> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # How Trustpilot Makes Money: Inside the UK-Listed Review Platform - URL: https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/how-trustpilot-makes-money-inside-the-uk-listed-review-platform/ - Published: 2026-09-16T10:00:59.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-16T10:00:58.000Z - Description: How does Trustpilot make money? The UK-listed review platform keeps reviews free for consumers while charging businesses for subscriptions, analytics, invitations, widgets and other tools. - Author: Sharoni Banerjee - Tags: Founder Stories --- Trustpilot makes money by charging businesses for a subscription, not by charging the people who leave reviews. That's the whole model in one sentence. Let's start with the basics: what is Trustpilot, and why did a Danish review platform debut on the London Stock Exchange with a **£1.08 billion valuation?** The shorter version is that reviews stay free and open for consumers, while the tools that let a business actually use them invitations, branding, analytics, widgets are what Trustpilot sells. Understanding **how Trustpilot makes money** starts with keeping those two sides separate in your head. --- ## What Is Trustpilot? Trustpilot is a global consumer review platform, founded in Copenhagen in **2007** by **Peter Holten Mühlmann**, that lets anyone rate a business publicly and lets businesses respond. In 2026, it's a long way from that scrappy Danish start-up it's a publicly listed company answerable to shareholders. Trustpilot Group plc floated on the London Stock Exchange in March 2021, pricing shares at 265p and valuing the business at approximately £1.08 billion, raising roughly £473 million in total between new shares and existing shareholder sales (Bloomberg). It trades under the ticker TRST as part of the FTSE 250. **Mühlmann ran the company** as CEO for sixteen years before stepping aside in September 2023\. His successor, **Adrian Blair**, previously led *Just Eat's* global operations and ran the SaaS accounting platform Dext (Trustpilot Investor Relations). Today, more than 1.17 million businesses globally have reviews on Trustpilot, according to the company's current figures. --- ## How Does Trustpilot Make Money? Trustpilot makes money through business subscriptions layered on top of a free, two-sided consumer platform, a structure it confirmed in its own IPO documents as a "software-as-a-service (SaaS) based" offering sold to companies. Consumers write reviews for nothing. **Is Trustpilot free for businesses** at the entry level, too? Yes, businesses can use Trustpilot's free tools to manage their profile and collect reviews, while paid plans add higher invitation volumes, more users and domains, additional analytics, integrations and other features. That distinction is the whole story: the **reviews themselves aren't** the product being sold to consumers; access to the business-facing functionality built around those reviews is what's monetised. The company also operates rules and enforcement systems designed to detect and remove fraudulent or policy-violating reviews, which supports the case that credible, trustworthy data is what makes businesses willing to pay for it in the first place. A company can claim its profile for free and use Trustpilot's basic tools without paying. The free plan includes up to 50 review invitations a month, while paid plans increase that allowance substantially. A usable free tier with paid tiers scaling review volume and features on top: that's essentially **how Trustpilot makes money**, mechanically speaking. --- ## Trustpilot Business Model Explained **The Trustpilot business model** is best described as a **Trustpilot freemium model**: free profile claiming at the bottom, increasingly capable paid tiers stacked on top. It follows a familiar SaaS structure, a free consumer-facing platform combined with paid business subscriptions, the free tier keeps reviews accessible to consumers, while paid plans give businesses additional tools for collecting, managing, analysing and displaying those reviews. Where **the Trustpilot business model** gets more interesting is how tightly pricing tracks business size. Trustpilot prices its plans per domain, with different tiers offering different limits for review invitations, users and domains, alongside additional integrations and features; larger businesses can also receive custom Enterprise pricing. A five-person online shop and a national retailer are, functionally, buying different subscription configurations even though the underlying reviews infrastructure is identical. That structure doesn't change the mechanics of **how Trustpilot makes money** much, but it does help explain why larger accounts are taking up a growing share of the business. --- ## Trustpilot Pricing Plans Trustpilot's pricing plans currently run four paid tiers above the free option, with an initial contract term of 12 months and the paid-plan prices shown billed annually. **Is Trustpilot free for businesses** that just want the basics? Yes, the Free tier costs nothing and remains usable on its own, without ever requiring a card on file. According to Trustpilot's own UK pricing page, the full structure looks like this: | Plan | Starting price | Review invitations/month | Widgets | Users | | ---------- | -------------------------------------------- | ------------------------ | ------- | ----- | | Free | $0 | 50 | 1 | 1 | | Starter | From $99/month, per domain, billed annually | 100 | 2 | 1 | | Plus | From $319/month, per domain, billed annually | 300 | 10 | 3 | | Premium | From $799/month, per domain, billed annually | 1,000 | 21 | 10 | | Enterprise | Custom quote | Unlimited | 22 | 1,000 | The Starter tier is only available to new small businesses (up to $5 million in revenue, per Trustpilot's own wording), and every price shown is per domain a business running several websites pays for each one separately. These pricing plans have **shifted during 2026**, too: several third-party comparison sites still quote older, lower US-dollar figures from earlier tiers, so businesses budgeting for Trustpilot should check the live UK page rather than a cached screenshot from last year. --- ## Other Revenue Streams The subscription tiers are the backbone of **the Trustpilot business model**, but they're not the whole picture. Beyond its core plans, Trustpilot also offers additional products and monetisation opportunities, including API access available as an add-on from Premium level upward, allowing businesses to integrate review data and functionality into their own systems. There's also a Data Solutions product, launched in 2025, for businesses seeking additional access to and analysis of Trustpilot review data across search, commerce, procurement, risk, marketing and investing use cases; Trustpilot doesn't publish a standard public price for it. One of the clearest signals in **how Trustpilot makes money** at scale: on Trustpilot's own H2 FY2025 earnings call, the company said the share of total bookings coming from customers paying more than $20,000 a year had grown from 25% of bookings in 2022 to 43% in 2025, with the number of these customers rising 35% year-on-year and average annual contract value reaching $10,852\. Growth here is increasingly about deepening a smaller number of larger accounts, not just adding logos at the bottom of the funnel. --- ## Is Trustpilot Profitable? Yes, Trustpilot Group plc reported adjusted EBITDA of $40.7 million for the year ended 31 December 2025, up 69% on the previous year, giving it a **15.6% adjusted EBITDA** margin (Trustpilot Group plc, FY2025 results announcement). Revenue for the year came in at $261.1 million, up 20% at constant currency, while annual recurring revenue reached $296.1 million at year-end; Trustpilot's own FY2025 commentary said ARR had surpassed $300 million on the company's broader measure. Operating profit jumped 320% year-on-year to $16.0 million, and net dollar retention sat at 102%, meaning existing customers were, on balance, spending slightly more than the year before rather than churning away. Trustpilot's own guidance points to a 25% adjusted EBITDA margin by 2028 and 30% by 2030, reflecting the company's stated focus on expanding profitability alongside continued growth. None of that really changes **how Trustpilot makes money** at the mechanical level; it just means the model is working at increasing scale. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/05/a4/05a4a052-18ab-4836-8924-ec8b322c371c/content/images/2026/09/is-trustpilot-free.png.png) Customer and founder reviews ### FAQs **1\. Is Trustpilot free for businesses?** Yes. A business can claim its profile, reply to reviews, and use Trustpilot's basic tools at no cost. The Free plan includes up to 50 review invitations per month, while paid plans provide higher invitation limits and additional features. **2\. How much does Trustpilot cost?** Trustpilot's pricing plans start at £119 a month per domain for the Starter tier, rising to £289 for Plus and £779 for Premium, all billed annually. Enterprise pricing is custom-quoted. Actual spend varies with domain count, review volume, and add-ons like API access. **3\. Who owns Trustpilot?** Trustpilot Group plc is a publicly listed company on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker TRST. Founder Peter Holten Mühlmann remains involved as a Non-Executive Director, having stepped down as CEO in September 2023. **Also read:** [*How PensionBee took on the workplace pension problem*](https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/how-pensionbee-took-on-the-workplace-pension-problem/) --- **Sources:* Data drawn from Trustpilot Group plc's FY2025 results announcement and H2 FY2025 earnings call, investor relations disclosures, Trustpilot's official UK business pricing page (accessed at time of writing), Bloomberg's coverage of the 2021 IPO, and Trustpilot's own IPO filing documents. Figures reflect the most recent available data at the time of writing; pricing in particular is subject to change and should be verified against Trustpilot's live pricing page before publication.* --- ***The EP+ Editorial Desk covers UK startups, founder stories, and venture capital. All editorial content is independently produced and human-reviewed before publication.***