Understand freelancer talent badges

Upwork offers four talent badges—Rising Talent, Top Rated, Top Rated Plus, and Expert-Vetted—to highlight freelancer and agency excellence. Badges reflect factors like profile completeness, consistent client satisfaction, job success, earnings, and in the case of Expert-Vetted, passing a rigorous screening. Badges help clients identify high-performing professionals quickly.

To help you connect with the top talent on our platform, we created talent badges for freelancers and agencies. These badges highlight proven talent and expertise.

Rising Talent

The Rising Talent badge highlights freelancers and agencies who are among the best new freelancers in the Upwork marketplace.

Rising Talent freelancers show great potential based on strong backgrounds in their fields and early success with their clients on Upwork. Agencies either have strong backgrounds or were started by Top Rated freelancers.

Criteria

To qualify for the Rising Talent badge, a freelancer or agency must meet criteria that includes the following:

• Maintain a 100% complete profile with accurate skills and genuine work
• Submit a proposal or work within the past 90 days
• Have no public or private negative feedback from previous clients
• Follow Upwork’s Terms of Service and have no account holds

Top Rated

Freelancers can earn a Top Rated badge when they have built a strong reputation on Upwork by getting positive feedback from their clients, time after time. Top Rated represents the top 10% of talent on Upwork.

We update eligibility every two weeks to be sure to help you connect with the most current outstanding members of our marketplace.

Criteria

To qualify for the Top Rated badge, freelancers must:

• Demonstrate consistent high-quality work with multiple clients
• Have an outstanding Job Success Score (at least 90%) for at least 13 of the last 16 weeks
• Have an up-to-date and complete freelancer or agency profile
• Keep their availability for new jobs up to date
• Have a strong earnings history
• Have had their first project on Upwork more than 90 days ago
• Have been active on Upwork during the past 90 days
• Follow the Upwork Terms of Service

In addition to the criteria already listed, agencies must maintain:

• A 100% complete agency owner profile with photo
• An agency profile with a logo, overview, and services offered
• Agency member profiles that are at least 60% complete on average

Top Rated Plus

To earn a Top Rated Plus badge, freelancers must display proven success on large or long-term contracts. They’ve built a strong reputation on Upwork by getting consistent positive feedback, including work on high-value contracts. Top Rated Plus talent represents the top 3% of performers on Upwork.

We update eligibility every two weeks to help you connect with the most current outstanding members of our marketplace.

Criteria

To qualify for the Top Rated badge, freelancers must:

• Demonstrate consistent high-quality work with multiple clients
• Have an outstanding Job Success Score (at least 90%) for at least 13 of the last 16 weeks
• Have an up-to-date and complete freelancer or agency profile
• Keep their availability for new jobs up to date
• Have a strong earnings history, with total earnings over $10,000 in the past 12 months
• Follow the Upwork Terms of Service
• Agencies must have earnings of over $20,000 in the past 12 months to qualify.

Expert-Vetted

Important:

The Expert-Vetted badge is only visible to you if you are signed up for a Business Plus or Enterprise plan.

To earn an Expert-Vetted badge, freelancers go through a pre-screening process with our Talent Managers. Expert-Vetted badges are only available for certain work categories. The screening process evaluates technical expertise and soft skills in select categories.

Expert-Vetted talent represents the top 1% of talent on Upwork, and this badge only displays to Enterprise and Business Plus clients, giving you the most access to top talent.

To qualify for the Expert-Vetted badge, freelancers must:

• Possess exceptional expertise in their field
• Pass a screening process by Talent Managers
• Possess strong soft skills including excellent communication