Two numbers shape most online conversation about a new film, and they are built in different ways. Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer reports the percentage of counted reviews that are positive; Metacritic's Metascore is a weighted average of numerical scores assigned to a curated set of reviews. Both companies publish their own rules, and the figures below reflect those published pages as of August 20, 2026; criteria change.
What does the Tomatometer score actually measure?
It measures proportion, not intensity. Rotten Tomatoes states that "when at least 60% of reviews for a movie or TV show are positive, it is considered Fresh and a red tomato is displayed," and that below 60% the title "is considered Rotten and a green splat is displayed." Each counted review is sorted into one of two buckets before anything is added up.
That design has a consequence worth holding onto: a film at 61% and a film at 99% differ in how many critics landed on the positive side, not in how enthusiastic those critics were. A review calling a film a modest success and a review calling it a masterpiece both register as one positive mark. The company describes the score as resting on "the collective opinions of hundreds of film and television critics."
What does a Certified Fresh badge require?
More than a high percentage. Rotten Tomatoes lists a Tomatometer score of 75% or higher with at least five reviews from Top Critics, plus a volume floor that depends on how the title was released. The badge is a combination of score and sample size, not a separate measure of quality.
Per the company's published criteria, films in wide theatrical release need a minimum of 80 reviews, films in limited release a minimum of 40, and streaming films a minimum of 40. A television season needs reviews from at least 20 critics, five of them Top Critics. A title can sit well above 75% and still carry no badge simply because too few counted reviews exist.
How is the Popcornmeter different from the Tomatometer?
It counts viewers, not critics. Rotten Tomatoes says a full popcorn bucket appears "when at least 60% of users give a movie or TV show a star rating of 3.5 or higher." The mechanism mirrors the Tomatometer's threshold logic, but the population being counted is the audience, and the underlying unit is a star rating rather than a critic's verdict.
Verification sits underneath that number. In May 2019, TechCrunch's Anthony Ha reported that Rotten Tomatoes would begin asking users to confirm ticket purchases through Fandango, writing that "verified reviews will be clearly marked, and only those reviews will be included when calculating the Audience Score." Ha's piece tied the change to repeated review-bombing campaigns aimed at films with diverse casts.
In an August 21, 2024 editorial post, Rotten Tomatoes described a Verified Hot badge awarded to titles that "earn a Verified Audience Score of 90% or higher on the Popcornmeter," and said a film that later slips below 80% loses the designation. The same post set minimum counts of verified audience reviews scaled to a film's forecast domestic box office, listing 500 verified reviews for titles projected above $120 million and 300 for titles projected between $60 million and $120 million.
How is Metacritic's Metascore calculated?
By averaging, with weights. Metacritic states that it curates "a diverse group of highly respected critics and assign scores to their reviews," and that "the weighted average of those scores results in a single number and color, the Metascore." Reviews written on letter grades or star scales are converted to a 0-100 scale before the average is taken.
The weighting is explicit and is the main structural difference from a straight count. Metacritic's support documentation says the Metascore "is a weighted average in that we assign more importance, or weight, to some critics and publications than others, based on their quality and overall stature." The individual weights are not published, so a reader cannot reconstruct a given Metascore from the listed reviews alone.
Metacritic also applies a normalization step for film and music, describing a curve in which "higher scores are pushed higher, and lower scores are pushed lower" so that results spread across a wider range. The resulting number runs from 0 to 100 and is displayed in one of three colors: green for favorable reviews, yellow for mixed, red for unfavorable.
Why do the two numbers disagree on the same film?
Because they answer different questions. One reports how many critics were positive; the other reports how positive, on average and with weighting, those critics were. A film that nearly everyone found mildly agreeable and a film that split its critics can end up far apart on one scale and close together on the other.
The gap has been studied. In a November 14, 2012 post on Northwestern University's Amaral Lab blog, M. Irmak Sirer analyzed both systems and argued that the Tomatometer's binary conversion discards information, noting that many films cluster near the fresh-rotten line — "a major portion of the movies are in that gray area, that exact border of 'is it positive or negative'." Sirer concluded that "Metacritic's approach to the problem of summarizing critic opinions is the better one" for that reason.
The practical reading follows from the mechanism rather than from any preference between the two. A Tomatometer percentage tells you how widely a film was recommended; a Metascore tells you, on a weighted scale, how warmly. Neither figure is designed to say how the film will land for one particular viewer.
Who counts as a critic in these systems?
Both aggregators decide that themselves, and the rules have changed. Rotten Tomatoes' published criteria for approval describe values it looks for in applicants — insight, audience, quality and dedication — and state that the company does "not tolerate plagiarism, trolling, discrimination, conflicts of interest, or other breaches of conduct across all platforms."
The approach shifted in 2018. Writing in Fortune on August 29, 2018, Aric Jenkins reported an overhaul of the criteria and quoted the company saying it was "revamping our critics criteria that both shifts our focus to approving critics individually rather than through publications." Jenkins reported that more than 200 new approved critics were added in a pool that had been dominated by white male writers.
Metacritic describes its own pool as curated rather than open, which is why a review that counts toward one score may be absent from the other. When the two numbers diverge, part of the explanation can simply be that the two sites were reading different sets of critics.
How do the systems compare side by side?
| System | What it counts | Scale | Key threshold | Date checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tomatometer | Share of counted critic reviews rated positive | 0-100% | 60% or higher displays as Fresh | Aug 20, 2026 |
| Certified Fresh | Tomatometer plus review-volume floors | Badge | 75% or higher, five Top Critic reviews, 80 reviews for wide release | Aug 20, 2026 |
| Popcornmeter | Share of users rating 3.5 stars or higher | 0-100% | 60% or higher displays a full popcorn bucket | Aug 20, 2026 |
| Verified Hot | Verified audience ratings only | Badge | 90% or higher; lost if it later drops below 80% | Aug 20, 2026 |
| Metascore | Weighted average of converted critic scores | 0-100 | Green, yellow and red mark favorable, mixed and unfavorable | Aug 20, 2026 |
All thresholds above are taken from the companies' own published pages on the date shown and are subject to change without notice.
What should you check before quoting a score?
Check three things: the date, the sample, and which meter you are reading. A percentage captured on opening weekend often rests on a fraction of the reviews that will eventually be counted, and a badge earned that week can be lost later under the criteria the aggregator publishes.
Then check whether the number in front of you came from critics or from viewers. On Rotten Tomatoes those are two separate meters with separate populations, and only one of them is filtered by ticket verification. On Metacritic, the critic Metascore and the user score are likewise computed from different groups.
Finally, treat the figure as a summary of other people's published judgments rather than a property of the film. The aggregators say as much in their own descriptions: a score stands in for a body of reviews, and the reviews themselves remain the place where the reasoning lives.
For a related entertainment news perspective, read How Streaming Popularity Charts Actually Work, Explained.