Reviews and ratings
Who can review whom and when, why reviews cannot be bought or removed on request, how to write one that is actually useful, what to do about an unfair review, and why clients are reviewed too.
Reviews are the memory of the platform. They are the main reason a stranger will take a chance on you, and they are worth understanding rather than treating as an afterthought at the end of a contract.
Who can review, and when
Reviews come from completed contracts. You cannot review someone you have not worked with, and you cannot review before the work is done.
This is the property that makes them worth anything. A review here means money moved and work happened, which is why they cannot be manufactured the way testimonials on a website can.
Both sides review. Freelancers are reviewed by clients, and clients are reviewed by freelancers.
Why clients are reviewed too
This surprises some clients. It exists because the risk on a marketplace runs both ways: a freelancer taking a contract is also betting on a stranger — that the brief is real, that approvals will happen, that they will not be argued out of payment.
A client with good reviews gets better proposals. Good freelancers can choose, and they check. If you are a client wondering why your posts attract mediocre applicants, your own review history is worth looking at.
The behaviours that build a good client reputation are cheap: respond to proposals, decide promptly, fund quickly, approve work you are happy with rather than sitting on it, and be clear about what you want.
Writing one that is useful
The score is a summary. The text is what people actually read.
Be specific. "Great work, thanks" says nothing. "Delivered the migration two days early, spotted a data issue we had missed, and documented it properly" tells the next client exactly what they are getting.
Mention what was hard. A review acknowledging a difficult constraint and how it was handled is worth ten generic ones.
Be honest about problems, proportionately. A deadline that slipped by two days on an otherwise excellent project is worth mentioning and does not need to sink the score. Reviews that never mention anything imperfect are eventually discounted by everyone reading them.
Do not use it to relitigate a dispute. If something went badly enough to dispute, that process exists and has its own record. A review written in anger reflects on its author too, and experienced readers can tell.
Unfair reviews
Sometimes you get one you do not deserve. It happens on every marketplace and it is genuinely frustrating.
Reviews are not removed on request, and not for being negative. A review system where unfavourable entries can be argued away is not a review system.
They are removed when they break the rules. Personal abuse, content unrelated to the work, attempts at extortion, or a review from an engagement that did not really happen. Report it and it will be looked at against those criteria.
What actually works is your response. A calm, factual reply to a poor review is read by every future client, and a measured response to an unreasonable complaint frequently reads better than the complaint. Do not be defensive and do not be sarcastic. State what happened, briefly, once.
And then bury it with work. Recent reviews weigh more heavily than old ones. Three good contracts after a bad review changes the picture far more effectively than any argument about the bad one.
Asking for reviews
You may ask. Most people forget rather than decline, and a short message at the end of a contract is entirely reasonable.
What you may not do is condition anything on the content. Offering a discount for five stars, threatening a poor review to extract something, or agreeing to swap positive reviews are all manipulation of the system, and they are treated seriously because they attack the thing that makes the platform work.
If somebody pressures you over a review, report it. That is exactly the situation reporting exists for.
The score, and what it feeds
Ratings feed into Talent Level and search ordering, weighted toward recent work. See Talent Level and how ranking works.
One thing worth knowing: not completing a contract is worse than completing one imperfectly. A mediocre review still records a finished engagement. An abandoned contract records a client left with nothing, and completion rate is weighted heavily. If a contract is going badly, finishing it is almost always better for you than walking away.
Reading reviews as a buyer
Read the text, not the number. A four-star review saying "excellent, one deadline slipped" is more informative than a bare five.
Look at recency. Excellent reviews from two years ago and nothing since is a different signal from the same reviews last month.
Look for repeat clients. The same client hiring someone four times is the strongest signal available.
Do not over-weight a single bad review among many good ones. Everyone has one difficult engagement. A pattern is meaningful; an outlier usually is not.
When you can leave one
Reviews open when a contract completes. Before that there is nothing to review, and after a period the window closes so that reviews reflect recent working relationships rather than being left indefinitely.
Leave it promptly. The details fade quickly, and a review written the day after a contract ends is more specific and more useful than one written a month later from a vague memory.
If you get no reviews
Some clients simply forget, and a short message at the end of a contract asking for one is entirely normal and usually works.
If you are consistently getting none, look at how your contracts end. An engagement that fades out without a clear finish rarely produces a review, because nobody feels it is over. Marking the completion clearly, handing over properly and saying thank you is what prompts people.
For a new freelancer this matters disproportionately. The first few reviews are the hardest to get and the most valuable, because they move you from an unknown to somebody with a record. It is worth taking a small first contract specifically to get one.
Reviewing when it went badly
You are allowed to be honest, and you should be. A review system where nobody writes anything negative is a review system nobody can use.
The distinction that matters is between describing what happened and attacking a person. "Three deadlines were missed and communication was difficult" is fair and useful. Speculation about somebody's competence, motives or personal circumstances is not, and it is the kind of thing that gets a review removed and reflects badly on its author.
Stick to what happened, what was agreed, and what you would want to know if you were reading it.
What reviews feed
Ratings contribute to Talent Level and to how you appear in search, weighted toward recent work. They also appear on your public profile, where they are frequently the deciding factor in whether somebody hires you.
For clients, your review history affects the quality of proposals you receive, because good freelancers check before spending a bid on your job.
A note for new accounts
The first review is the hardest thing to get on any marketplace, and it is worth being strategic about it rather than waiting.
Take a small piece of work, deliver it well, and ask. A single genuine review from a completed contract changes how every subsequent proposal is read, because it moves you from unknown to known. Freelancers who hold out for their target rate before their first review typically wait a long time.
The same applies to clients hiring for the first time: completing one engagement well, and being reviewed for it, materially improves the proposals you receive on the next post.
Responding to a review
You can reply to a review, and on a poor one the reply is read carefully by every future client.
A good response is short, factual, and not defensive. State what happened in one or two sentences. If part of the complaint was fair, acknowledge it — that reads better than a flat denial, and clients notice. Then stop.
What damages you is arguing, sarcasm, length, or attacking the reviewer. A measured reply to an unreasonable review frequently reads better than the review itself. An angry reply confirms it.
Do not reply to good reviews with anything more than a brief thank you.
Reviews and repeat work
The reviews that matter most are not the ones with the highest scores. They are the ones from clients who came back.
A profile showing the same client at three separate contracts says something no rating can: that working with this person was good enough to do again. It is the strongest available signal and it is the hardest to fake.
Which means the highest-return thing you can do for your review profile is not chasing five stars, it is finishing engagements well enough that people return.
Why this matters more than it looks
On a marketplace, reviews are the mechanism that makes a stranger worth taking a chance on. Everything else — verification, rank, portfolio — describes capability. Reviews describe what it was actually like.
Which is why they cannot be bought, removed on request, or left by someone who never worked with you. Those constraints are annoying exactly once, when a review goes against you, and valuable every other time.
Common questions
Can I edit a review after leaving it? Reviews are intended to be a record rather than a running opinion. If you left one in error, contact support.
Can I see who left a review? Reviews come from identified completed contracts, so yes.
Does a dispute stop me being reviewed? No. A completed contract can be reviewed whatever the outcome was.
Will a bad review follow me forever? Recent work is weighted far more heavily. Three good contracts afterwards change the picture more than any argument about the bad one.
Related
Did this answer your question?
Did this not answer it?
Open a ticket and a person will read it. You do not need an account.