Rising Talent is Upwork's badge for new freelancers and agencies that have a complete profile and meet Upwork's screening criteria but do not yet have the contract history behind a Job Success Score or a Top Rated badge.
Upwork awards Rising Talent to profiles that look promising before the marketplace has had time to judge them. Upwork's published criteria ask for a profile that is 100% complete, up-to-date availability, skills in demand on the platform, regular proposal activity and a clean record under the Terms of Service; the exact list is set by Upwork and changes from time to time. There is no application. Upwork's systems pick candidates, the badge appears on the profile and in search results, and the Help Center states that it brings a one-off award of free Connects and access to some of Upwork's talent-sourcing programmes.
The badge is temporary by design. Once a profile has enough finished work to carry a Job Success Score, Rising Talent is withdrawn and the profile competes on its record. A good record leads towards Top Rated; a weak one leads to nothing in particular, and the profile simply shows its score.
Two things are often confused. Rising Talent is not a lower tier of Top Rated and says nothing about delivered work; it is a signal about the profile, not about contracts. And losing it is normal rather than a demotion: almost every profile that earns a score loses the badge at the same moment. See Upwork talent badges for how the four badges fit together.
How Upwork Insights uses it
This term describes Upwork's own rules or product rather than a figure the index measures; the pages that do carry live figures are the stats and rate pages.