Three tiers
- Official HBF rankings — developers with a rolling 12-month HBF “would recommend” percentage (including scores inherited from a linked parent brand, with a footnote).
- Consumer review rankings — developers without HBF data but with sufficient verified consumer reviews on Trustpilot and/or Google.
- Awaiting data — listed alphabetically with no rank number until enough data is available.
Tier 1: HBF
Sort order follows the HBF Customer Satisfaction Survey rolling recommend % descending. Star bands (e.g. 90%+ = 5★) are derived from that percentage for display only.
Tier 2: Consumer reviews
Minimum sample sizes: Trustpilot requires at least 10 reviews; Google requires at least 25. Scores are normalized to a 0–100 scale and adjusted with Bayesian shrinkage so developers with very few reviews cannot top the tier unfairly. The industry prior is 75 (roughly 3.75★). When both sources qualify, we combine them weighted by review count.
Tier 3: Awaiting data
Developers without HBF data and without enough consumer reviews are not given a rank number. They remain searchable and listed on the rankings page.
Fairness rules
- HBF percentages and consumer star ratings are never blended into one score.
- Minimum sample sizes apply before a consumer rank is assigned.
- Inherited HBF scores always show which parent brand they come from.
- Rank positions cannot be set manually in the admin — only data sources matter.