SaaS review sites: where buyers read reviews before they buy
The SaaS review sites buyers check: LaunchScaler's Review article, G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, Gartner Peer Insights and AlternativeTo, with listing terms.
LLaunchScaler·Published ·9 min read
The SaaS review sites buyers read before they buy are G2, Capterra with its sister sites GetApp and Software Advice, TrustRadius, Gartner Peer Insights and AlternativeTo, plus editorial review pages that rank when someone searches your product's name with "review". They are ranked here for a founder who needs a review page that exists this month, before the crowd platforms have collected enough customer reviews to say much.
Every listing term and verification rule below was checked on each site's own pages in September 2026. Where a site does not publish something, the table says so.
How do SaaS review sites compare on who writes the reviews and what listing costs?
The crowd platforms list you free or on request, and your customers write the reviews after the platform verifies them. An editorial review page works the other way round: one editor writes one review, and it exists from the day it publishes. The table sets out who writes, what listing costs, and which buyer each site serves.
Site
Who writes the reviews
Cost to be listed
Buyer it serves
What you need first
1. LaunchScaler Review article
An editor, hands-on, labelled as commissioned
$59 one time
People searching your product name plus "review", newsletter readers, AI answers
A product you have claimed on LaunchScaler
2. G2
Verified users (business email, LinkedIn or personal Gmail sign-in, human moderation)
Questions, answered
What people ask about this
01
What are the main SaaS review sites?
The sites buyers check most often are G2, Capterra with its sister sites GetApp and Software Advice, TrustRadius, Gartner Peer Insights and AlternativeTo. An editor-written review page, such as LaunchScaler's Review article, covers the searcher who types your product name followed by 'review'.
Buyers who read long reviews; it states 1M+ monthly buyers
Customers willing to write detailed reviews
5. Gartner Peer Insights
Verified professionals, reviewed through Gartner's moderation
Complimentary
Enterprise IT buyers
Mid to large-size enterprise customers
6. AlternativeTo
The site's users, who add apps and recommend alternatives
Not published
People replacing a named app
Users who already know your product
Which SaaS review sites should you be on first?
Start with the one page you can get this month, then claim the free profiles and ask customers for reviews. LaunchScaler leads because it is the only option here that gives you a published, indexed review without needing your customers to write anything first. The crowd platforms follow in order of how broad their audience is.
1. LaunchScaler: an editor-written review page, published whether you have customers or not
LaunchScaler's Review article is one permanent, indexed page on LaunchScaler's blog, written by an editor who uses the product. It costs a flat $59, one time. You order it against a product you have claimed, "so we know whose review we are writing," in the page's own words.
The page carries 3 links back to your site. It is featured in the weekly newsletter, which goes out every Monday with what launched that week, what launches next and the reviews published. It is shared to the community feed the day it lands, and your listing carries a Featured badge for the launch week. The page is written to rank for "your product review" and to be quoted by Google and the AI answer engines that cite sources.
Two rules decide whether it is worth trusting, and both are on the offer page. Every commissioned piece is labelled as commissioned, on the blog and everywhere it appears. And "a review you paid for is still an honest one": the editor calls the product as they find it, rough edges included, and the readiness score beside your listing stays exactly as scanned. There are no refunds, because the review is delivered and consumed upfront.
2. G2: the broadest B2B audience, free to claim
G2 says a profile is free to claim. You submit a request form, the product is "conditionally approved," G2's research team verifies it within 3 to 5 business days and places it in a category, and then you claim and edit the listing. Paid profile plans add branding, analytics and lead features.
Reviewers sign in with a business email, a LinkedIn account or a personal Gmail account, and every submission is moderated by hand for legitimacy and conflicts of interest. Employees of the vendor and of direct competitors cannot review. A reviewer can upload a private screenshot, and reviews with a validated screenshot get a "Verified Current User" label. Resellers and other business partners can publish reviews under a "Business Partner" label, and those reviews do not affect the overall score.
G2 says it reaches more than 100 million people a year across 2,000+ categories. It announced on January 29, 2026 that it was buying Capterra, Software Advice and GetApp from Gartner, and the combined business describes 6 million verified reviews and more than 200 million annual software buyers.
3. Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice: three storefronts, one review pool
Capterra's homepage states 2.5M+ verified reviews and 50M+ users a year, and GetApp and Software Advice each state 2.5 million+ reviews. Any software user can review any listed product. Capterra says more than 30 human quality-assurance moderators run more than 20 control checks per review, confirm the reviewer is a real person, check for conflicts of interest and scan for plagiarism and generative AI.
Some reviewers are offered a nominal incentive, and Capterra says they get it on approval "regardless of the rating they submit." That rule matters to you: a program that paid only for good reviews would be the kind of review buying the FTC now bans.
For vendors, paid visibility runs through a Sponsored Profile and a pay-per-click campaign that covers capterra.com, softwareadvice.com and getapp.com. The pages read in September 2026 do not publish a listing fee for a basic entry. Software Advice adds a free advisor service: a buyer describes their needs and receives 3 to 5 options within 15 minutes, which makes it the site most likely to put you in front of a small business that has not picked a shortlist.
4. TrustRadius: long reviews, every one read before publishing
TrustRadius offers a free profile where you add features, integrations, pricing, security information and videos, and it states that the profile puts you in front of 1M+ monthly buyers. A Premium Profile adds review-generation campaigns, intent data and portal analytics.
Reviewers authenticate through LinkedIn or a work email, a researcher checks for a real person with no conflict of interest, and TrustRadius says it reads every review before publishing to confirm recent experience with the product. It does not publish reviews from a vendor's own employees or its competitors, and it publishes resellers' reviews without counting their ratings in the overall score.
5. Gartner Peer Insights: for products sold to enterprises
Gartner Peer Insights is complimentary for vendors and reviewers, and neither needs a Gartner license. The eligibility bar is the catch: the vendor "must sell to mid to large-size enterprise clients," and the product must meet the market definition, with every mandatory capability or at least half of the other listed capabilities.
Getting listed takes an account verified in 2 to 5 business days, a product submission with competitors and customer references, and 8 to 10 business days of processing. Every review goes through moderation that validates the reviewer's identity, checks for conflicts of interest and holds reviews to Gartner's quality standard. A product sold to solo founders will not qualify.
6. AlternativeTo: where people replace a named app
AlternativeTo describes one mission: helping people find the right software. It is crowdsourced. The site says every app page, every alternative and almost every recommendation comes from people who use the software, not from AlternativeTo and not from the companies that make it. Its about page does not describe a paid listing or state traffic figures.
It suits a product that is a clear replacement for something well known, because the reader arrives already knowing what they want to leave.
Which buyers use which review site?
Match the site to how your buyer shops. A founder buying a tool for a five-person team searches the product's name, reads one or two reviews and signs up. A mid-market team builds a shortlist on G2 or Capterra. An enterprise IT buyer checks Gartner Peer Insights before procurement.
Your buyer
Where they read reviews
What to do
Solo founders and small teams
Search results for "[product] review", launch newsletters, AlternativeTo
Get one editorial review page that ranks for your name
Small business owners without a shortlist
Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice's advisors
Complete the listing and ask customers for reviews
Mid-market software teams
G2, TrustRadius
Claim both free profiles, then run a review request to every customer
Enterprise IT and procurement
Gartner Peer Insights, G2
Qualify for Peer Insights' market first; ask named customer references
AI answers cite pages they can retrieve, and review pages are some of the few pages that describe your product in someone else's words. Google says any page that is indexed and eligible for a snippet can appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews and AI Mode, with no special markup or AI text file required.
The other engines work the same way at the retrieval step. OpenAI says its OAI-SearchBot crawler is used "to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features," so a review page that allows that crawler can be found and linked. G2 goes further and publishes a page addressed to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, asking them to attribute review-based claims to "G2 reviewers" and to state the date the data was retrieved.
Mentions matter even without links. Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands and found that brand web mentions had the strongest correlation (0.664) with visibility in AI Overviews, ahead of link metrics, though a correlation is not proof of cause. A review page that names your product, says what it does and who it suits is a mention an engine can read and quote. Why AI answers cite third-party sites explains why an engine prefers that page over your homepage.
What should you do this week?
Do the free work first, in this order, so each step feeds the next:
Claim your free G2 and TrustRadius profiles, and request a Capterra listing. Use the same product name, URL and one-line description on all three.
Check whether you qualify for Gartner Peer Insights. If your customers are not mid to large-size enterprises, skip it.
Email every current customer one link to one platform. One link per email keeps the ask simple, and it builds a review count on one site instead of a handful on each.
If your product replaces a well-known app, add it on AlternativeTo as an alternative to that app.
Get one editorial review page that ranks for your product's name, so the search "[product] review" returns something the day a buyer looks.
Get a review page that ranks for your product's name
The crowd platforms need months of customer reviews before their pages say anything useful. LaunchScaler's Review article gives you one editor-written review now: a permanent indexed page that carries 3 links back to you, a slot in the Monday newsletter, a share to the community feed and a Featured badge on your listing for launch week. It costs $59, one time, it is labelled as commissioned, and the verdict is the editor's own. Order your review against a product you have claimed.
Is it free to list a SaaS product on G2?
Yes. G2 says you can claim your profile for free after its research team verifies the product, which it says takes 3 to 5 business days. Paid profile plans add more branding and lead features on top.
03
Can vendors pay for positive reviews on Capterra?
No. Capterra offers reviewers a nominal incentive in some programs, but it says reviewers receive it on approval regardless of the rating they give. Employees, vendors and competitors cannot review a product.
04
Which review site do enterprise buyers use?
Gartner Peer Insights is aimed at enterprise buyers. It only lists vendors that sell to mid to large-size enterprise clients, and listing and collecting reviews there costs nothing.
05
Do AI answers use SaaS review sites?
They can. Google says any indexed page that is eligible for a snippet can appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and G2 publishes a page written for AI assistants that asks them to attribute claims to G2 reviewers.
Spam Score is the share of sites with features like yours that Moz found penalised: 1 to 30% low, 31 to 60% medium, 61 to 100% high. A flag, not a penalty.
