Trustworkly
Verified performance, not self-reported claims

How Trust Metrics work

"Every rating comes from timestamps, photos, and payments — not a five-star click."

What gets measured

Trustworkly tracks two hard performance metrics on every completed project: On-Time Completion and Budget Accuracy. Both are derived from evidence — GPS-tagged photos and bank-confirmed payments — not from customer surveys or contractor self-reporting.

On-Time Completion

Calculated automatically from the timestamps on two geo-verified photos — no customer input required:

  • Before photo — captured at the job site when work begins. Its GPS coordinates must match the project address. That timestamp is the true start date.
  • After photo — captured at the job site when work is finished, also GPS-verified to the project address. That timestamp is the true completion date.

We compare the completion date to the estimated completion date on the accepted quote. On-time rate is the share of a contractor's completed projects that finished on or before the promised date.

Budget Accuracy

Calculated only from payments processed through Trustworkly via Stripe Connect. The "final price paid" is a real, bank-confirmed transaction — not a number either party typed in.

Budget Accuracy is the share of completed projects where total verified payments were less than or equal to the quoted price.

Off-platform payments are excluded. If any portion of a project is paid outside Trustworkly, that project is removed from this metric — the true amount can't be independently verified.

Why photos can't be faked or reused

Every verification photo is checked before it's accepted:

  • GPS location match. The photo's embedded coordinates must match the registered project address. A photo taken somewhere else is rejected.
  • Duplicate detection. Every photo is fingerprinted and compared against every other photo in the system. The same image can't be reused across multiple projects or contractors.
  • Timestamp integrity. The capture time is preserved from the original image metadata and locked once uploaded — a contractor can't backdate a job.

Why some profiles rank higher when performance ties

Search results are ranked by the four performance metrics first — % of jobs that ran long, average days over when delayed, % over budget, and average % over original quote. When two contractors are close on performance, we apply a small, capped confidence tiebreaker based on the volume of verifiable evidence behind their record.

  • Verification volume affects ranking confidence, not payment amount. A contractor with more photo-verified, Stripe-verified projects carries more confidence — because there is more independently checkable data behind their numbers. Paying more, subscribing to Verified Pro, or running larger jobs never boosts ranking.
  • Honest disclosure is not punished. A contractor who discloses off-platform payments honestly is treated differently than one who simply has thin, low-volume data — the honest discloser keeps their real performance numbers; they just carry less confidence weight until more on-platform jobs accrue. Both paths are open; neither is penalized on performance.
  • A minimum of 10 verified transactions is required before any ranking boost applies. Contractors need at least 10 verified on-platform transactions before ranking confidence is applied — a couple of jobs isn't enough data to meaningfully prove a track record. Below that threshold, verification volume contributes nothing to ranking.
  • The bonus is capped. Confidence can move a contractor by at most ~5 points on a 100-point scale, so it only breaks near-ties. A low-volume contractor with excellent numbers will always outrank a high-volume contractor with mediocre numbers.

Fairness: ranking is the same for every contractor

Trust Metrics rank the same way for every contractor regardless of subscription tier. Verified Pro contractors don't get a ranking boost — they simply gain the ability to publicly showcase their verified project history. Search order is driven only by verified performance data and a capped confidence tiebreaker from verification volume. Not plan tier. Not ad spend. Not seniority.

Want to see how the plans compare? Visit pricing or read the full fees page.

Reordering is presentation only. Verified Pro contractors can choose the order their verified projects appear in on their public showcase, but they cannot add, remove, or hide any project — every card shown is a real, geo-verified job on their record.