Top Rated Plus is held by 1,489 of the 28,921 agencies in this index as of Oct 31, 2026. Upwork awards it automatically to agencies and freelancers that already meet the Top Rated criteria and that also show substantial recent earnings, including work on a large contract, within the past twelve months.
Counting both tiers, 9.8% of indexed agencies carry a Top Rated badge of some kind. The rest, the large majority, either have no Job Success Score yet or fall short of one of the published thresholds. This post sets out what those thresholds are, how the fortnightly review works, and what the badge is worth to an agency.
Upwork's published criteria
Top Rated Plus sits above Top Rated and below the invitation-only Expert-Vetted tier, and it is built on the Top Rated criteria. At the time of writing, Upwork requires for Top Rated:
- A Job Success Score of 90% or higher, held through Upwork's 16-week eligibility window rather than on a single day.
- A first contract at least 90 days ago, and at least $1,000 earned in the past twelve months.
- A profile that is complete and up to date, with availability set.
- No recent account holds.
Top Rated Plus adds a scale requirement on top: substantial earnings in the past twelve months, including work on a large contract. Upwork publishes the current thresholds in its help centre, and they can change, so the exact figures are better read there than copied here.
Everything in the list is checked against the agency account itself. An agency's badge depends on the agency's own score, the agency's own earnings and the agency's own contracts; a member who is Top Rated Plus on their personal profile contributes nothing to it.
The fortnightly review
Upwork grants and removes the badges automatically on a two-week cycle. On each review an account that meets every criterion gains the badge, and an account that has stopped meeting any one of them loses it, with no appeal beyond meeting the criteria again.
The practical consequence is that the badge is fragile. One contract that ends badly can push the score under 90%, and the badge goes with it at the next review, together with the visibility it brought. Agencies at this tier are therefore careful about which contracts they accept and careful about how contracts end, because a client who leaves without feedback or who leaves poor private feedback does damage the profile will never display.
It also means the badge recovers on the same cycle. Once the score is back above 90% and the other criteria are met, the next review restores it; there is no waiting period beyond the eligibility window.
How many agencies have it
1,489 agencies in the index hold Top Rated Plus and a further 1,346 are Top Rated without the Plus tier, as of Oct 31, 2026. That is 9.8% of 28,921 with a badge of either kind. The stat page breaks the count down by category and shows where the badges are most common; the share differs widely between categories, and the ones where contracts run long and large tend to sit at the top.
The pool is small mostly because the score it depends on is scarce. A Job Success Score needs rated contract history, and a large share of agencies in the directory have not built enough of it to be scored at all. Among agencies that do have a score, 90% or above is common rather than rare, so the badge mainly separates agencies with a current, rated record from the rest.
The ranking filtered to Top Rated Plus lists every agency holding the badge, sortable by earnings, score or Index Score.
What the badge is worth
Upwork surfaces Top Rated Plus profiles to larger clients and Enterprise buyers, gives them priority support, and shows the badge in search results before a client reads a word of the profile. For an agency selling to clients who cannot interview every member, that pre-reading signal is most of the value.
In this index the badge is the trust component of the Index Score. Trust is worth 15 of the 100 points: Top Rated Plus scores the full 1.0 of that component, Top Rated 0.7, and Expert-Vetted adds 0.3, capped at the full 15. Badges are read from each agency's public page at observation time, so a badge gained or lost at a fortnightly review appears here the next time the page is read.
Frequently asked questions
- Can a new agency get Top Rated Plus?
- Not immediately. The agency needs a first contract at least 90 days old, a Job Success Score of 90% or more held across the eligibility window, the Top Rated earnings minimum and then the larger recent-earnings requirement for Plus. In practice that means several months of completed, rated contracts before the first review that could grant it.
- Does Top Rated Plus expire?
- It is re-checked every two weeks against the same criteria. If the agency keeps meeting all of them it keeps the badge indefinitely; if recent earnings fall below the Plus threshold, or the score dips under 90%, the badge is removed at the next review and restored when the criteria are met again.
- Is Expert-Vetted higher than Top Rated Plus?
- Yes, but it is awarded to individual freelancers by invitation after Upwork reviews their work, not to agency accounts. The stat page states how many agency pages in the index show it; the number is small because Upwork attaches it to people rather than to agencies.