How your score is actually computed.

01The score is math, not a black box

Every question in the quiz maps to a fixed point value. Your answers get summed into a single 0–100 total. There's no model in the loop deciding what your number should "feel like" — the same answers always produce the exact same score, every time, for anyone.

That determinism is the point. It's what makes the score something you can actually act on: fix one specific thing, re-answer that one question, re-score, and watch the exact number move. If the score were an AI's holistic impression, you couldn't isolate what moved it.

02The 9 readiness factors

Your Campaign Readiness Assessment starts by asking what stage your campaign is at — Early, Mid, or Late — because what "ready" looks like is genuinely different at each stage. From there, 9 weighted factors build your score: 6 asked of every campaign, and 3 swapped in to match your stage, so you're never judged against a bar that doesn't apply to you yet.

Plus 3 more, specific to your stage — for example, an Early-stage campaign is scored on concept validation and execution capacity, a Mid-stage campaign on content readiness and reward-tier structure, and a Late-stage campaign on page conversion and launch-week momentum. Each stage-specific factor is worth 10 points, for 30 more — 112 possible points in total, normalized to your 0–100 score.

The paid Campaign Improvement Plan doesn't re-ask any of this — it's generated directly from the same assessment, so the number and the report always agree.

03See it move

Same illustrative campaign, all nine factors from the rubric above — eight held fixed, one real lever you can drag. Watch the score move, using the same weighted math your real score is built from.

Illustrative example — real weighting, composite numbers, not a verified result.

04Where the AI actually comes in

Once your score exists, Pledgescore's AI tool reads your specific answers — your funding goal, your category, what you told us about your story and audience — and writes the parts that require judgment and language, not arithmetic: what your particular gaps mean, a rewritten hook for your specific campaign, the exact funding math for your numbers, a pre-launch plan dated to your launch window.

Pledgescore's AI tool never starts from a blank page and never invents your score — it's always working forward from a number that already exists before it writes a single word.

05Verify it yourself

We're not going to publish a predictive-accuracy percentage we can't fully stand behind. What we can guarantee is transparency in the other direction: every point value behind your score is listed in Section 02 above — nothing held back, nothing hidden in a model. Recompute your own score by hand from your own answers and you'll get the exact same number, every time. That's a claim you can check yourself, not one you have to take on faith.

06Where the framework comes from

The nine factors and their weights were developed from a combination of hands-on experience running and advising on crowdfunding campaigns, analysis of past campaigns, and published crowdfunding research, with the experience and the campaign analysis carrying the most weight. It reflects what we have seen separate prepared campaigns from unprepared ones. It is not a statistical forecast of funding outcomes, and we do not present it as one. More about how Pledgescore is built and run.

07Scoring versions

Current scoring version: v1.2. Every score and badge records the version that produced it. When any question weight or badge tier threshold changes, the version number changes, so a badge issued under an earlier version still means what it meant when it was issued.

08Why we're telling you this

AI is genuinely good at reading a lot of specific context and writing tailored, useful advice from it. It's not particularly good at being a fair, consistent judge applying the same rule to everyone the same way — so we don't ask it to be one. The judging part is fixed math you could recompute by hand from your own answers. The writing part is AI, and we're not going to pretend otherwise.

09Related reading

The factors above are explained in more depth in these guides, and you can put numbers to the funding-goal factor with the funding goal calculator.

• How to Set a Funding Goal That's Actually Achievable — The math behind getting the number right: too high tanks momentum, too low leaves money on the table.
• The Pre-Launch Checklist Top Crowdfunding Creators Use — The 30 days before you go live matter more than the campaign itself.
• The 7 Reasons Kickstarter Campaigns Fail Before They Launch — Most campaigns are decided before the first backer. Here is what the data tells us.
• From First Idea to Funded Launch — What first-time creators underestimate about raising money, and how to close the gap before launch.