We cannot tell you whether any placement was influenced by money, and the public pages we read do not settle it. What buyers can do is ask direct questions about independence, vendor review and criteria, and weigh a placement by what they can verify.
What we found in public sources
Forrester's public pages that we fetched did not address vendor payment. One policy page says employees may not engage in activities that compromise, or appear to compromise, research integrity. The methodology page says Forrester follows a publicly available method applied consistently, may evaluate products regardless of vendor participation, and will not consider vendor requests to remove themselves.
For Gartner, we could not fetch its independence page. A reprint checklist for vendors says that Gartner research reflects opinion, not fact, that Gartner does not endorse any vendor, and that vendors may not present inclusion as an award or imply a partnership.
The Wikipedia article on the Magic Quadrant does not discuss pay-to-play. It records a 2009 lawsuit over the rating system that was dismissed.
That is the extent of what we confirmed. Be careful of any confident claim in either direction.
Separate two different concerns
People use "pay to play" for different things.
- Direct influence on scores. Money buying a better rating. No source we read says this happens, and none rules it out.
- Indirect effects. Vendors who invest more time in briefings, questionnaires and reviews may present themselves better. A vendor with a large analyst relations team can simply be easier to evaluate.
The second is a plain feature of any process that relies on vendor input. Forrester describes questionnaires, briefings within about two weeks of the questionnaire deadline, and a review period. Well-staffed vendors will use all of it.
Questions to ask
Ask the analyst firm or your account contact:
- Is there a written policy on vendor payment and how it relates to evaluations?
- How are inclusion criteria set, and who approves them?
- Do analysts take part in sales or advisory work with vendors in the same market? Forrester describes a policy that limits analyst engagement with clients being evaluated in the same market, so ask how it works.
- What can vendors change after seeing a draft?
Ask the vendor:
- Which parts of your placement come from the report text and which are your own summary?
- When were you evaluated, and which product version?
What to do with the uncertainty
You do not need to resolve this to make a good decision. Reduce how much weight the placement carries and increase the weight of things you can test yourself. A product that performs on your code does not need a chart to justify it, and a product that fails your test should not be rescued by one.
Safeguard offers SBOM and dependency scanning, reachability analysis and a free scan at gold.safeguard.sh/scan, so your own results can be the evidence.
Quick check
Should I ignore analyst reports because of this concern?
No. They remain useful for learning a market. Just do not let them carry the decision.
Can a vendor be removed from a report on request?
Forrester says it will not consider vendor requests to remove themselves from a Wave, although it may remove a vendor that does not fit the objectives.
Sources
- Forrester Wave methodology
- Forrester policies
- Gartner Reprints content compliance checklist
- Magic Quadrant, Wikipedia
Last reviewed: 19 October 2026.
