Terms of Service

_Last updated: 3 August 2026_

Welcome to TrustRating. These Terms of Service (the "Terms") are a binding agreement between you and TrustRating (the operator of trustrating.ai, business.trustrating.ai and related services — "TrustRating", "we", "us" or "our") governing your access to and use of our websites, applications, widgets, APIs and any other service that links to these Terms (together, the "Service"). By creating an account, submitting content, claiming a company, or simply browsing the Service, you accept these Terms. If you do not agree with them, you must not use the Service.

1. What TrustRating is

TrustRating is an open trust platform. We publish company profiles, verified customer reviews, and TrustScores that combine human reviews with independent analysis produced by multiple artificial-intelligence models. Consumers use the Service free of charge to research companies, write reviews and compare providers. Businesses may claim their profile, respond to reviews, invite customers to leave feedback, and subscribe to optional paid tools as described in the Business Terms of Service and the Subscription, Billing & Cancellation Terms. Our scoring principles are described on the methodology page and in the Content Integrity, Scoring & IP Policy.

2. Definitions

In these Terms: "Content" means any text, review, rating, image, reply, company information or other material submitted to the Service; "User Content" means Content you submit; "TrustScore" means the aggregate rating displayed for a company; "Consumer Account" means a personal account used to read and write reviews; "Business Account" means an account used to represent a company, including linked business identities created during a company claim; "Plans" means the paid subscription tiers available to businesses.

3. Eligibility and accounts

You must be at least 16 years old (or the higher minimum age required in your country) to create an account. You must provide accurate registration information and keep it up to date. You are responsible for everything that happens under your account and for keeping your password and sign-in links confidential. Notify us immediately at our contact page if you suspect unauthorised use of your account.

One person may hold one Consumer Account. A person may additionally hold a linked Business Account for each company they legitimately represent. Creating multiple accounts to manipulate reviews, evade a suspension or claim commissions is prohibited under the Acceptable Use Policy and will result in the closure of all related accounts.

Some accounts are created in the course of a business claim before a password is set. Such accounts must be activated through the emailed activation link before they can be used, and remain subject to these Terms from the moment of creation.

We communicate with you about your account through the email address you registered and through in-product notifications. Notices sent to that address count as delivered, so keep it current and monitored; transactional messages about security, billing and moderation decisions are part of operating the Service and cannot be opted out of while the account exists, while optional communications respect the preferences you set in your notification settings.

4. Your content and licence to us

You retain ownership of your User Content. By submitting User Content you grant TrustRating a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt (for formatting and excerpting), translate, publish, publicly display and distribute that Content in connection with operating, promoting and improving the Service — including display in search results, category pages, leaderboards, embeddable widgets, trust reports, and use as input to the AI systems that produce TrustScores and summaries. This licence survives account closure for reviews and replies, because removing genuine reviews when a reviewer or business leaves the platform would distort the record that other consumers rely on. You may still request deletion of personal data as described in the Privacy Policy.

You are solely responsible for your User Content. You warrant that you have the rights necessary to submit it, that it reflects your genuine experience where it is presented as a review, and that it does not violate any law or third-party right.

5. Reviews

Reviews are the heart of the Service and are governed by the Reviewer Guidelines and the Review Verification, Moderation & Appeals Policy. In short: reviews must be based on genuine experiences, must not be bought, incentivised, coerced or written on behalf of a competitor, and may be verified, labelled, moderated, hidden or removed in accordance with those policies. We do not — and will never — remove or suppress a genuine negative review in exchange for payment.

6. TrustScores and AI-generated content

TrustScores, AI model assessments, sub-scores, summaries and similar outputs are opinions generated from the evidence available to us at the time, produced by automated systems combining verified reviews with analysis from third-party AI models. They are provided for general information only. They are not financial, legal or professional advice, not a guarantee of any company's future conduct, solvency or quality, and not a statement of verifiable fact about any company. AI systems can be incomplete or wrong. You must make your own judgement before relying on any score, and businesses acknowledge that scores move in both directions as new evidence arrives. Score computation, dispute and re-scan rights are described in the Content Integrity, Scoring & IP Policy.

7. Acceptable use

Your use of the Service is subject to the Acceptable Use Policy, which is part of these Terms. Highlights: no fake or incentivised reviews; no harassment, hate speech or unlawful content; no scraping, bulk downloading, automated access outside the documented API, probing or interfering with security; no misrepresentation of affiliation; no use of the Service to develop a competing review database.

8. Business services

Claiming a company, the verified badge, subscriptions, review invitations, widgets, the API, webhooks and the affiliate program are governed by additional terms: the Business Terms of Service, Company Claims & Domain Verification Policy, Subscription, Billing & Cancellation Terms, Payments & Refunds Policy, Widget & Embedding Terms and API, Webhooks & Affiliate Program Terms. If there is a conflict between those documents and these Terms with respect to the specific service they cover, the specific document prevails.

9. Intellectual property

The Service — including its software, design, databases, the TrustRating name and logo, the TrustScore presentation and all content we create — is owned by TrustRating or its licensors and protected by copyright, database, trademark and other laws. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to access and use the Service for its intended purposes. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell or lease any part of the Service, extract substantial parts of our databases, or reverse-engineer our software, except as permitted by non-waivable law or the documented API. Use of our brand is governed by the brand rules in the Content Integrity, Scoring & IP Policy.

10. Moderation, suspension and termination

We may moderate, label, hide or remove Content, and may warn, restrict, suspend or terminate accounts, where we reasonably believe these Terms or the linked policies have been violated, where required by law, or where necessary to protect the integrity of the platform or the safety of users. Enforcement follows the graduated framework described in the Review Verification, Moderation & Appeals Policy, which also explains how to appeal a decision. Account status labels (for example "suspended" or "review-banned") may be displayed where relevant for transparency.

You may close your account at any time from your account settings. Closing an account does not automatically delete published reviews (see Section 4) but you may exercise your data rights under the Privacy Policy. Sections of these Terms which by their nature should survive termination (including Sections 4, 6, 9, 11–14) survive.

The Service itself also evolves: we continuously add, improve, reorganise and occasionally retire features, and we may interrupt the Service for maintenance, security incidents or infrastructure work. We aim for high availability but do not owe uninterrupted operation to free users; paid features carry the commitments stated in the Subscription, Billing & Cancellation Terms. Where we permanently discontinue a materially important part of the Service, we give reasonable advance notice so you can export what is yours.

11. Disclaimers

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free or secure, that any review reflects objective truth, that any TrustScore is accurate or current, or that any company listed on the Service will perform as described. Nothing in these Terms excludes warranties or rights that cannot be excluded under the law that applies to you, including mandatory consumer-protection rights.

12. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law: (a) TrustRating will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, loss of profits, revenue, goodwill, data or business opportunity, arising from or related to the Service or these Terms; (b) our total aggregate liability for all claims in any twelve-month period will not exceed the greater of (i) the amounts you paid us for the Service in that period and (ii) one hundred euros (EUR 100). These limits apply regardless of legal theory and even if we were advised of the possibility of the damage. They do not limit liability that cannot be limited by law — including liability for fraud, wilful misconduct, gross negligence, or death or personal injury caused by negligence — and do not affect non-waivable consumer rights.

13. Indemnity

If you are a business user, you will indemnify and hold TrustRating harmless from third-party claims, damages and reasonable costs (including legal fees) arising from your User Content, your use of the Service in breach of these Terms, or your violation of law or third-party rights. Consumers remain responsible for their own breaches to the extent provided by applicable law.

14. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the jurisdiction in which TrustRating is established, excluding its conflict-of-law rules, and disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of that jurisdiction — except that consumers always keep the protection of the mandatory laws, and access to the courts, of their country of habitual residence. Before starting formal proceedings, please contact us: most issues are resolved quickly through support. If you are an EU consumer, you may also use the European Commission's Online Dispute Resolution platform.

15. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as the Service evolves or the law requires. For material changes we will give reasonable advance notice — by email, in-product notice, or a prominent posting — before the new version takes effect. Continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes acceptance. If you do not agree, stop using the Service and close your account. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page always identifies the current version.

16. General

If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the remainder stays in force and the provision is modified to the minimum extent necessary. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them to a successor of the Service. Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control (force majeure), except for payment obligations already due. Headings are for convenience only; "including" means "including without limitation"; and where these Terms have been translated, the English version controls to the extent the law allows.

The order of precedence between our documents is: mandatory law first; then any individually negotiated written agreement; then the specialised policy governing the specific service in question (for example the Subscription Terms for billing matters or the Widget & Embedding Terms for widgets); then these Terms. All of the documents together — available in the legal hub whose sidebar you see next to this page — are the entire agreement between you and TrustRating regarding the Service and supersede prior discussions.

Questions about these Terms can be sent through the contact page or the help center; we would always rather explain a clause before a dispute than argue about it after one.