diff --git a/man/systemd-run.xml b/man/systemd-run.xml
index 610c3acd37..3a1d18dae9 100644
--- a/man/systemd-run.xml
+++ b/man/systemd-run.xml
@@ -399,8 +399,13 @@
   <refsect1>
     <title>Exit status</title>
 
-    <para>On success, 0 is returned, a non-zero failure
-    code otherwise.</para>
+    <para>On success, 0 is returned. If <command>systemd-run</command> failed to start the service, a
+    non-zero return value will be returned. If <command>systemd-run</command> waits for the service to
+    terminate, the return value will be propagated from the service. 0 will be returned on success, including
+    all the cases where systemd considers a service to have exited cleanly, see the discussion of
+    <varname>SuccessExitStatus=</varname> in
+    <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.service</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>.
+    </para>
   </refsect1>
 
   <refsect1>
@@ -503,6 +508,16 @@ There is a screen on:
 
       <programlisting>$ loginctl enable-linger</programlisting>
     </example>
+
+    <example>
+      <title>Return value</title>
+
+      <programlisting>$ systemd-run --user --wait true
+$ systemd-run --user --wait -p SuccessExitStatus=11 bash -c 'exit 11'
+$ systemd-run --user --wait -p SuccessExitStatus=SIGUSR1 bash -c 'kill -SIGUSR1 $$$$'</programlisting>
+
+      <para>Those three invocations will succeed, i.e. terminate with an exit code of 0.</para>
+    </example>
   </refsect1>
 
   <refsect1>
diff --git a/src/run/run.c b/src/run/run.c
index 3d63cf0254..de968caf3f 100644
--- a/src/run/run.c
+++ b/src/run/run.c
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@
 #include "bus-wait-for-jobs.h"
 #include "calendarspec.h"
 #include "env-util.h"
+#include "exit-status.h"
 #include "fd-util.h"
 #include "format-util.h"
 #include "main-func.h"
@@ -1303,9 +1304,14 @@ static int start_transient_service(
                         }
                 }
 
-                /* Try to propagate the service's return value */
-                if (c.result && STR_IN_SET(c.result, "success", "exit-code") && c.exit_code == CLD_EXITED)
+                /* Try to propagate the service's return value. But if the service defines
+                 * e.g. SuccessExitStatus, honour this, and return 0 to mean "success". */
+                if (streq_ptr(c.result, "success"))
+                        *retval = 0;
+                else if (streq_ptr(c.result, "exit-code") && c.exit_status > 0)
                         *retval = c.exit_status;
+                else if (streq_ptr(c.result, "signal"))
+                        *retval = EXIT_EXCEPTION;
                 else
                         *retval = EXIT_FAILURE;
         }