About trustd

What is trustd?

trustd (trustd.co.za) is a free tool that helps South African online shoppers detect fake reviews on e-commerce marketplaces. Paste any Takealot product URL, and trustd analyses every review for patterns of manipulation — then shows you the real rating with suspicious reviews removed or downweighted.

No sign-up. No payment. No data stored. Just paste a URL and see the truth.

The problem we're solving

Online reviews are the most trusted source of product information for shoppers — but that trust makes them a target for manipulation. Sellers who buy fake reviews gain an unfair advantage over honest competitors, and shoppers end up with products that don't match their expectations.

In South Africa, there was no independent tool to check whether a product's reviews were genuine. Global tools like Fakespot focus on Amazon US. trustd was built specifically for the South African market, starting with Takealot — the country's largest online retailer.

Our data

trustd has built one of the largest independent datasets on review integrity in South African e-commerce:

These numbers come from a comprehensive analysis of the entire Takealot marketplace. Every product check you run on trustd uses real-time data fetched directly from Takealot's public API.

How it works

trustd's ReviewShield engine analyses reviews for two types of anomalies: duplicate reviews (same account posting multiple times) and identity manipulation (same account posting under different names). Each detection is classified by severity, and suspicious reviews are downweighted rather than simply removed.

The result is a Trustd Rating — a weighted average that more accurately reflects genuine customer sentiment. Read our full methodology →

Our values

• 1
  Free forever. Review integrity information should be accessible to every shopper, not locked behind a paywall.
• 2
  Transparent methodology. Every detection method is documented publicly. No black boxes.
• 3
  No user data stored. trustd doesn't track users, require sign-ups, or store personal information.
• 4
  Built in South Africa. By South Africans, for South African shoppers. Localised for our marketplaces and consumer protection laws.

What's next

trustd is actively expanding its detection capabilities and marketplace coverage:

• Amazon South Africa — fake review detection for Amazon is in development
• Makro — Makro support is being built
• New detection methods — coordinated review networks, review velocity anomalies, and bot-generated text detection