Clutch Profile and UpCity: Agency Listing Guide

A Clutch profile is a free listing for a business-to-business service provider on clutch.co, the review directory where buyers shortlist agencies, and UpCity is a similar agency directory with its own free profile, reviews and paid tiers. For an agency, creating either profile costs nothing, and the paid layers sit on top for visibility. Our take: reviews are the whole game on both sites, so build a client review program before you pay for anything. Clutch weights reviews more heavily than anything else in its scoring, and its sponsors only get a better spot on directory pages, not a better score; UpCity’s paid prices are not published, so do not budget against a number you cannot see. This guide covers how to list, how verified client reviews work on each, what the paid options cost where the sites publish a number, and how each decides who ranks first.

In our catalog, Clutch is the second site and UpCity the seventh on the marketing citation list, and both are labelled free. That label describes the profile; each site also sells paid upgrades, covered below.

One limit on sourcing. We read Clutch’s own help center and get-listed page directly. We could not open upcity.com (the pages would not load), so the UpCity facts below are taken from UpCity’s own pages as returned by web search, and several of those pages are years old. Treat them as a starting point and confirm on the live site.

Clutch and UpCity at a glance

	Clutch	UpCity
Who it is for	B2B service providers: marketing, design, development, IT and business services	Agencies and other service providers on UpCity’s marketplace
Free profile	Yes, the Basic profile	Yes, the free partnership
What the free profile includes	Company profile, basic analytics, limited case studies, client review collection, badges and widgets, a profile on The Manifest	A free profile, one list placement, a free badge, review widgets, basic visibility insights and a basic review request tool
Paid upgrade	Clutch Verified, $499 a year at the time of writing; sponsorship and advertising, custom priced	Certified and Certified Sponsor; no price found
How reviews are checked	Clutch checks the identity and work history of each reviewer	An editorial team verifies reviews and can ask for proof of business
Contract	Verified and sponsorship need a 12-month agreement	Not published

Sources: Clutch’s get-listed page, its help articles on free features and enhanced profile features, UpCity’s free partnership and certified partnership pages.

How to create a Clutch profile

1. Check you are a fit. Per Clutch’s help article on eligible companies, Clutch lists B2B service providers. Its article on rejected profiles says it may decline a company that primarily sells software, tools or platforms, primarily sells to consumers, already has a profile (including a parent company), has a blog or publication as its website, or has a website Clutch cannot open.
2. Search for an existing profile. If one is unclaimed, Clutch’s claim guide says a Claim Profile button appears on it. Sign in with a Google account, LinkedIn account or company email and complete the form. If your email matches Clutch’s records you get an automatic verification email (it expires after 3 days); otherwise its team checks your connection to the company first.
3. If there is none, start at the get-listed page. Choose the free Basic option and sign in the same way. Clutch says the setup is a three-step process of 10 minutes or less (another Clutch page says 20).
4. Fill in the profile. Per Clutch’s help article on getting listed, it asks for company name, tagline, number of employees, minimum project size and average hourly rate, website, locations, contact information, overview and service focus.
5. Wait for publication. Per Clutch’s publishing-time article, an analyst publishes each profile by hand, on average about 3 days after submission, and contacts you once it is live. It can take days or weeks for the profile to appear in Clutch’s own search.
6. Submit client references straight away. Reviews are the biggest part of Clutch’s scoring (see below), so there is no reason to wait for the profile to go live.

How verified client reviews work on Clutch

On Clutch you do not post reviews yourself. You submit the contact details of clients as references, Clutch collects their feedback, and the feedback is published as a review after verification. Clutch’s help article on references and reviews explains the difference.

• Who can review. Per Clutch’s rules on who can leave a review, only clients who hired you for the services you offer, current or past, one review per client company. Former employees and people with a family tie to you are excluded.
• What verification checks. Per how Clutch verifies reviews, identity and work history, using the reviewer’s login information and online research. Clutch does not publish its exact methods.
• Timing. Per Clutch’s review timing article, reviews usually take 5 business days to appear, longer in busy periods. The date shown is when the reviewer began writing, not when it was published.
• Not Verified. If Clutch cannot confirm identity or the project, it can publish the review marked Not Verified. Clutch’s help center says such reviews do not affect your Clutch score or directory rankings, and the missing details can be added later.
• Replying. Per Clutch’s vendor response policy, you can respond to reviews rated 3.5 stars or lower, up to 300 words, and Clutch may edit it before it appears directly beneath the review.

Ask clients who can describe a concrete challenge and result, because their reviews read like evidence, and Clutch’s scoring rewards recency as well as the star rating.

How Clutch decides who ranks first

Clutch’s own rankings and research factors article is unusually specific. Each directory has its own formula, but the common core is an Ability to Deliver score out of 40 points:

Component	Points	What it looks at
Reviews	20	Overall rating, recency, verification status and the client’s project budget; the largest part
Clients and experience	10	The type and quality of clients, case studies and the portfolio section of your profile
Market presence	10	Web presence, domain authority, industry recognition, thought leadership

Clutch says the score updates in real or near real time as the information on your profile changes. It judges industry recognition links one by one for verification, recency and independence, and links that name your company on the awarding organization’s own site count for more than links to pages you control.

Paid placement is a separate layer. Per Clutch’s help articles on sponsors versus non-sponsors and directories versus Leaders Matrices:

• Sponsors are listed above non-sponsors on directory pages, in tiers from Starter up to Quadruple Diamond (per Clutch’s sponsorship levels article). Clutch’s get-listed page also says Verified providers are listed above non-verified ones.
• Sponsorship does not affect Leaders Matrix rankings, which use Clutch rank alone. Visitors can filter directory pages by Clutch Rank to see the unsponsored order.

What a Clutch profile costs, and the paid options

At the time of writing (November 2026), Clutch’s get-listed page shows three levels:

Level	Price on the page	What it adds
Basic	Free	Company information, basic analytics, limited case studies. No Clutch verification, no removal of competitors from your profile, no link to your website from directory pages
Verified	$499 a year	Verification badge, higher visibility than non-verified providers, no competitors on your profile, a link to your website from directory pages, custom URLs, unlimited case studies, a dedicated support representative
Advertiser	Custom pricing	Priority placements on chosen service pages, targeting options, a 90-day onboarding program

Read the terms before buying. Per Clutch’s billing terms, both sponsorship and Clutch Verified require a 12-month agreement with no early cancellation, Verified is billed in full up front, and cancelling after the first year means contacting Clutch (Support for Verified, your Account Manager for sponsorship) at least five business days before the renewal date. Clutch Verified also depends on a business registration and credit check (how to become verified). Premier Verified requires at least 3 verified reviews with at least one in the past 12 months, an average rating above 3.0 and a very low to moderate credit risk rating. Clutch’s page on failing the check says a one-time $85 charge can apply when you ask for the credit check to be re-run, and that a partial refund can be requested within 30 days of notification, reduced by that fee.

There is also a free award-style mark: Clutch Certified is given automatically, with no application or fee, where you have at least 3 verified reviews rated 4.0 or higher in the last 24 months for a service line that makes up at least 10% of your mix.

How to create an UpCity profile

Per UpCity’s own pages (see the sourcing note above):

1. Start from UpCity’s partnership pages. UpCity says creating and maintaining a profile is free, and we could not open its sign-up flow, so follow the steps on the live site rather than any step list here.
2. Complete the profile. UpCity names profile completion as a factor in its Recommendability Rating.
3. Request reviews. In UpCity’s review request tool, you choose the location, customize the message and enter client email addresses separated by commas.

UpCity says creating and maintaining a profile is always free. Its free partnership page lists the free tier, and the certified partnership page lists the upgrades: Certified adds an enhanced profile, higher-visibility list placements (6 or more), certified badges, customized review generation and review insights; Certified Sponsor adds a sponsored profile, unlimited sponsored list placements, a spotlight placement and traffic generation. We found no price for either tier. UpCity says the tier depends on the number of lists you are certified on, the size of the local market, your services and your growth goals, so expect a quote.

How verified reviews work on UpCity

• Who can review. Current or past clients, per UpCity’s review request tool guide.
• Checks. An editorial team verifies reviews and can ask for proof of business, such as a receipt or invoice. Each review is also screened by hand by UpCity’s Quality Team against its community guidelines, per the review verification article.
• Timing. Reviews may take 3 to 5 business days to appear.
• Flagging. You can flag a suspicious review from the review tile or by email; per UpCity’s flagging article, the Quality Team reviews a flagged review within 2 to 3 business days, and if it needs more information it contacts the reviewer for proof of the relationship, which can take up to 7 business days. The review then stays or is removed.
• Fraud. UpCity’s help center says a review that looks fraudulent or deliberately breaks its guidelines is removed and can put a partner’s certification at risk. Its trust guidelines cover the wider policy.

How UpCity decides who ranks first

UpCity describes a proprietary score it calls the Recommendability Rating. Its explainer on Recommendability says the rating cannot be purchased and is built on its own methodology, using profile completion, engagement, services offered, target markets, price points and reviews. UpCity’s 2021 update says the engagement part awards points for actions such as activating your account and optimizing your profile. UpCity says the specific weightings are proprietary.

One caution: these pages are years old and disagree with each other on how many signals the score uses (one says about 40 data points, others say nine signals), so the current formula may differ. Compare it with Clutch’s published 40-point formula: Clutch tells you what is weighted and by how many points, UpCity tells you what matters but not by how much.

Edit, pause or remove a profile

• Edit. Sign in to the profile you claimed or created on each site and change the fields there; we did not find a published step list for UpCity, so use its help center.
• Remove. Per Clutch’s removal article, a company cannot have its profile removed on request: Clutch publishes company profiles and client reviews as a central resource for business buyers. Clutch’s cancellation form lets a Verified company revert to a basic profile. We found no UpCity article on removing a profile, so ask UpCity support.
• Stop paying. On Clutch, you cannot cancel Verified or sponsorship during the first 12 months, and afterwards you contact Clutch at least five business days before renewal. On UpCity, ask for the cancellation terms in writing before you sign.

Do these profiles help local SEO?

Modestly, and mostly as proof rather than as a link. Clutch states in its help center that the Visit Website link on profiles is nofollow, and the Basic tier gets no link from directory pages at all, so do not expect link equity. What you do get is a stable public record of your agency’s name, locations and website that buyers can check against your own site. That is the same consistency job as any niche citation, and our guide to review sites for business shows how the review platforms relate to citations.

For an agency, the risk is inconsistency. A Clutch profile with an old office address, an UpCity profile with a former phone number and a website that says something else all weaken the picture. Run the free NAP checker on your agency, fix the source of truth on your website, then update each profile to match. Agencies that manage listings for clients can read our page on citation building for agencies and our guide to white-label local SEO. For the wider set of marketing-specific directories, see the marketing citation list or pick your own country in the local citation finder.

A short checklist for agencies

• Confirm you are a B2B service provider before you spend time on Clutch.
• Search for an existing unclaimed profile on each site before creating one.
• Use a company email for sign-in so access survives staff changes.
• Match name, address, phone and website exactly to your own site.
• Submit client references on Clutch, and send UpCity review requests, in the same week.
• Ask each client for a specific challenge and result, not only a star rating.
• Ask for written price and cancellation terms before buying any paid tier.
• Revisit both profiles after a move, rebrand or change of service focus.

Common mistakes with agency directory profiles

• Paying before you have reviews. Clutch weights reviews at up to half of its score, and a sponsorship cannot lift you in the Leaders Matrix.
• Creating a second profile. Clutch may decline a profile for a company (or parent company) that already has one.
• Assuming a paid tier buys the rating. UpCity says its Recommendability Rating cannot be purchased, and Clutch says sponsorship does not change its Leaders Matrix rankings.
• Ignoring Not Verified reviews. Help the reviewer supply the missing detail so the review counts toward your score.
• Treating the links as SEO links. Clutch calls its profile link nofollow, so judge these sites on buyer visibility.