The Tomatometer Percentage Isn't a Grade. It Counts Something Else Entirely.

Two films sit at 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. One is a masterpiece every critic admired. The other is a film every critic thought was… fine. The site gives them the same number, because the number was never measuring how good critics thought the films were. It measures how many of them were on the positive side of the line.

What the percentage counts

Rotten Tomatoes' own definition, from its "What is the Tomatometer?" page: the Tomatometer is "the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show." Each review the site counts is classified Fresh or Rotten — a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down — based on the critic's own verdict or, where no score exists, the review's overall tone as assessed by the site's curation team. The percentage is simply the Fresh share of all counted reviews.

That design has consequences nobody warns you about:

• Intensity is invisible. A rave and a grudging three-star notice count identically. A film critics mildly like across the board can outscore a film half of them loved and half despised — the second film is more interesting, and the number will never tell you.
• The line is 60%. At 60% positive or higher, a film is "Fresh." At 59% or below, "Rotten." One review in a small sample can move a film across the line and change the icon next to its name everywhere on the internet.
• Small samples stay provisional. Until a film has at least 40 countable reviews, the site shows the score without a critics' consensus — the percentage exists, but the site itself treats it as early.

Certified Fresh is a stability badge, not a higher score

"Certified Fresh" isn't a higher score; it's a stability guarantee. Per the same official page, a film needs a Tomatometer of 75% or higher with at least 80 reviews for a wide release (40 for a limited release), including at least five reviews from the site's designated Top Critics. The point of the badge is that the number is unlikely to collapse as more reviews arrive. A film can be at 94% on 30 reviews and be less "certified" than one at 78% on 200 — and for once, the site's iconography is telling you exactly that, if you know how to read it.

The audience score counts a different group, in a different way

The audience score — the site now brands it the Popcornmeter — counts users whose star rating is 3.5 stars or higher, with ratings from verified ticket buyers shown by default for films released from May 2019 onward: the same headcount logic, applied to star ratings instead of reviews. Its Certified-Fresh equivalent, "Verified Hot," launched in August 2024 and requires 90% or higher with at least 500 verified ratings (250 for limited releases and special events). Comparing a Tomatometer to an audience score is comparing two different populations' thumbs — critics versus people who chose to buy a ticket, a group pre-selected to be favourable. The gap between them isn't a conspiracy or a review-bomb, in either direction. It's two different questions being answered.

How to use the number honestly

Here's the trick — read the percentage as breadth, not depth: what share of critics cleared the bar. Then read the average rating if the site shows it, and the consensus line, for depth. A 92% with a consensus calling a film "solid, crowd-pleasing" is a different object from a 92% whose consensus uses the word "masterpiece" — the site published both signals; the big red number is just the one that fits in a poster. The same discipline — ask what a percentage is a percentage of — runs through every number on this site, from our facts library to the Chance shelf's odds. Percentages are always fractions wearing a costume. Check the denominator.