Can You Offer a Discount for a Review? Incentive Rules by Platform

The short answer

Offering money, discounts, gift cards, entries into a giveaway, or free products in exchange for a review is against the policies of Google, Yelp, Trustpilot, and most others. It also runs into the FTC’s rules against deceptive reviews, because paid reviews misrepresent genuine customer sentiment. See the FTC fake review rule.

Platform rules at a glance

• Google: prohibits offering incentives in exchange for reviews. Reviews found to be incentivized can be removed and the profile flagged.
• Yelp: strongly prohibits soliciting reviews at all, let alone paying for them.
• Trustpilot & others: allow inviting reviews but ban incentives tied to leaving one (or to leaving a positive one).

The gray areas (tread carefully)

• Incentives for feedback, not reviews: offering a small thank-you for completing a private survey is generally fine — as long as it isn’t tied to posting a public review.
• Rewarding everyone regardless of review: a loyalty perk given to all customers, not conditioned on reviewing, is a different thing entirely.
• Never condition on sentiment: offering a reward only for positive reviews is the clearest violation and the riskiest.

When in doubt, decouple the reward from the review. The moment a perk depends on someone leaving a review — especially a good one — you’re offside.

What actually drives reviews (no bribes needed)

• Just ask, at the right time. A timely, personal request beats an incentive — see how to ask for a review and when to ask.
• Make it effortless with a direct review link or QR code.
• Deliver a genuinely great experience. The most reliable “incentive” is doing work worth talking about.

Grow reviews the compliant way

Tailwind automates timely, personal review requests to every customer — no incentives, no gating, no risk. See automated review requests, and make sure you’re not accidentally gating reviews either.

Get more reviews without breaking the rules. See how Tailwind works.