What did the ratings say when we read them?
On 15 October 2026:
- ScholarshipOwl: Trustpilot 4.2 out of 5 from 1,260 reviews, a claimed profile since May 2015 with a paid Trustpilot subscription; App Store 4.7 out of 5 from 228 ratings.
- Bold.org: Trustpilot 4.8 out of 5 from 218 reviews, claimed since May 2026; App Store 4.7 out of 5 from 3.2K ratings.
- Fastweb: Trustpilot 1.2 out of 5 from 232 reviews, unclaimed; App Store 2.7 out of 5 from 85 ratings.
- Scholarships.com: Trustpilot 2.9 out of 5 from 2 reviews; App Store 5.0 out of 5 from 5 ratings.
- Niche: we found a Trustpilot profile filed under an unrelated category and do not quote it.
- Appily: we did not read a rating.
Why does the number of reviews matter?
Two reviews can produce any average. Scholarships.com's 2.9 on Trustpilot and 5.0 on the App Store both rest on a handful of people, so they tell you very little either way. A rating from hundreds or thousands of reviews is steadier, though still not a measurement of how well a platform works for someone like you.
What do claimed and paid profiles mean?
A claimed Trustpilot profile means the company has taken control of its page, usually to reply to reviews and invite customers to leave them. A paid subscription gives the company more tools for inviting reviews. Neither is wrong, and Trustpilot shows both on the profile, but they help explain why a claimed, active profile often collects more and warmer reviews than an unclaimed one. Fastweb's profile was unclaimed when we read it; ScholarshipOwl's was claimed with a paid subscription; Bold.org's was claimed.
What do app ratings measure?
How people feel about the app: speed, design, notifications. An app rating says little about the scholarships behind it. It is useful if you plan to apply mostly on your phone, as Bold.org's one-tap no-essay applications or ScholarshipOwl's app reminders invite you to.
How should you use ratings?
- Read the newest low reviews and the newest high reviews, not just the average.
- Look for complaints about the things you care about: billing, email volume, data, finding real awards.
- Check the number of reviews before trusting the score.
- Treat the homepage badge on a platform's own site as a claim; check the rating site itself.
This site never turns ratings into stars or averages them into a score. Each profile quotes the rating, the count and the date.
What matters more than a rating?
The facts you can check: what it costs, what the terms say about refunds, what the privacy policy says about selling data, and whether its features fit your week. The profiles and the fact table put those side by side.
Why do ratings for the same platform differ so much?
Different people leave them, for different reasons. App store ratings are often prompted inside the app after a good moment, while review sites attract people with a problem to report, especially about billing or email. A platform can look excellent in one place and poor in another without either being false. Reading both, with their counts, gives a fairer picture than either alone.
Can a company remove bad reviews?
Review sites have their own rules about what companies may and may not do, and the details change. What you can do is look at the spread: a profile with only five-star reviews and very few written complaints is worth reading more closely, and so is one where the company never replies. Dates matter too: a run of recent reviews tells you more about the platform today than a mass of reviews from years ago.
What about ratings shown on a platform's own homepage?
Some platforms show a rating badge on their own site. ScholarshipOwl's homepage, for example, showed "4.4 1K+ Reviews" without naming the review site in the text we read. Badges like this are a summary chosen by the company; the rating site itself, with its count and date, is the place to check.