How many reviews does it take to move your star rating?
A displayed rating is a weighted average, so the more reviews you have the harder it is to shift — in either direction. This works out how many you need to reach a target, how long that takes at your current rate, and what a single one-star does to you.
Your numbers
The answer
Reviews needed
57
To move from 4.3 to 4.7
Time to get there
14 months
At 4 reviews a month
Average after one 1-star
4.2
A drop of 0.08
Reviews to undo one 1-star
5
At 5 stars each
Total stars you hold now
181
42 reviews × 4.3
How this was worked out
- Stars you hold
- 42 × 4.3 = 181
- Reviews needed
- 42 × (4.7 − 4.3) ÷ (5 − 4.7) = 57
- Time
- 57 ÷ 4 a month = 14 months
- After one 1-star
- (181 + 1) ÷ (42 + 1) = 4.2
What each target costs you in reviews, from where you are now
| Target average | Reviews needed at 5 stars | Months at your rate |
|---|---|---|
| 4.5 | 17 | 4.2 months |
| 4.7 | 57 | 14 months |
| 4.9 | 253 | 63 months |
Targets at or above the rating of the reviews you are adding are left out, because they are not reachable by collection. This table says nothing about search visibility — no credible source links a review count to a ranking position, and this tool does not pretend otherwise.
What to do with this
- Reaching 4.7 needs 57 more reviews at 5 stars. At 4 a month that is 14 months.
- Ask at the moment the job is finished and the customer is happy, in person, and make the link one tap. Batching requests into a monthly email is the version that does not work.
- One new one-star review would take you from 4.3 to 4.2, and it would take 5 reviews at 5 stars to undo.
- Reply to every review, including the good ones. It is the one part of this that costs nothing and is visible to every future customer reading the page.
Change anything above and the link in your address bar changes with it, so you can send the exact result to whoever needs to see it. Nothing you type is sent anywhere — the whole calculation happens in your browser.
What this does, and how the maths works
What it does
- Works out how many new reviews at a given rating it takes to move your displayed average to a target.
- Converts that into a timeframe at the rate you currently collect them.
- Shows what one new one-star review does to your average, which is the number that explains why the same rating gets harder to protect as it grows.
How to use it
- Enter your current review count and the average shown on your profile.
- Enter the average you want to reach. It has to be below the rating of the reviews you expect to receive — you cannot average your way past them.
- Enter the rating of the reviews you realistically expect. Five is optimistic; most businesses collecting honestly land between 4.6 and 4.9.
- Enter how many you collect a month to get the timeframe.
The formula
- Reviews needed = current count × (target − current average) ÷ (new rating − target)
- Time to get there = reviews needed ÷ reviews collected a month
- Average after one 1-star = (count × average + 1) ÷ (count + 1)
Reading the answer
- The bigger your review count, the more inertia it has. That protects a good rating and traps a bad one, which is why fixing a rating is slow and defending one is cheap.
- If the reviews needed run into the hundreds, the target is not reachable by collection alone in any useful timeframe. The realistic move is a lower target plus fixing whatever produced the low ratings.
- The one-star line is the argument for collecting continuously rather than in bursts. A business collecting steadily barely notices a bad review; one with fourteen reviews drops a tenth of a star.
What it cannot tell you
This is arithmetic on a displayed average and nothing more. It makes no claim about ranking, visibility or how many customers a rating brings in, because nothing credible links a review count to a position in local search results. Anyone promising you that link is selling something.
Where every figure on this page came from
Every default in the calculator above is either your own number or a figure from one of the studies below, with the market and the sample stated. Nothing here is an estimate somebody felt was about right, and no United States figure is wearing an Australian label.
This tool cites no third-party figures. Every input is your own, which means the answer is only as good as the numbers you put in — and that nothing here is a benchmark dressed up as a default.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about working with SoudCoh
Have more questions? Let's chat!
Book a Free Strategy CallIt depends entirely on how many you already have, because a displayed rating is a weighted average. Moving from 4.3 to 4.7 with 42 reviews takes 56 five-star reviews. The same move with 200 reviews takes 267. That inertia is the whole shape of the problem: a large review count protects a good rating and traps a bad one.
It depends on the count behind it. A one-star review on a business with 10 reviews at 4.5 drops the average to 4.18. The same review on a business with 200 at 4.5 drops it to 4.48. That is the practical argument for collecting reviews continuously rather than in bursts — the inertia you build is what absorbs the bad day.
We are not going to tell you that, because nothing credible establishes it. Google does not publish how reviews weigh into local ranking, and the statistics quoted everywhere about review counts and visibility trace to aggregator sites recycling each other with no primary study behind them. This calculator does the star arithmetic and stops there. Reviews are worth collecting because people read them before they call you, which is reason enough.
In person, at the moment the job is finished and the customer is visibly happy, with a link that takes one tap. Everything else is a distant second. Do not offer anything in exchange — incentivised reviews breach the platforms' terms and, under Australian Consumer Law, reviews that misrepresent themselves as independent can be misleading conduct.
Yes, and quickly, calmly, and without arguing the facts in public. The reply is not for the person who wrote it — it is for the next customer reading the page, who is deciding whether a problem with your business gets handled. That reader is the entire audience for the response.
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We will read
your real ones.
Send us the account rather than the estimate. We will tell you what it is actually costing to win a job, which part of the chain is leaking, and whether it is worth fixing — before anyone asks you to sign anything.