Top Rated is Upwork's badge for freelancers and agencies that hold a Job Success Score of 90% or higher, have a complete profile with at least $1,000 earned and 90 days of history, and have no recent account holds, re-checked every two weeks.
Top Rated is the first of Upwork's automatic badges and the one most agencies aim at. Upwork reviews eligibility on a two-week cycle against a published set of criteria: a Job Success Score of 90% or above, a first contract at least 90 days ago, $1,000 or more earned in the past twelve months, a profile that is 100% complete with up-to-date availability, Top Rated eligibility for most of the preceding sixteen weeks, and no account holds in the past three months. Meet all of it and the badge appears without an application; miss one and it disappears at the next review.
Benefits include a visible badge on the profile and in search results, the ability to remove one piece of feedback from the score periodically, premium support and more access to Upwork's talent-sourcing programmes. The next step up is Top Rated Plus, which adds a recent-earnings requirement.
For an agency the badge belongs to the agency account and reflects the agency's own contracts; a freelancer who is Top Rated individually does not make their agency Top Rated.
How Upwork Insights uses it
1,066 agencies in the index hold Top Rated without the Plus tier as of Oct 30, 2026; with the 1,131 Top Rated Plus agencies, 2,197 agencies, or 8.7% of 25,139, carry a Top Rated badge of some kind. The ranking filtered to Top Rated includes both tiers.
Badges are read from the public page at observation time and feed the trust component of the Index Score; Top Rated scores 0.7 of the 15 points available.