If you've spent any time on Trustpilot — either as a customer or a business — you've seen the rating labels. Excellent. Great. Good. Average. Bad. They appear on business profiles, in Google search results, in advertising, and embedded on thousands of company websites. They seem simple and self-explanatory.
But most businesses don't fully understand what those labels actually mean, how they're assigned, or — most importantly — how dramatically they affect purchasing decisions. The difference between "Excellent" and "Average" isn't just a matter of semantics. It's often the difference between winning and losing a customer.
This guide breaks down exactly what each Trustpilot badge represents, where the thresholds sit, and what being in each category means for your business in practice.
Trustpilot assigns a category label to every business based on its TrustScore — a number between 0 and 10 that is derived from your star rating using a Bayesian weighted model. The label categories and their corresponding star ranges are as follows:
| Label | Star Range | TrustScore Range |
|---|---|---|
| Excellent | 4.5 – 5.0 stars | ~9.0 – 10.0 |
| Great | 4.0 – 4.4 stars | ~7.9 – 8.9 |
| Good | 3.5 – 3.9 stars | ~6.4 – 7.9 |
| Average | 2.5 – 3.4 stars | ~4.4 – 6.4 |
| Bad | 1.0 – 2.4 stars | ~0 – 4.4 |
These labels are displayed in colour-coded format: green for Excellent and Great, a lighter green for Good, orange-yellow for Average, and red for Bad. The visual language matters — colour psychology plays a significant role in how customers quickly assess these labels without consciously reading them.
The "Excellent" badge is Trustpilot's highest tier, awarded to businesses maintaining a rating of 4.5 stars or above. It is represented by a five-star display and the word "Excellent" in green, and it is the standard that serious brands compete for.
Reaching and maintaining "Excellent" status carries a set of measurable commercial advantages.
First, the conversion impact is significant. Research consistently shows that consumers trust businesses with "Excellent" ratings far more readily than those in any other tier. The purchase hesitation — the internal "but what if something goes wrong?" question — is substantially reduced when a business shows 4.5 stars or higher. Customers feel justified in their choice, which matters as much as the choice itself.
Second, "Excellent" status changes the nature of your negative reviews. All businesses receive occasional negative feedback — but at 4.7 or 4.8 stars, a single negative review is absorbed by the weight of surrounding positivity. Customers reading a negative review on a 4.7-star profile are statistically less likely to weight it heavily, because the overwhelming evidence suggests an outlier experience. At 4.1 stars, the same review creates much more doubt.
Third, Trustpilot's "Excellent" badge is a genuinely premium advertising asset. In Google search ads, it renders with full visual weight. On email marketing campaigns, it is a credibility signal that requires no explanation. On website landing pages, it functions as one of the highest-performing conversion elements available.
A "Great" badge — awarded for ratings between 4.0 and 4.4 stars — represents a solid, credible business, but one that has not yet separated itself from the competitive pack. For many businesses, "Great" is the natural resting place after initial growth, and the jump to "Excellent" is where the real competition happens.
Being in the "Great" tier is genuinely adequate for many purchase decisions, but it comes with an important caveat: it is increasingly the minimum expectation in mature, competitive markets. In sectors like insurance, software, and financial services, the majority of credible competitors now sit at 4.0 or above. A "Great" badge used to differentiate; in many industries today, it simply keeps you in the conversation.
The "Great" tier is also where the most interesting competitive dynamics occur. The distance between 4.0 and 4.5 is relatively modest in absolute star terms, but it represents a significant upgrade in both category label and consumer perception. Businesses that manage to consistently break into "Excellent" territory gain a disproportionate reputational advantage over their "Great"-rated competitors.
The strategic goal for any business currently in the "Great" tier should be clear: get to "Excellent" and maintain it.
A "Good" label, applied to businesses with 3.5 to 3.9 stars, marks the beginning of the trust uncertainty zone. Most consumers will still consider a "Good"-rated business, but with significantly more hesitation and a greater tendency to read negative reviews carefully before deciding.
The word "Good" sounds positive in isolation, but in the context of a purchasing decision, it reads as "okay but not great." When a customer is comparing two similar options and one shows "Excellent" while the other shows "Good," the default assumption is that the "Good" business has something to hide, has had service issues, or is not actively investing in customer experience.
"Good" is also the zone where B2B decisions become more complicated. Procurement teams and vendor approval processes often have informal or explicit minimum rating requirements, and while "Good" may technically pass some thresholds, it frequently triggers additional due diligence that a competitor with "Excellent" status would bypass entirely.
These lower tiers represent profiles where the rating is actively costing the business money on a daily basis. An "Average" label (2.5 to 3.4 stars) tells potential customers that a meaningful proportion of people who used this business were dissatisfied. The orange-yellow colour coding reinforces this signal at a glance, even before a customer reads a single review.
In competitive markets, an "Average" Trustpilot badge is essentially a public warning notice. Competitors with "Excellent" or "Great" ratings are almost always the safer default choice, and customers will take that option unless there is a compelling reason not to.
"Bad" ratings (below 2.5 stars) tend to affect businesses that have experienced either significant service failures or sustained reputation attacks, and recovery from this tier requires structured, sustained effort over a significant period.
The transition from one tier to the next requires a precise number of additional five-star reviews, calculated against your current review count and distribution. This is not guesswork — it is mathematical. Our Rating Calculator at Reputaro gives you the exact figures for your profile.
As a general illustration:
The exact figures depend heavily on the distribution of your existing reviews and Trustpilot's Bayesian weighting. Running a proper audit before starting a review growth campaign is essential — otherwise you are investing without a clear target.
One final point worth emphasising: buyers read the label, not just the number. When someone sees a widget on a website showing "Excellent" in green, they absorb the full signal immediately — colour, word, and star count together. The word "Excellent" carries emotional weight that "4.3 stars" alone does not.
This is why targeting the tier boundary isn't enough. If you're at 4.4 stars, you're showing "Great" — but you're one strong push away from "Excellent" and a fundamentally different customer perception. That push is almost always worth making.
Your Trustpilot badge is one of the first things a potential customer sees about your business. Make sure it's saying the right thing.
See exactly what your current badge is worth — and what it would take to reach "Excellent": reputaro.io/audit
