How the Ironclad Score works

Every contractor on Ironclad Verified carries one score, from 0 to 100. It is computed by the same formula for every contractor, from their record of reviews on confirmed real jobs. This page is the published methodology.

The five signals

The Score is built from five signals. On the home page they read as: real reviews, consistency, follow-through, getting better, owning mistakes. Here are the same five, formally, with the exact weights in the formula.

• Review Quality, 25 points. The contractor’s average rating, weighted by how substantive the reviews are. A detailed review of a real job carries more weight than a bare star rating.
• Review Consistency, 20 points. The contractor’s worst 90-day stretch measured against their overall average. A steady record scores higher than a great year with a bad quarter buried in it. A record too new or too thin to measure across time takes partial credit here (14 of 20) until consistency is actually demonstrated: steadiness is proven, never presumed. This is also why a brand-new record cannot burst its way to a perfect score in one week.
• Follow-Through, 20 points. The share of confirmed jobs that turn into a review. This signal is capped, so raw volume alone can never dominate the Score.
• Staying Sharp, 20 points. Consistency of recent activity, plus whether recent review quality holds up against the prior period. A strong record from three years ago does not coast forever.
• Owning Mistakes, 15 points. The share of critical reviews the contractor answers within 24 hours. Everyone has a rough job eventually. This measures who shows up when it happens.

Inside each signal, scoring curves smooth the raw math. We publish the signals, what each one measures, and the exact weights. We do not publish the curve shapes, because that is exactly what fraud rings would tune against. Everything else about the formula is on this page, and the curves are set once and applied identically to every contractor.

No money in the formula

There is no money field in the formula. No field for payment, ad spend, subscriptions, referral fees, or any commercial relationship exists anywhere in the computation. No payment of any kind can ever change rank. The only way a contractor moves up is by doing good work, getting reviewed for it, and handling problems when they happen.

When a contractor gets a score

A contractor gets no score until roughly 20 confirmed jobs are on the record. Until then, their page shows their reviews with a plain note that the record is still building. We would rather show nothing than show a number we cannot stand behind.

Every review is tied to a real job

Every review that counts toward the Score is tied to a confirmed job. There are three ways a job gets confirmed:

• The contractor’s own job-management software. The job exists in the contractor’s own job-management software, with a real customer and a real completion.
• Jobs booked through this marketplace. The request, the contact, and the job all happened here, so the trail is already on file.
• Homeowner-confirmed review invitations. The homeowner confirms directly that the job happened before their review counts.

Where the record comes from (and why it changes the order)

Every confirmed job carries its source, and every contractor’s page says how their record was built:

• Independent evidence: jobs booked through this marketplace (we saw the request, the contact, and the completion) or confirmed in the contractor’s own job-management system. Neither can be hand-picked after the fact.
• Attested history: past jobs the contractor asked their own customers to confirm. Real (a homeowner attested each one), but the contractor chose which customers to ask, so it is honestly labeled as self-assembled history.

The ranking respects the difference. Among scored contractors, a record with at least 3 independently-confirmed reviews ranks above a record built only from attested history, whatever the two numbers say. The score formula itself is identical for everyone; what a contractor cannot do is assemble a hand-picked greatest-hits record and sit above someone earning theirs job by job in the open. The way up is the same for everybody: take real jobs, do great work, get confirmed independently.

Fraud rails

Automated checks and human review watch for fake reviews, traded reviews, self-reviews, and manufactured jobs. Reviews are removed only for fraud under this published policy, never for sentiment. A negative review of a real job stays up.

Every removal is logged. Those logs, along with score-distribution data, will publish in a recurring fairness report once the first cohort of contractors is scored, so anyone can check that the rails are applied evenly. Hold us to it.