How we score.
Every campaign gets a score from 0 to 100, built from four factors and weighted by where the campaign is in its life. A creator's score is the backer-weighted average of their campaigns.
Payment never affects scores.
Creators can pay for Pro features like public replies and alerts. Investors and journalists pay for reports. None of this changes a score: the calculation doesn't look at who has paid, and claimed and unclaimed profiles are scored the same way.
Two stages, different questions
During a campaign we ask whether the creator is managing it well. Once it ends, what matters most is whether they delivered.
A factor with no evidence yet is left out and the others are rescaled.
Delivery
On-time vs promised date and % of rewards shipped
- Compares the promised delivery date with the actual (or current) date. Each day late reduces the score.
- Blends in the share of backers with verified shipments, from fulfilment manifests and verified creator confirmations.
- Deliveries are verified automatically from carrier tracking on a random sample of each upload, free for every creator. Paying has no effect on this.
- Verified partial shipments raise the score on late campaigns. At 90% of backers shipped, a campaign counts as delivered.
- Late campaigns decay further over time; failed campaigns score near zero.
Communication
Update frequency; 60+ day silences are penalised
- Measures the cadence of creator updates throughout the campaign lifecycle.
- Every gap longer than 60 days between updates is a significant penalty; 30–60 day gaps are a smaller one.
- An ongoing silence of 60+ days on an undelivered campaign is penalised again.
Product quality
Post-delivery sentiment and backer reviews
- Uses backer reviews and post-delivery comments about quality.
- It counts only after delivery, once there are reviews or post-delivery comments about the product.
Backer sentiment
Comment sentiment, weighted to the recent trend
- Every comment excerpt is scored from −1 (negative) to +1 (positive).
- The 12 most recent comments count for 60%, so the score reflects the current trend.
- After delivery, only comments from after delivery count. Frustration during a delay stops affecting the score once rewards arrive.
Trust levels
Campaign standing
Before delivery, each campaign shows a live standing calculated from dates, updates and verified shipments: on track, quiet, behind but keeping backers informed, behind and silent, or shipping. Creators can't set it. Campaigns still in progress are labeled "In progress" and can't be rated Trusted until they deliver.
Sentiment index and crises
The ticker follows backer comments over time and keeps its full history. A negative comment the creator answered on Kickstarter or Indiegogo moves the line less than one left unanswered. A fall of 15 or more points within 90 days is recorded as a crisis, with how long recovery took. Replies written on BackerScore have no effect on the index or the score.
Creator statements
Creators on Pro can publish and revise statements here. Every revision is marked and earlier versions stay visible. Statements are not verified by us and never affect a score.
Privacy
We only store short excerpts (about 40 words at most) from public comments, with a link to the original. We never store or show commenters' usernames.