Recommendation you can trust, because it can’t be bought.

Finding a good local company has somehow got harder, not easier. Search results are full of ads. Review scores are gamed. “Top 10” lists are often just the businesses that paid the most. It’s difficult to know who to trust — exactly when trust matters most, like when someone is moving your whole home or your grand piano.

We started Best Rated Company to fix that for our corner of the world, then keep widening it. The idea is deliberately old-fashioned: a short, honest list of the best local businesses, vouched for by people who actually checked.

How we’re different

Most directories make money by charging businesses to appear or rank higher. We don’t. Listing is free, and no amount of money moves a company up the page — because there is no “up the page”. We name a maximum of two businesses per category in each town, and only after they’ve passed our checks.

We verify that a company’s reviews are genuine — including by phoning a real customer at random — confirm it’s financially sound, and require proof of public liability insurance in its trading name before anything goes live. You can read the full process here.

Local, not national

We list independent, locally rooted businesses — never national chains. The best company in your town is rarely the biggest one; it’s usually the one whose owner you could call by name, who’s built a reputation over years of doing right by their neighbours.

Where we cover

We cover the whole of the United Kingdom and are adding new trades and towns continually. If your area isn’t represented yet and you run an excellent local business, put yourself forward — that’s how new categories open up.

A note on honesty

We’re a young company and we’d rather earn your trust slowly than fake it quickly. We don’t invent ratings, we don’t pad our lists, and we’ll always tell you plainly what we have and haven’t verified about a business. If we ever get something wrong, tell us and we’ll put it right.