. Whether this changes consumer outcomes is a question of moderation policy, not just pricing — and that's exactly what our scorecards examine.
Definitions vary by platform. Some verify a real transaction, some verify a real account, some verify only an email address. The definition is usually buried in the help centre. We surface it on each platform page.
Generally only when the review breaks platform rules — for example because it's defamatory, off-topic or posted by someone with no genuine experience. The threshold and process vary widely. The platform's moderation policy is the document to read.