The Influence of correlations on the thermal performance modeling of parabolic trough collectors was analyzed in this work. A versatile model for a parabolic trough collector was developed that allows one- and two- dimensional analyses and enables the use of correlations to calculate thermophysical properties and convection heat transfer coefficients. The effect of each correlation was evaluated independently, and the results were compared with a reference. The correlation for the absorber emittance has the strongest impact on the collector efficiency, leading to a lower error when used. A one-dimensional model approach considering a correlation for the absorber emittance leads to efficiency errors below 3% for collector lengths of up to 243.6 m. Comparing with the reference case, a one-dimensional approach using all correlations, for a collector with a length of 500 m and operating temperatures of 773 K, can result in errors around 9%; however, using constant values for properties and heat transfer coefficients could lead to errors of up to 50%. Multiple thermal models for parabolic trough collectors proposed in the literature rely on a one-dimensional approach, constant thermophysical properties, constant and heat transfer coefficients. The errors associated to those approaches are analyzed and quantify in this work.