✓ Find Top Rated and Rising Talent

Upwork’s talent badges—such as Top Rated and Rising Talent—help identify freelancers and agencies with strong performance or promising potential. These badges signal trust and quality, based on client feedback or early success. They appear on profiles, proposals, and project listings, and can be filtered during talent searches.

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Interested in all of Upwork's Talent Badges?  Learn more here.

To help you find freelancers who may have the experience and knowledge you need, look for Upwork’s talent badges on freelancer and agency profiles, proposals, and projects. You can also filter for badges in talent searches.

These badges highlight freelancers and agencies with a history of success on Upwork or proven expertise, earned through great reviews, top performance, or an expert screening process. You can find them across experience levels, categories, and geographies.

Top Rated

The Top Rated badge highlights freelancers and agencies who’ve built a strong reputation on Upwork by getting positive feedback from their clients. They represent the top 10% of talent on Upwork.

We check member eligibility every two weeks to ensure that we highlight those who are currently recognized by their clients for outstanding performance.

Rising Talent

The Rising Talent badge highlights some of the best new members in the Upwork marketplace.

Rising Talent freelancers have 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.

Freelancers who have been inactive on Upwork for a while may also get the Rising Talent badge if they start taking clients on Upwork again and demonstrate success.

Top Rated and Rising Talent are just two of Upwork's Talent Badges! Learn more about proven and expert talent at Upwork here.