How ranking works

TrustRank has one rating primitive: the percentage of members who would recommend a tool. No stars, no weighted five-axis composite, no editor picks. One number, and the arguments behind it.

Where the number comes from

Every member gets one vote per tool. A vote from someone with a verified review of that tool counts 3 times as much as an unverified one, because they had to show evidence they actually use it. That is the only weighting in the system: demonstrated use. Not follower count, not account age alone, not who pays.

Scores update the moment a vote lands. A single vote nudges rather than swings, because it blends into the existing population instead of replacing it.

New tools do not get a score straight away

A tool needs 3 reviews before we publish a score for it at all, and 10 before it appears in rankings. Every score below 50 reviews carries a provisional label, because a number built on a dozen opinions moves a lot when the thirteenth arrives.

A tool with no score is still listed, still searchable and still open for review. It is kept out of rankings, not out of the site, because a tool nobody can find is a tool nobody can review.

What we refuse to do

• No sponsored placements. There is no paid tier that moves a tool up the directory, and there never will be.
• Founders cannot delete reviews. A verified founder can reply to any review, publicly, with a founder badge. That is the only lever they get. Criticism stays up.
• No invented data. Community verdicts are generated from published reviews only, and say so.

Fighting fake votes

Votes carry a hashed fingerprint of the network and browser they came from. We never store a raw IP. When many accounts vote the same tool from one network inside an hour, the system opens a moderation item and a human decides. Vote manipulation gets a tool delisted.

Getting listed

Tools are added by the TrustRank team, so every listing has a human behind it rather than a signup form. Tell us what you use in the community and it gets added. From there the community decides where it ranks. If a tool is yours, you can claim the page by publishing a verification token on its domain, in DNS or on the site itself, and every review already on it comes with you.

Using our data

Scores are public. There is a read-only JSON API at /api/v1/tools, and an embeddable badge at /api/badge/<slug>.svg if you want to show your score on your own site.