TL;DR
Review-site research can be useful evidence of product evaluation, but it does not prove an approved budget or a decision to purchase.
G2’s Buyer Intent documentation includes research from G2, Capterra, Software Advice and GetApp. Available signal types depend on the product’s plan. Coverage across those properties does not guarantee a particular increase in useful accounts for your category.
TrustRadius Intent was acquired by HG Insights and pairs a smaller but heavily senior audience with an Intent-Driven Leads programme. Best for: teams selling to mid-market and enterprise buying committees.
Both are account-level, not person-level. Neither tells you who to call, so budget a contact database alongside.
Neither publishes an add-on price. G2 Buyer Intent requires a Professional or Enterprise profile plan, which means the plan with the lowest published cost cannot buy it.
Contents
- Why review-site intent behaves differently
- The two providers compared
- Comparison table
- Available events, signal by signal
- Audience scope
- Account identity and what sales can actually do with it
- CRM delivery
- Packaging and plan dependencies
- Additional tools to consider
- FAQ: Review-Site Buyer Intent
Why review-site intent behaves differently
Most intent data tells you an account is reading about a topic. Review-site intent tells you an account is comparing vendors.
A comparison-page visit can indicate vendor evaluation, but it may also be background research, partner work or an existing customer checking alternatives. Use the behaviour to prioritise investigation rather than infer a completed buying decision.
Review-site signals are useful when the category has relevant activity and the team can act on it. Coverage and quality should be measured against the target accounts rather than assumed to exceed other intent sources.
One limitation applies to both products equally and needs stating up front: this is account-level data, not person-level. Neither tool tells you which individual was reading. Sales has to decide who to contact, which requires a contact database and a view on the buying committee.
This article compares review-site intent and its activation requirements. Confirm the current product and integration scope with each vendor before comparing proposals.
The two providers compared
1. G2 Buyer Intent
Layer(s)/Best for: Account-level research signals across four review properties. Best for breadth of research signal.
G2 surfaces account research associated with product, category and competitor activity. Evaluate the signals available for your actual product subscription and inspect how each maps to a CRM account.
The expanded research footprint can be relevant to a new evaluation. Ask for the actual accounts and signal types available in your subscription.
Nine distinct signal types are documented, and which of them you receive depends on your G2 plan. That plan dependency is the commercially awkward part, addressed below.
On scoring, G2 retired its single intent score in June 2022 and replaced it with two fields, Buying Stage and Activity Level, each carrying three values and recalculated daily. Daily recalculation matters here: a research signal that ages a week in delivery has lost most of its value.
Integrations are broad and cover 6sense, Chili Piper, Demandbase, HubSpot, LinkedIn, Marketo, Salesforce and ZoomInfo, and a G2 API is available.
For G2, establish the product subscription, signal types and delivery integrations included in the proposal. Multiple listed products may need separate intent subscriptions.
Where it falls short: plan entitlements and account matching can limit the useful feed. Confirm signal access and inspect ambiguous company matches before building sales rules.
Verdict: the stronger of the two on signal breadth and integration surface, especially after the four-property expansion. Establish which of the nine signal types your intended plan actually includes before signing.
2. TrustRadius Intent
Layer(s)/Best for: Account-level research signals from a senior, purchase-ready audience. Best for mid-market and enterprise selling.
TrustRadius is another source of product-research activity. Its usefulness depends on the category and accounts represented, as well as the delivery and activation arrangement.
TrustRadius can be useful when its reviews and comparison activity cover your product category and target accounts. Ask for a sample against the actual account list. Audience-wide seniority or purchase-timing statistics do not establish coverage of your buying committee.
The corporate change matters for planning. TrustRadius was acquired by HG Insights, announced as HG Insights Acquires TrustRadius to Power AI-Led Buyer Intent, with founder and chief executive Vinay Bhagat named in the release. HG Insights brings technographic and market intelligence, and the combination is coherent, but packaging after an acquisition is legitimately uncertain. Ask directly about roadmap on any multi-year term.
The activation route is the Intent-Driven Leads programme, which generates leads from accounts researching you and your competitors. That is a meaningfully different model from a data feed, because you are buying identified leads rather than only signals, which suits teams with no activation layer. Buyer intent connects directly to Salesforce, and the data is available on the Snowflake marketplace for teams that want it in a warehouse.
TrustRadius also runs a 2026 Buyer's Choice Winners programme, which is a marketing surface rather than an intent capability but frequently appears in the same conversation.
For TrustRadius, ask for examples covering the category and account list you serve. Product review-site ratings are not a substitute for evaluating intent delivery.
Pricing: no published pricing. Contact the vendor. Given the HG Insights acquisition, confirm both current packaging and roadmap before committing.
Where it falls short: the category may not contain enough relevant activity for the target account list. Confirm current packaging, delivery and activation scope.
Verdict: include TrustRadius when its category coverage fits the buying committee you serve. Choose from evidence on that audience, not a general assumption that one review site contains better buyers.
Comparison table
| Tool | Layer | Best for | Entry price |
|---|---|---|---|
| G2 Buyer Intent | Account-level signals across four review properties | Breadth of research signal | Current scoped quote; confirm term and included capacity |
| TrustRadius Intent | Account-level signals from a senior audience, plus Intent-Driven Leads | Mid-market and enterprise selling | No published pricing; contact vendor |
Available events, signal by signal
G2 documents nine signal types, and which you receive depends on your plan. The ones that matter most in practice:
Reading reviews of your product. Evidence of interest in your listing, with motive still to be established.
Comparing your product against a competitor. Almost as strong, and more useful, because it tells you who you are up against.
Researching competitors without visiting you. A reason to investigate account fit and category interest, rather than proof of an active deal.
Category research. Earlier stage, higher volume, weaker per signal.
Visiting pricing pages. Possible cost evaluation, which should be assessed alongside other account context.
Profile engagement. Broad interaction with your listing.
The two scoring fields, Buying Stage and Activity Level, each hold three values and are recalculated daily. Use them as a routing input rather than as a truth: high activity at a late buying stage warrants a human immediately, while category-only activity at low intensity is worth a nurture sequence at most.
TrustRadius surfaces research activity on you and on your competitors, and converts it into leads through the Intent-Driven Leads programme rather than only into a signal feed.
Ask how quickly each event arrives and how long it remains useful in your sales cycle. Delivery delay can reduce relevance, but it does not establish that a deal has already been lost.
Audience scope
This is the sharpest difference between the two and the one that should drive the decision.
Compare category coverage with the priority account list. A broader footprint does not establish a higher useful match rate.
Compare both services against the same priority accounts and product category. Seniority and company-size assumptions about an entire audience cannot establish which service will produce more useful signals for your team.
A useful sanity check before either purchase: search both properties for your own category and count the reviews. If your category is thinly covered on one of them, the intent signal from that property will be thin too, regardless of the headline audience statistics.
Account identity and what sales can actually do with it
Both products deliver account-level intent. Neither delivers person-level intent. This constraint determines whether the purchase works.
What you receive is: this company is researching this category, at this intensity, at this stage. What you do not receive is: this person, in this role, read this page.
So the workflow has to bridge the gap. The pattern that works:
Signal identifies the account and the timing.
A contact database identifies the buying group. Two to four people per account, spanning the economic buyer, the likely champion and the technical evaluator.
The message references the category, never the surveillance. Saying you saw someone looking at your profile ends conversations. Leading with where teams at that stage usually get stuck uses the same insight properly.
A human works the strongest signals, sequences handle the rest.
Use the signal to improve relevance without implying that a named person performed an action when only company-level evidence is available. The account owner still needs to decide the appropriate audience and message.
Worth noting too: account-level attribution is the most common reviewer criticism of G2 Buyer Intent, and it applies equally to TrustRadius. It is a property of the category rather than a flaw in either product.
CRM delivery
This determines whether anyone acts on the data.
G2 integrates with 6sense, Chili Piper, Demandbase, HubSpot, LinkedIn, Marketo, Salesforce and ZoomInfo, and offers an API. That is the broader delivery surface, and the Chili Piper and Marketo connections in particular mean signals can trigger routing and nurture without custom work.
TrustRadius connects buyer intent directly to Salesforce and publishes data on the Snowflake marketplace, which suits teams that want intent in a warehouse alongside product and CRM data.
Two questions to ask before buying either:
Does the integration write to accounts, or create leads? These produce very different downstream behaviour, and the wrong one creates duplicate records at volume.
Can a signal trigger a workflow directly, or does it land in a report? A signal that requires somebody to open a dashboard has already lost most of its value, because research signals decay in days.
Administrative friction is a documented complaint about G2 Buyer Intent specifically. Ask who at your company will own configuration and how long setup takes, then double the estimate.
Packaging and plan dependencies
This is the section that catches buyers out, and it is worth reading twice.
G2 Buyer Intent is an add-on available only on Professional and Enterprise profile plans. In G2's own plan comparison, the Free and Starter columns for Buyer Intent are blank. So the plan tier with the lowest published cost cannot buy the product, and G2 publishes no price for the add-on itself. Your intent budget is therefore a profile plan upgrade plus an unpublished add-on fee.
TrustRadius publishes nothing. Given the HG Insights acquisition, ask specifically whether intent is sold standalone, bundled with HG Insights products, or only through the Intent-Driven Leads programme, because those are three different purchases with three different price shapes.
Practical negotiating notes for both: establish which of the nine G2 signal types your intended tier includes, get the four-property coverage confirmed in writing since it is recent, and ask whether the profile plan and the intent add-on renew on the same cycle. Misaligned renewal dates are how a one-year experiment becomes a two-year commitment.
Additional tools to consider
Worth evaluating where review-site intent alone is too narrow.
PeerSpot is a B2B review community offering buyer intent and comparison data across enterprise technology categories.
HG Insights provides technographic and market intelligence and now owns TrustRadius, making it the natural place to ask about combined packaging.
Software Reviews publishes category rankings and buyer data drawn from its own practitioner survey panel.
Capterra is one of the four properties now feeding G2 Buyer Intent, with a distinct small-business audience worth checking for category coverage.
Clearbit Reveal style visitor identification covers the adjacent case where the research happens on your own site rather than on a review property.
FAQ: Review-Site Buyer Intent
How much does G2 Buyer Intent cost?
Request pricing for the product listing, intent access and integrations you need. Establish which signal types and destinations are included before comparing with another review platform.
What changed with G2's intent data in 2026?
The current documentation includes all four properties. Confirm signal access per product subscription and assess relevant activity rather than assuming a fixed uplift.
Who owns TrustRadius now?
HG Insights, which acquired it in a deal announced as HG Insights Acquires TrustRadius to Power AI-Led Buyer Intent. HG Insights brings technographic and market intelligence. Because packaging after an acquisition is uncertain, ask whether intent is sold standalone, bundled, or only through the Intent-Driven Leads programme before committing to a multi-year term.
Is review-site intent person-level or account-level?
Account-level on both products. You learn that a company is researching a category at a given intensity and stage, not which individual was reading. Identifying the buying group requires a contact database, which is a separate budget line. Account-level attribution is the most common reviewer criticism of G2 Buyer Intent and it applies to the category generally.
How does G2 score intent now?
The single intent score was retired in June 2022 and replaced by two fields, Buying Stage and Activity Level, each with three values and recalculated daily. Use them together for routing: high activity at a late buying stage warrants immediate human attention, while low-intensity category research belongs in a nurture sequence.
Should I mention the intent signal in my outreach?
No. Referencing that you saw someone on a review site reads as surveillance and reliably ends the conversation. Use the timing rather than the fact: reach out now, lead with a category insight or a specific problem teams at that stage usually hit, and let the relevance do the work.
For the wider account-prioritisation decision, our guide to b2b intent data providers covers the adjacent options.
Work with Forma Nôrden
We build signal-based outbound systems for B2B companies selling into the enterprise and upper mid-market. Review-site intent is one of the few signal classes worth acting on within days, which makes the routing design more important than the data purchase itself. Explore how we work.
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