TrustRadius Badges Guide: How to Earn Awards in 2026

TL;DR

TrustRadius has five badge types, but two matter most for SaaS companies: Top Rated (flagship annual award — 10+ reviews, trScore 7.5+, 0.5% category traffic) and Buyer's Choice (75% of reviewers rate you best in capabilities, value, AND relationship). The next Top Rated deadline is April 26, 2026, with winners announced June 10. For Buyer's Choice, reviews collected January 1 through September 26, 2026 count toward the 2027 award (yes, the naming is confusing — more on that below). The genuinely good news: TrustRadius lets you use all award badges for free in your marketing materials. No $2,999/year display fee like G2. That alone makes this platform worth your attention.

Why We Wrote This Guide

TrustRadius has a well-documented awards program — better than most directories, actually. Their scoring FAQ is clear, the awards calendar lists deadlines, and the Freshdesk help articles explain each award type.

So why does this guide exist? Because the information is spread across at least five different pages on two different domains (trustradius.com and solutions.trustradius.com), some pages reference deadlines from previous years, and a couple of badge types seem to have quietly disappeared without explanation. We found everything, organized it into one place, noted the inconsistencies, and added the context TrustRadius doesn't provide — like how their awards compare to G2 and Capterra, and what the trScore methodology actually means for your strategy.

The Five TrustRadius Badge Types

TrustRadius currently runs five recognition programs. Here's the quick view:

Which should you target? Top Rated and Buyer's Choice are the two review-based awards that signal product quality to buyers. Trusted Seller is worth pursuing in parallel — it's an application process, not a competition. Customer Verified happens automatically once you hit 10 recent reviews. Tech Cares is a completely different program focused on CSR, not product quality.

Now let's look at each one.

Top Rated Award

This is TrustRadius's flagship recognition. Winners are chosen entirely from review data — no analyst opinions, no paid placements. In 2025, 442 products won across 562 categories. Top Rated products get prominently showcased on category pages throughout the year.

How to Qualify

Three criteria, all of which must be met at the time awards are evaluated:

2026 Deadlines

• Review submission deadline: April 26, 2026
• Public announcement: June 10, 2026

Reviews submitted after April 26 won't count toward the 2026 award — they'll contribute to 2027.

Source: TrustRadius Awards Calendar (November 26, 2025)

Buyer's Choice Award

Where Top Rated measures overall satisfaction, Buyer's Choice measures something more specific: do your reviewers think you're the best across three dimensions?

How to Qualify

That 75% threshold across all three dimensions is a high bar. It means nearly every reviewer needs to say you deliver on capabilities, value, and vendor relationship. In 2026, 368 products earned the badge — which sounds like a lot until you consider TrustRadius covers 800+ categories with tens of thousands of listed products.

The Naming Confusion

Here's something that trips people up: the 2026 Buyer's Choice was already announced on November 18, 2025. If you're reading this in early 2026, that ship has sailed.

What you can work toward now is the 2027 Buyer's Choice:

• Review collection window: January 1, 2026 – September 26, 2026
• Public announcement: October 27, 2026

The award is named for the year it's announced in, but the review collection window runs through the previous calendar year. So "2027 Buyer's Choice" means reviews collected in 2026, announced in late 2026 but branded as 2027.

Source: TrustRadius Awards Calendar

Trusted Seller Program

This isn't a competitive award — it's a verification program. Formerly called the TRUE program, Trusted Seller recognizes vendors who follow ethical review collection practices. Recipients get a pill-shaped badge at the top of their product listing, plus promotion in a TrustRadius press release and media kit.

How to Qualify

This is an application process. You fill out a form (~10 minutes) and TrustRadius verifies that you:

• Source at least 10 reviews per year with up-to-date product feedback
• Disclose your review sourcing methodology and any use of incentives
• Provide equal opportunity for all product users to share honest feedback (no cherry-picking promoters)
• Read and respond to published reviews
• Keep your product profile current with accurate information

2026 Deadlines

• Application deadline: February 13, 2026
• Announcement: March 17, 2026

The program runs bi-annually, so there should be a second window later in 2026 — though the specific date isn't published yet.

Why this matters beyond the badge: Trusted Seller aligns with FTC guidelines on authentic reviews. As regulators pay more attention to incentivized reviews and review gating, having a third-party verification of your practices has real value.

Source: TrustRadius Trusted Seller Program

Customer Verified Badge

The simplest badge to understand: if your product has 10+ reviews from the past 12 months, it gets a Customer Verified badge. This isn't something you apply for or win — it appears (and disappears) automatically based on your review activity.

Think of it as the baseline. If you don't have Customer Verified status, you don't have enough recent reviews to be taken seriously on the platform. If you do have it, you're meeting the same review count threshold needed for Top Rated and Buyer's Choice (though those awards have additional criteria).

Source: About TrustRadius Scoring

Tech Cares Award

This is the outlier in the awards lineup. Tech Cares isn't based on reviews or product quality — it recognizes B2B technology companies demonstrating exceptional corporate social responsibility.

Focus Areas

• Sustainability and the environment
• Volunteerism
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion
• Community impact
• Employee well-being and development
• Support for women in technology
• Education support

2026 Deadlines

• Nomination deadline: July 22, 2026
• Public announcement: August 13, 2026

Companies can nominate themselves or be nominated by others. If your company has strong CSR programs, it's worth submitting — but this is a brand-building exercise, not a product marketing one.

Source: TrustRadius Awards Calendar

How trScore Works

Understanding TrustRadius's scoring algorithm matters because it directly affects your Top Rated eligibility. TrustRadius doesn't use simple averages — they use a proprietary weighted algorithm called trScore.

Why This Matters

Most review platforms calculate ratings as simple averages: add up all ratings, divide by number of reviews. TrustRadius identified two problems with this approach:

Problem 1: Old reviews drag down (or inflate) current scores. Products change quickly. A score heavily influenced by reviews from three years ago doesn't reflect what the product is like today.

Problem 2: Vendors can game simple averages. If you only invite your happiest customers to leave reviews, a simple average will be artificially high. TrustRadius calls this "biased sampling."

How trScore Addresses This

The algorithm applies three types of weighting:

This is the most sophisticated scoring approach we've seen across directories. G2 uses its own proprietary algorithm for the Grid, but TrustRadius is unusually transparent about what the weighting actually does.

The strategic implication: Don't just chase review volume. Collect reviews from a representative cross-section of customers, encourage detailed write-ups, and maintain a steady cadence rather than one big campaign push.

Source: About TrustRadius Scoring (methodology page — undated, but referenced from multiple 2024/2025 articles)

The 2026 Awards Schedule

Here's every deadline for the current cycle:

Note: The 2026 Buyer's Choice was already announced November 18, 2025. The next Buyer's Choice you can work toward is the 2027 cycle (reviews collected in 2026).

Step-by-Step: Working Toward a Badge

Step 1: Claim and Optimize Your Profile

If you haven't already, claim your product profile on TrustRadius. Update it to their "gold standard" — accurate product information, current screenshots, pricing details, and complete feature descriptions.

This matters for two reasons: profile completeness affects how your product sorts in category pages, and the 0.5% traffic requirement for Top Rated means your page needs to attract visitors.

Step 2: Check Your Current Position

Log into your vendor portal and check the awards overview. You can see your current review count, trScore, and traffic share within your category. This tells you exactly how close (or far) you are from each award's thresholds.

Step 3: Run a Review Campaign

Running a review campaign for TrustRadius follows the same principle across all directories: reach out to customers who've used your product recently and ask them to share their experience.

Who can review: Current or recent users who can verify their identity through the TrustRadius platform.

What makes TrustRadius different: The trScore algorithm downweights reviews from biased samples. If you only invite your most enthusiastic customers, those reviews will carry less scoring weight than reviews from a representative cross-section of your user base. This is unusual among directories and worth understanding before you design your campaign.

For Buyer's Choice specifically: Reviewers need to rate you best in capabilities, value, AND relationship. This means targeting customers who are genuinely satisfied across all three dimensions — not just those who love your features but had a rough implementation.

Step 4: Apply for Trusted Seller (If Eligible)

If you're already collecting reviews ethically and maintaining your profile, Trusted Seller verification is low-hanging fruit. It's an application process, not a competition — you don't need to beat anyone, just demonstrate good practices.

Step 5: Drive Traffic to Your Profile

The 0.5% category traffic requirement for Top Rated means your TrustRadius page needs visitors. You can influence this by linking to your TrustRadius profile from your website, including it in marketing materials, and directing prospects there for independent research.

Free Badge Usage: The Good News

Here's where TrustRadius stands out from the competition: all award badges can be used for free across your marketing channels. No annual licensing fee. No premium tier required for off-site usage.

TrustRadius explicitly lists where you can use badges:

• Your website
• Social media
• Press releases
• Landing pages
• Emails
• Sales collateral
• Lead generation campaigns
• Videos
• Even billboards (their word, not ours)

The one caveat: Award badges appear on your TrustRadius product page only if you have a premium profile subscription. So the badge is free to use in your own marketing, but displaying it on TrustRadius itself is gated behind their paid tier.

Why this matters: On G2, even displaying badges on your own site requires a paid plan starting at $2,999/year. TrustRadius's approach is significantly more vendor-friendly for companies that want to leverage their earned recognition without a recurring platform fee.

What Happened to Best Of and Most Loved?

While researching this guide, we noticed two TrustRadius award programs that seem to have disappeared.

Best Of Awards (Best Feature Set, Best Value, Best Relationship)

Last documented in 2023. TrustRadius issued both "Winter Best Of" awards (February 2023) and annual "Best Of" awards (late 2023). These required 10 reviews, and winners ranked in the top 3 positions per category in each award dimension. There are no Best Of winners announced for 2024, 2025, or 2026, and the program doesn't appear on the current awards calendar.

The awards page at solutions.trustradius.com/awards/ still references "Best Relationship, Best Feature Set, and Best Value for the Price" in its marketing copy — but there's no active program or deadline for these awards.

Most Loved Award

Last documented in 2024. This Valentine's-themed award recognized the top 100 products with the highest ratio of "love" mentions per review, calculated using formulas called "loveCount," "loveDensity," and "lovePercentile." In 2023, TrustRadius analyzed almost 30,000 reviews to select winners. The Freshdesk help article still exists, but the award doesn't appear on the 2026 calendar.

What this probably means

TrustRadius appears to have streamlined their awards program — possibly in connection with the HG Insights acquisition in June 2025. The current lineup focuses on two review-based awards (Top Rated and Buyer's Choice), one verification program (Trusted Seller), and one CSR recognition (Tech Cares). That's a cleaner structure than having six or seven overlapping programs.

If you previously won a Best Of or Most Loved award, those badges may still hold value in your marketing materials. But there's no indication these programs are coming back.

How TrustRadius Compares to G2 and Capterra

If you're deciding where to invest your review campaign effort, here's how TrustRadius stacks up:

The TrustRadius advantage: Free badge usage and the most transparent, anti-manipulation scoring methodology we've seen. If your priority is earning recognition you can actually leverage without paying a platform fee, TrustRadius is the strongest option.

The TrustRadius trade-off: Smaller buyer audience than G2, annual awards cycle means slower feedback loop, and the 0.5% traffic threshold creates a barrier for products in crowded categories with low organic visibility.

For diversification: Having badges from multiple platforms means you're not dependent on one company's pricing decisions, policy changes, or algorithm updates. A TrustRadius Top Rated badge alongside G2 and Capterra recognition gives you coverage across the three largest general-purpose software directories. (See Why Software Directories Matter for AI Search.)

What We Don't Know

TrustRadius is more transparent than most directories about methodology, but some questions remain:

• Exact trScore formula — We know the three weighting factors (recency, bias correction, depth) but not the specific math. How much does a 2-year-old review get downweighted versus a 2-month-old one?
• Traffic measurement details — The 0.5% category traffic threshold is clear as a number, but how is traffic measured? Unique visitors? Page views? Over what time period?
• Premium profile pricing — TrustRadius doesn't publish pricing publicly. You need to book a demo to get a quote. This matters because on-site badge display requires a premium profile.
• Best Of and Most Loved status — Are these programs permanently discontinued, or paused? No announcement either way.
• Trusted Seller second window — The program is described as "bi-annual" but only the February 2026 deadline is published. When is the second application window?

If TrustRadius publishes more detailed methodology or updates their awards program, we'll update this guide.

Source Documentation

We reviewed every official source. Here's what to trust:

Primary Sources (Dated, Reliable)

Secondary Sources (Useful Context)

FAQ

What is the difference between TrustRadius Top Rated and Buyer's Choice awards?

Top Rated measures overall customer satisfaction — you need 10+ reviews, a trScore of 7.5+, and 0.5% category traffic. Buyer's Choice is more specific: 75% of your reviewers must rate you best in capabilities, value, AND vendor relationship. Top Rated is announced in June; Buyer's Choice in late October.

How long does it take to earn a TrustRadius badge?

Customer Verified happens automatically when you hit 10 reviews from the past 12 months. Top Rated and Buyer's Choice are annual awards with fixed deadlines (April 26 and September 26, 2026 respectively). Trusted Seller can be earned in the next application cycle (February 2026). Plan for 3-6 months of review collection to hit the 10-review minimum.

Can I display TrustRadius badges for free?

Yes — on your own website and marketing materials. TrustRadius explicitly allows free use of earned badges across your website, social media, emails, sales collateral, and more. The only restriction is that on-site badge display (on your TrustRadius profile itself) requires a premium profile subscription.

How does TrustRadius trScore compare to G2's rating system?

trScore is a weighted average that accounts for review recency, sample bias, and review depth. G2 uses a proprietary Grid methodology that combines satisfaction scores with market presence data. TrustRadius is more transparent about their weighting factors; G2's exact formula is undisclosed. Both aim to surface products with genuine customer satisfaction, but TrustRadius specifically penalizes cherry-picked reviews.

Is TrustRadius worth it compared to G2 and Capterra?

TrustRadius offers free badge usage (G2 charges $2,999+/year), transparent scoring methodology, and strong anti-manipulation measures. The trade-offs: smaller buyer audience than G2, annual awards vs. quarterly, and the 0.5% traffic requirement can be challenging in competitive categories. For most SaaS companies, presence on all three platforms provides the best visibility posture.

Key Takeaways

1. Target Top Rated first. 10+ reviews, trScore 7.5+, 0.5% category traffic. Deadline: April 26, 2026.
2. Free badge usage is the key differentiator. No $2,999/year fee like G2. Use badges anywhere in your marketing.
3. 10 reviews is the minimum for everything. Customer Verified, Top Rated, Buyer's Choice, Trusted Seller — all require it.
4. Don't cherry-pick reviewers. trScore downweights biased samples. Invite a representative cross-section.
5. Buyer's Choice 2026 already happened. You're working toward 2027 now (reviews Jan–Sep 2026).
6. Apply for Trusted Seller by Feb 13, 2026. It's an application, not a competition — low-hanging fruit.
7. Best Of and Most Loved awards are gone. No explanation, just quietly dropped from the 2026 calendar.
8. HG Insights acquired TrustRadius in June 2025. Awards program unchanged so far.

Related Guides

• G2 Badges Guide: How to Earn Badges in 2026 — G2's grid methodology, review requirements, and paid plan considerations
• Capterra Badges Guide: How to Earn Badges in 2026 — Capterra's category-specific deadlines and 20-review targets
• PeerSpot Badges Guide: How to Earn Awards in 2026 — Enterprise tech focus, quarterly awards, 5-factor ranking methodology
• SourceForge Badges Guide: How to Earn Badges in 2026 — SourceForge's top 5%/10% thresholds and seasonal awards
• How to Get G2 & Capterra Reviews — Review collection best practices that apply across platforms

About This Guide

This guide was created by Blastra, a SaaS listings management platform. We help software companies manage their third-party visibility posture across directories like G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, and 30+ other platforms.

TrustRadius's awards documentation is better organized than most directories, but still scattered across multiple pages with some outdated references and silently discontinued programs. So we organized it.

This guide reflects publicly available methodology documentation as of February 2026. TrustRadius may update their programs — verify against official sources for the most current requirements.