How we rank

How we rank relocation agencies.

Agencies are ranked by one number, the ReloFinder score: the Google rating of their own listing, weighted by how many reviews stand behind it. Agencies with a paid profile appear in a separate band above a list, labelled “Recommended · paid placement”. The ranking itself can’t be bought. Today every list is A–Z, because we have no Google ratings yet.

Method last changed 6 October 2026. See the changelog.

Colour

The score

The ReloFinder score is a Bayesian average: score = (C × m + R × n) ÷ (C + n).

R is the Google rating of the agency’s own listing, and n the number of Google reviews behind it.
m is the mean rating of all ranked agencies, each weighted by its review count (not defined until the first agencies are ranked).
C is 25: the number of “average” reviews every agency starts with.

So a few reviews move the score little, and many reviews let the rating speak. With an example mean of m = 4.50, a perfect 5.0 from 7 reviews scores 4.61, and a 4.9 from 200 reviews scores 4.86.

Who is ranked, and in which order

A list is a place. A country list has the agencies with an office in the country, a city list those with an office in the city, and a city and service list those that also offer the service. An agency that serves a country without an office there is not in its ranking; the country page names such agencies apart.
The order is the score. Ranked agencies run from 1 down by score. Ties: more reviews first, then the name.
5 Google reviews to get a rank. An agency with fewer reviews, and an agency without a rating yet, is listed after the ranked ones, alphabetically, without a rank. Without a rating it reads “Not rated yet”.
Short answers follow the ranking. A line such as “rated highest in this city” names the first 3 ranked agencies of the list that have at least 10 Google reviews, in rank order. It never names the Recommended band.
Review excerpts are not picked. The review shown on a card is the newest one with at least 80 characters, whatever its rating, quoted word for word with its date.

Today: we have not collected any Google rating yet, so every list is A–Z and every agency reads “Not rated yet”. The lists reorder by score as ratings are added.

The Recommended band

Agencies with an active paid ReloFinder profile can appear in a band above a list. It is advertising, and it is labelled “Recommended · paid placement” everywhere it appears.

At most 3 agencies per list, and only agencies that serve that list: an office in the city for a city list, in the country for a country list.
The order changes daily, by UTC date. When more than 3 agencies qualify, the date also decides which 3 are shown. Each one comes first once in every cycle, so none sits fixed on top.
It is not part of the ranking. The band has no rank numbers and no scores.
No double counting, no hiding. An agency in the band also appears in the ranking below, at the place its score gives it.
No agency, no band. A list without a recommended agency shows nothing in its place.

Today no list has a Recommended band. The llms files and the open data below list every band apart from the ranking, under the same label.

What can’t be bought

Agencies pay ReloFinder for introductions (a request we pass to them) or for a recommended profile. That is all they can pay for. They cannot buy a rank, a score, a better place in a tie, or a change to a rating. Ratings and review counts are Google’s figures for each agency’s own listing; ReloFinder does not edit them, and a review is only ever quoted word for word with its source and date, or counted.

ReloFinder is operated by Loaded AG.

The data

agencies listed: 366
ranked (5+ reviews): 0
Google reviews counted: 0

No Google rating has been captured yet. The directory was last exported on 7 October 2026.

Open data

The whole directory, in ranking order, is open: JSON and CSV, licensed CC BY 4.0. Please credit “ReloFinder (relofinder.com), operated by Loaded AG”. The Recommended band is listed apart from the rows (recommended_band in the JSON), and the row flag recommended never moves a row. There is no contact data and no personal name in it. The same lists are in /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt.

rank integer | null: Position in the whole ranking, all countries together; empty for agencies listed but not ranked. The lists on the site (a country, a city) rank their own agencies: see list_ranks.
slug string: Stable identifier, also the profile path.
name string: Agency name as shown on the site.
score number | null: ReloFinder score, 2 decimals; empty when not ranked.
rating number | null: Google rating of the agency’s own listing; empty while it is not rated yet.
reviews integer: Google review count of that listing.
recent_24m integer: Captured reviews dated within the 24 months before the directory export (updated_at).
offices list: Office localities with the country.
services list: Service keys: home_search, immigration, school_search, settling_in, temporary_housing, departure, tax, pets, language, partner_support, moving.
languages list: ISO 639-1 language codes.
memberships list: Professional memberships as the agency lists them.
recommended boolean: The agency has an active paid profile ("Recommended · paid placement"). It never changes rank or list_ranks.
list_ranks object: Rank in each country or city list of the site that serves the agency ("DE", "DE/berlin"); empty where it has no rank there.
profile_url url: The agency’s ReloFinder profile.
captured_at date: When the Google rating and count were captured.

Corrections

A wrong fact, a missing office, a rating that does not match the agency’s Google listing? Write to hello@relofinder.com. We check it against the agency’s own listing and correct it in the next export.

Changelog

Every change to the method, newest first. A rule changes in the code and here in the same commit.

6 October 2026
First published method for relofinder.com. Agencies are ranked by one score: the Google rating of their own listing, weighted by how many reviews stand behind it. Agencies without a rating yet are listed after the ranked ones. Agencies with a paid profile appear in a separate band above the list, labelled "Recommended · paid placement", at most three, in an order that changes daily. They keep their normal place in the ranking, which cannot be bought.