How HomeClip Trust Scores work
Every business on HomeClip has a single 0–100 score. Here's exactly how it's built and what no amount of paying us can change.
The score has seven components
| Component | Relative emphasis | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| License verification | Primary | Active state license with the named authority; no disciplinary actions. Unlicensed trades get a baseline so they're never penalized for category. |
| Reliability sentiment | High | On-time + communication, extracted from Google and Reddit review text |
| Quality + safety sentiment | High | Workmanship + safety language from reviews |
| Reddit recommendations | Medium | Upvote-weighted overall recommendation from local subreddits |
| Engagement | Medium | Profile completeness, recent activity, portfolio photo uploaded, and insurance/CE certificate on file. Earned by the BEHAVIOR, see below. |
| Responsiveness | Supporting | How recently the business replied on public channels |
| Pricing fairness | Supporting | Quote accuracy and surprise-charge mentions in review text |
About the Engagement component
Engagement rewards specific accountability behaviors, not subscription tier. Four equally-weighted sub-signals:
- Profile completeness, description, address, phone, and primary trade all filled out
- Recent activity, replied to inquiry or updated profile in the last 60 days
- Portfolio uploaded, at least one work photo on file (any tier)
- Insurance or CE certificate on file, at least one current document uploaded
Each sub-signal is earned or not, and they contribute equally to the Engagement component, every point earned by doing the work, never by paying us.
This is the line, and it's important. Pro+ subscribers have tools that make these behaviors easier (one-click renewal packets, a CE vault, a 30-photo portfolio, AI-assisted review responses). The TOOLS are subscription-gated. The SCORE is not. A free-tier contractor who manually keeps their profile complete, responds to inquiries, uploads a photo, and emails us their insurance certificate for filing earns exactly the same 10 points as a Pro+ subscriber doing it all from the dashboard.
We chose this structure because the alternative, rewarding subscription directly, would corrupt the “paying us never moves your Trust Score” promise that makes HomeClip different from Angi and HomeAdvisor. We'd rather make Pro+ a genuine convenience purchase than a hidden rank-buying mechanism.
Trade-aware licensing
Texas state law requires licenses for plumbers, electricians, HVAC contractors, pest control operators, and pool builders. For these trades, License verification is the single largest factor, an unlicensed plumber simply can't score high on HomeClip.
For trades the state doesn't license, handymen, cleaners, landscapers, painters, deck builders, its weight redistributes proportionally to the other components. A great handyman with strong reviews and Reddit support can score 90+ without ever needing a license they aren't required to have.
Time decay
Recent signals count fully; older ones are progressively discounted. A contractor who was great three years ago and now ghosts doesn't ride past reputation.
Platform weighting
Platforms are weighted by how hard they are to game, reviews from easily-inflated sources count for less:
- HomeClip-verified customers and Reddit carry the most weight, verified, or public and upvote-checked, and hardest to manufacture
- Google sits in the middle, high volume, mixed quality
Upvote weighting
Reddit comments with more upvotes count more, capped so a single viral comment can't dominate. A 200-upvote warning beats a 1-upvote complaint.
Confidence cap
A business with two perfect reviews doesn't get a perfect score. The score is discounted by a confidence factor that rises with the number of contributing signals, a couple of reviews can't score as confidently as dozens. New businesses appear with “Trust Score: building” instead of a misleadingly precise number.
7-day grace period
Every new signal is held for 7 days before counting toward the Trust Score. During that window, the business can file a dispute with proof, which pauses the signal's impact until reviewed. More on disputes.
What paying us cannot do
- Pay to rank above a higher-scoring business, never
- Pay to remove or hide a negative signal, never
- Pay for a higher confidence multiplier, never
- Pay to reset a red flag event, never
Pro subscribers ($69/mo) get a verified badge, faster dispute review, real-time lead alerts, and priority placement within their score band. Among two businesses scoring 88, the Pro shows first. A Pro scoring 72 never outranks a free listing scoring 88.
Revenue-share partnerships (insurance and financing)
We earn a revenue share on two partner integrations and we want to be transparent about how they do and do NOT, interact with the Trust Score and the directory ranking.
Insurance quotes via NEXT Insurance. Pro+ subscribers can request 3 fresh business-insurance quotes from within the dashboard. When a contractor binds a policy through this flow, we earn a referral share from NEXT Insurance. This is a service we provide; it does not move the contractor's Trust Score, their position in any listing, or any other public-facing rank. The recommendation always routes to NEXT because they cleanly cover the Texas trades we directory, not because they pay more.
Financing. When a homeowner toggles “I'd like financing” on the Get-3-Quotes form, we narrow the recommended contractor set to those who have opted in to offer financing. The narrowing is a FILTER on the contractor set, not a rank lever. Inside the filtered set, contractors are still ranked by Trust Score with the Pro tiebreak rule above. A contractor's listing position is never affected by whether they offer financing, only whether they show up in the financing-filtered view at all. Financing itself is arranged directly between the contractor and the homeowner, HomeClip doesn't broker, underwrite, or take a cut of it.
Transparency report
Once per quarter we publish anonymized dispute resolution stats, how many were filed, how many were upheld vs. removed vs. annotated, median time to resolution. This will appear here once we have enough data to be statistically meaningful.
Why we don't publish the exact weights
Every signal that goes into the score, and how the signals are prioritized, is on this page. We deliberately keep the precise weights and constants internal: a score you can reverse-engineer to the decimal is a score that can be gamed and gaming is exactly what the Trust Score exists to defeat. The methodology is fixed and applied identically to every business; what we hold back is only the tuning, not the rules.