What Is TrustScore, and How Is It Calculated?
Trustpilot’s headline number isn’t a plain average of your star ratings — here’s the actual mechanics behind it.
TrustScore is the number Trustpilot shows at the top of a business’s profile. It looks like a simple average of star ratings — it isn’t. Understanding the actual mechanics matters if you’re trying to predict how a batch of new reviews will move it.
It’s a Bayesian average, not a mean
A new or low-review business’s TrustScore starts weighted toward a small number of neutral phantom reviews. As real reviews accumulate, their influence dilutes that starting point. Practically, this means the same five-star review moves the score less for a brand-new profile than it does once a business has a longer track record — the opposite of what pure-average intuition suggests.
Recency carries more weight than age
The most recent reviews influence TrustScore more than older ones. Trustpilot’s own guidance is that a steady, consistent flow of reviews produces a more stable score than sporadic bursts — a business that stops collecting reviews for months can see its score behave unpredictably even without any new negative feedback.
What doesn’t count at all
Reviews Trustpilot removes for violating its guidelines — fake reviews, incentivized reviews, wrong-business errors — don’t factor into the score, regardless of their star rating.
The practical implication
Because of the weighting, a rough "reviews needed" estimate for TrustScore is only ever an approximation, not an exact calculation the way it can be for a platform with a simple average. Treat any TrustScore projection as directional.