How we score roofing contractors in Ontario

Ontario Roofing Directory currently scores 1,323 roofing contractor businesses across the province. Every score comes from a fixed set of measured signals applied the same way to every listing. There is no manual thumb on the scale. This page explains what goes into the number, why it's weighted the way it is, and where the data falls short.

The five signals, heaviest first

Each business gets a composite score out of 100, built from five weighted parts:

• Sentiment, 28%. A synthesis of what recent reviews actually describe: praise, complaints, and the specific things customers keep bringing up, from workmanship to cleanup to how a warranty claim was handled.
• Rating, 26%. The Google aggregate star rating for the business.
• Volume, 20%. How many reviews a business has, log-scaled so ten reviews and four hundred reviews don't get treated as equivalent evidence.
• Recency, 10%. How recently customers have left reviews, since a roofer's crew, pricing, and quality of work can change over a few years.
• Completeness, 16%. Whether the listing has a working phone number, website, posted hours, and a verifiable address.

Why sentiment carries the most weight

A star average can hide the exact thing you need to know before hiring someone to work on your roof. Two roofing companies can both sit at 4.4 stars, and one of them has a clean spread of reviews while the other has a cluster of recent complaints about the same problem, say, no-shows on scheduled repairs, or leaks reappearing after a "fix." The stars alone won't tell you that. Reading what people actually wrote, and doing it across the recent review history rather than cherry-picking a few, is the only way to catch a pattern before it becomes your problem. That's why sentiment outweighs the raw rating in our formula.

Why the other signals matter for hiring a roofer

Rating still matters because it's the broadest, most familiar signal and a fast gut check. Volume matters because a 5.0 rating from three reviews tells you almost nothing, while a 4.6 from three hundred reviews has been tested against a lot more real jobs. Recency matters because roofing companies change owners, subcontractors, and quality over time, and a glowing review from 2019 doesn't guarantee what happens on your job in 2026. Completeness matters in a practical way: a contractor without a listed phone number, hours, or address is harder to vet and harder to hold accountable if something goes wrong on your roof.

The honest limits

Some businesses in the directory have very few recent reviews. When that's the case, we label the score as low-confidence rather than presenting it with the same weight as a business with a deep, current review history. We also don't republish reviews verbatim on this site; we synthesize what they say and link out to Google so you can read the original source yourself and judge it firsthand. The score is a starting point for research, not a replacement for getting a quote and asking your own questions.

Scores are earned, not sold

Every score on this site is generated from the rubric above and nothing else. Paid placement, where it exists, is always labelled as such and never changes a business's score or its position in a ranking. If a list's picks or order were reviewed or adjusted by an editor rather than generated purely from the data, that is disclosed on the page itself. When you see a number here, it came from the same formula applied to every listing, including our eavestrough and gutter contractor rankings and every other category page on the site.

Who's behind this

Ontario Roofing Directory launched in 2026 to give homeowners something better than scattered ads and inflated claims: a way to compare roofing contractors using published review data and public business records, refreshed monthly to keep listings current. Marcus Ramos, Research Lead, oversees the rankings and the rubric behind them. You can reach the publisher through the enquiry form at ontario-roofing.ca or by email at ontariodirectorypartners@gmail.com. To see how a specific category stacks up, start from the directory home page.