Trustpilot was founded in Denmark in 2007 by Peter Holten Mühlmann, the company's former
CEO. At the time, he was studying at
Aarhus University, School of Business and Social Sciences and would later leave university to create Trustpilot. After raising $3 million in early
venture funding from 2008 to 2010, Trustpilot received an initial capital injection from SEED Capital Denmark and Northzone in November 2011. One year later,
Index Ventures, SEED Capital Denmark and Northzone invested $13 million in
Series B funding in Trustpilot, which the company used for international growth. In 2013, Trustpilot opened offices in
New York and
London. In the same year, the company was named Danish Startup of the Year at
Next Web's European Startup Awards. In 2014,
Draper Esprit (then named DFJ Esprit) invested $25 million in Trustpilot, along with support from the existing investors. According to
VentureBeat, the Series C funding round would help Trustpilot "bring its online retail reviews service to the U.S." At the end of 2014, Trustpilot employed 325 people and 400,000 new reviews were posted each month. According to Website Magazine, "Trustpilot soared in 2014," and experienced "record growth with an 80 percent year-over-year increase in
revenue". In March 2015,
Google announced the launch of product ratings in Germany, the UK, and France. In order to do this, Google aggregated data from various European sources, including third-party platforms like Trustpilot. In May of that year, Trustpilot received $73.5 million in Series D funding. The investment was led by
Vitruvian Partners with contributions from all existing investors. In February 2020, the BBC reported that Trustpilot had removed at least 2.2 million fake reviews. Of these, 1.5 million were deleted with fraud protection software and 600,000 were removed manually. Additionally, 469,000 companies reported fake reviews, and around 90,000 fake reviews were removed by consumers. By 2024, Trustpilot removed 4.5 million fake reviews, with 90% of the fake reviews automatically taken down by AI tools. Trustpilot was listed on the
London Stock Exchange in March 2021. In March 2023, Mühlmann announced his resignation as CEO and transitioned to a non-executive board member. On 16 September 2025, the company announced a
share buyback program worth up to £30 million. In March 2026, the
Italian Competition Authority fined Trustpilot $4.6 million for misleading customers regarding how its services worked and failing to verify review authenticity. The company said that it planned to appeal the decision. ==Products and activities==