The rubric is 100 points across four categories. All data was collected on May 26, 2026, from public sources: company websites, Google Business Profile signals, HomeStars profiles where present, manufacturer contractor lookups, and Ontario government sources. No contractor was contacted and no scoring decision relied on private information.
The two heaviest categories — credentials and customer track record — are the two things a homeowner can least afford to get wrong and can most reliably verify. Together they account for 60 of the 100 points. The remaining 40 points reward depth: longevity, certifications, breadth of services, and genuine local presence.
How to Read These Scores
This is the most important paragraph in the article, so read it before you look at any number. Every company on this list is a legitimate, licensed, operating roofing contractor. None of them is a bad choice in the sense of being unqualified. The score is not a grade on whether a company does good work — it is a measure of how much verifiable strength and public documentation each company has across the four categories. A company scoring in the 60s is not "failing." It is a solid business that either operates with a narrower focus, is newer or smaller, or simply does not publish as much of its credentials online as a higher-scoring competitor. A company in the 80s has more verifiable depth across more categories. Both can install your roof well. The score tells you where the documented strengths and the open questions are — so you know what to confirm before you sign.
Verified Credentials & Compliance — 30 Points
This is the largest category because the consequences of getting it wrong are concrete. Roofing is classified by Ontario's Ministry of Labour as high-risk work governed by the Occupational Health and Safety Act and Construction Projects Regulation, which is why WSIB disclosure carries the heaviest single weight in the rubric.
On WSIB specifically: Ontario's Workplace Safety and Insurance Board issues clearance certificates confirming that a contractor is registered and in good standing. Under WSIB construction policy, a principal who directly retains a contractor for construction work is generally required to obtain a clearance certificate; without one, the principal can be held liable for the contractor's outstanding WSIB obligations up to the value of the labour portion of the contract. That is a real, financial reason to verify WSIB before signing. Public eClearance lookups require the contractor's account number, which not every company publishes — so where a company disclosed WSIB coverage, we awarded full marks, and where it did not, we awarded partial credit and flagged it for the reader to confirm directly. A company that does not advertise WSIB on its website has almost certainly not gone uninsured; it simply has not made the credential easy to verify, and our scoring reflects that distinction rather than assuming the worst.
The category also scores liability insurance (with a bonus where a coverage amount such as $2 million is stated), business registration and a verifiable physical address, and BBB accreditation where it exists.
Customer Track Record — 30 Points
Reviews are the strongest real-world signal of how a contractor actually performs, so this category carries equal weight to credentials. The bulk of it is the Google rating, weighted by review volume so that a strong rating on a large base counts for more than a perfect rating on a handful of reviews — a 4.6 across 177 reviews is a more reliable signal than a 5.0 across 8. We then add points for review volume and recency, and for meaningful presence on a secondary platform such as HomeStars. BBB accreditation contributes here as well; the BBB itself notes that accreditation does not mean a business's products or services have been evaluated or endorsed, so we treat it as one supporting input rather than a quality verdict.
Experience & Industry Standing — 20 Points
This category rewards the markers of an established, recognized business: manufacturer certifications, years in operation, and industry-association memberships. Manufacturer certification sits here deliberately, as a positive signal where present rather than a category a company can fail. Roofing manufacturers run tiered installer programs, and the top tiers — GAF Master Elite, CertainTeed SELECT ShingleMaster, IKO ShieldPRO Plus, and Owens Corning Platinum Preferred — are gated programs that, according to GAF, only a small percentage of contractors qualify for, and that unlock the strongest manufacturer warranties available to homeowners. A contractor who holds the top tier of any one of these programs earns near-full marks for the certification component; we do not require a company to collect multiple brands' certifications, because in practice strong contractors specialize in one manufacturer's program rather than stacking several.
Crucially, the absence of a manufacturer certification does not penalize a company in this rubric. Many excellent independent roofers — including some with decades in business and outstanding customer reviews — do not participate in these programs at all, either because they prefer not to be tied to one manufacturer or because they simply have not pursued the designation. Those companies earn their standing points through longevity and association memberships instead. Where a company's website listed a manufacturer brand without a verifiable tier, we confirmed status against the manufacturer's public contractor lookup and scored only what we could verify.
Service Capability & Local Commitment — 20 Points
The final category scores what a company can actually do and how committed it is to the local market. We weight the core residential services — asphalt shingle work and repair capability — most heavily, with metal, flat-roof, emergency, and inspection services as bonuses, so that a focused residential re-roofer is not penalized for declining to chase commercial flat-roof work. The category also scores published warranty terms (with longer and clearer terms scoring higher), genuine local presence (a Guelph or Wellington County headquarters scores higher than an out-of-area company serving Guelph at the edge of its range), and responsiveness signals such as online booking, financing, and stated response times.
