is there a website that rates employers?

Which one suits you depends on what you want to find out about the employer.

If you want a broad reviews site

Glassdoor offers company reviews and ratings from employees, plus salaries, job search and anonymous workplace discussion. Its app covers culture, compensation, leadership and work-life balance, and it is free on the UK App Store with no in-app purchases listed. It runs on the web, iPhone and Android.

The catch is the one every site here shares: the ratings are written by employees, and nothing in its listings says they are independently checked. Glassdoor's Google Play listing also names Indeed, Inc. as the app's developer, which matters if you plan to read Indeed as well.

If you want sheer volume

Indeed Company Reviews are the company review and salary pages inside Indeed's job search site and app. Indeed's App Store listing claims more than 700 million company ratings and reviews and more than 1.1 billion salaries, searchable by job title, company and location. Indeed calls it a free job search app.

The catch is where the reviews sit. They live inside an app built around applying for jobs, and the Google Play listing says it contains ads. The volume figures are Indeed's own claim from its listing, which we have not tested.

If you want staff talking frankly, not star ratings

Blind is an anonymous network where verified employees discuss their companies, pay, layoffs, leadership, culture and interviews, with company reviews and salary data alongside. It says it separates your work verification from what you post.

The cost is effort. Full access needs verification by work email, LinkedIn or work history, and with a personal email you get read-only access to public channels. If you have nothing to verify with, you will mostly be reading rather than taking part. Its member count also differs by listing: more than 12 million verified members on the UK App Store, and more than 9 million verified professionals at more than 300,000 companies on Google Play.

If the employer is in Germany, Austria or Switzerland

kununu is an employer review site with ratings, salary information and jobs, aimed at German-speaking countries. Its Google Play listing calls it the leading employer review portal in German-speaking countries, with ratings, salary comparison and jobs. It is free on the UK App Store, with no in-app purchases listed.

What you give up is language. Its UK App Store listing is written in German, though the Google Play listing has English text, so it suits readers comfortable in German. Its pages also do not name which countries it covers beyond German-speaking ones, so do not count on it elsewhere.

If you care how an employer treats different groups

Glassdoor's app lets you filter company ratings by gender, race or ethnicity and sexual orientation. That lets you see whether people from a particular group rate an employer differently from the overall score. The same caution applies: those ratings are still written by employees and not independently checked.

When paying is worth it

You do not need to pay to read employer ratings. Glassdoor, Indeed and kununu are free apps. Blind is free to download, and its paid Clean Feed subscription only removes ads and hides posts with keywords you choose, so it does not unlock anything extra about employers. The UK App Store lists Blind's in-app purchases from £2.99 to £99.99, labelled only as bundles such as "20 B", and none is named Clean Feed, so we could not confirm what it costs.

Before you count Glassdoor and Indeed as two opinions, remember they are linked. Glassdoor's Google Play listing names Indeed, Inc. as its developer, so reading both may not give you two fully separate views.

Blind's anonymity has a cost. Because it separates verification from activity, it says it cannot retrieve forgotten passwords, and if you lose access you may need to create a new account.

Google Play lists Indeed and Blind as containing ads, and Blind as having in-app purchases with a PEGI 18 rating.

The main caution is the reviews themselves. On all four sites they are written by employees and former employees, and none of the listings we read says the reviews are independently checked. Treat each rating as one person's account. These sites also only go one way: each describes reviews of employers by current or former staff, and we found none that lets employers review staff.