Blog Movie Ratings

How We Score Movies: GoodScore vs IMDb vs Rotten Tomatoes

February 14, 2026 3 min read

Every movie rating platform has a different methodology. IMDb uses crowd votes, Rotten Tomatoes counts critical consensus, and Metacritic weighs expert scores. GoodScore combines all of them. Here's how they compare.

The Three Scoring Systems

IMDb (1-10)

Crowd-voted average. Anyone can rate. Prone to vote manipulation, nostalgia bias, and recency effects. Skews toward popular genre films.

Rotten Tomatoes (0-100%)

Percentage of critics who gave a positive review. Binary (fresh/rotten) — doesn't distinguish between "liked it" and "masterpiece." Can make mediocre-but-inoffensive films look great.

Metacritic (0-100)

Weighted average of critic scores. More nuanced than RT but fewer reviews. Can be harsh — very few films score above 80.

GoodScore (0-100)

Composite of all four platforms (IMDb, RT, Metacritic, TMDB). When they agree, the score is confident. When they disagree, the score reflects the consensus. No single platform can dominate.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Movie IMDb RT MC GoodScore
The Godfather 9.2 97% 100 94
12 Angry Men 9.0 100% 97 94
Schindler's List 9.0 98% 95 93
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 9.0 94% 94 91
The Godfather Part II 9.0 96% 90 91
Parasite 8.5 99% 97 91
Grave of the Fireflies 8.5 100% 94 91
Spirited Away 8.6 96% 96 91
777 Charlie 8.7 100% 90
The Dark Knight 9.1 94% 85 90

Which One Should You Trust?

All of them — and none of them alone. Each platform captures something different. GoodScore's strength is that it doesn't rely on any single source. When IMDb, RT, Metacritic, and TMDB all agree a movie is great, you can be confident it actually is.

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