2027 Product Categories

Category Types

AI & Intelligent Systems

Digital Transformation Tools & Platforms

Education Technology

Industry Specific AI

Industry Specific Technology

Technology Startups (CODiE Breakers)

CODiE Breakers-Startup Technology

Workplace Technology

Digital Transformation Tools & Platforms

Overall Excellence

The 2027 categories below recognize excellence across technology and education. Each listing defines the eligible solutions and explains how the same five judging pillars apply to its context.

Judging Framework

All categories are scored on these five pillars on a 1–10 scale, in this order. Each category elaborates the pillars for its context without changing what is judged. Category-specific capabilities and considerations are evaluated within these pillars, not as additional scores.

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for users, not novelty alone?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for its intended users? How quickly can customers implement, integrate, and adopt it to realize value?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently and at scale, with the accuracy, speed, stability, and quality expected in real-world use?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect data, maintain security and privacy, and demonstrate responsible practices appropriate to its users and purpose?
Effectiveness: How well does the product achieve its intended purpose and deliver meaningful results?

AI & Intelligent Systems

Best Agentic AI Solution

Recognizes the best AI solution that autonomously plans, makes decisions, and takes actions to achieve user-defined goals. The winning solution goes beyond conversational assistance or content generation by completing complex, multi-step tasks, adapting its approach based on context and outcomes, and interacting with tools, data, applications, or other agents.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does it represent a meaningful advance in how AI agents plan, decide, collaborate, or take action?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How easily can users configure goals, permissions, workflows, and approval points and integrate the solution with relevant tools, data, APIs, and applications?
Performance & Reliability: How accurately, consistently, and efficiently does the solution interpret goals, autonomously develop and execute multi-step plans, make decisions, and take actions, maintain context, adapt to changing conditions, and recover from failures? Does it provide visibility into actions and scale its intended workflows, including multi-agent coordination where relevant?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect data, manage identity and permissions, prevent unauthorized or harmful actions, and maintain auditability? Can users understand, supervise, interrupt, correct, or override the agent, with guardrails and escalation proportionate to risk?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated improvements in productivity, speed, cost, quality, decision-making, customer experience, or other meaningful outcomes has the solution produced?

Best AI Coding & Software Development Solution - NEW

Recognizes the best AI-powered solution designed to improve how software is planned, developed, tested, secured, deployed, or maintained. Eligible solutions may support code generation and completion, debugging, testing, documentation, code review, modernization, or other stages of the software development lifecycle. The winning solution demonstrates a responsible and effective use of AI that meaningfully improves developer productivity, software quality, and delivery.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does its use of AI represent a meaningful advance for developers and software teams—not novelty alone?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for its intended users? How quickly can organizations integrate it with existing development environments, repositories, tools, and workflows to realize value?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform consistently and at scale, with the accuracy, speed, stability, and output quality expected in real-world software development?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect source code, credentials, intellectual property, and other sensitive information? Does it support secure development practices, transparency, appropriate human oversight, and responsible use of AI-generated code?
Effectiveness: How well does the solution achieve its intended purpose and deliver meaningful results? What evidence demonstrates improvements in developer productivity, code quality, security, maintainability, or speed of software delivery?

Best AI Content Solution

Recognizes the best solution that uses AI to help organizations create, optimize, personalize, and manage content at scale. Includes AI-powered content creation, editing and enrichment, localization, tagging and content operations, and personalization across marketing, editorial, and communications.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is the solution a meaningful advance in how organizations produce and manage content, rather than novelty alone?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for content, marketing, and communications teams? How quickly can organizations implement it, integrate it with existing content and marketing systems, and drive adoption?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform consistently at scale, producing accurate, on-brand, high-quality output across the volume and range of content its users need?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect brand, customer, and proprietary content, respect copyright and licensing, and use AI responsibly, including transparency, provenance, and appropriate human review?
Effectiveness: What measurable improvement in content output, quality, speed, or engagement does the solution deliver for the teams that use it? How well does the solution produce content that meets professional quality standards and stays consistent with brand voice, style, and guidelines, with the controls teams need to review and refine it?

Best AI-Powered Product Innovation - NEW

Recognizes the most effective AI-powered capability added to an existing software product during the eligibility period. The enhancement should solve a specific user problem, integrate naturally into established workflows, and deliver meaningful new value to customers.

Eligible capabilities may include AI assistants or copilots, automated insights, content generation, summarization, recommendations, intelligent automation, predictive capabilities, or agentic workflows. Judges will evaluate the AI enhancement itself—including how it strengthens the core product—rather than the product as a whole.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the AI enhancement? Does it meaningfully advance what the product can do for its users rather than simply add a generic AI capability?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How naturally does the enhancement fit into the product’s existing interface and workflows? Can customers enable, understand, and adopt it without significant configuration, training, or disruption?
Performance & Reliability: Does the enhancement perform accurately and consistently under real-world conditions? Does it appropriately manage errors, edge cases, and low-confidence outputs?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the enhancement protect customer data, communicate its capabilities and limitations, and give users appropriate visibility and control over AI-generated outputs or actions?
Effectiveness: What measurable value has the enhancement delivered, such as time saved, increased productivity, stronger adoption, improved task completion, or better user or business outcomes?
Integration with the Core Product: How effectively does the enhancement use the product’s existing data, context, functionality, and workflows to provide value that a standalone AI tool could not?

Best Generative AI Solution

Recognizes the best technology solution that applies generative AI to address a specific user need or deliver a valuable capability, such as drafting, summarizing, designing, producing media, transforming information, or creating personalized experiences.

The solution will be judged on how effectively generative AI is applied to its intended purpose—not solely on the underlying model. Solutions primarily focused on marketing content or software development should enter Best AI Content Solution or Best AI Coding & Software Development Solution, respectively.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the application of generative AI? Does it enable users to accomplish something new or perform an existing task meaningfully better?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for its intended users? How quickly can customers adopt it within their existing systems and workflows?
Performance & Reliability: How consistently do generated outputs meet the quality and accuracy standards required for their intended purpose? How effectively does the solution identify or manage inaccurate, inappropriate, or low-confidence outputs?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect customer data, provide appropriate transparency around AI-generated outputs, and keep users in control of their review, refinement, and use?
Effectiveness: What measurable improvements has the solution delivered in areas such as speed, quality, cost, productivity, engagement, or user outcomes? How effectively is the generative capability designed for its specific task, audience, and domain? Does it provide the context, controls, and customization users need to trust and apply its outputs?

Best Responsible AI Solution - NEW

Recognizes the best solution for helping organizations evaluate, govern, monitor, and control AI models, systems, and agents. Eligible products may address model risk, bias, explainability, policy enforcement, compliance, agent permissions, runtime monitoring, human oversight, auditability, or incident response.

The winning solution should make AI systems more transparent, accountable, secure, and trustworthy throughout their lifecycle.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution’s approach to AI governance and risk management? Does it meaningfully improve how organizations manage responsible AI?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How easily can organizations integrate the solution into their existing AI systems, workflows, and governance processes?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution consistently identify, monitor, and help organizations respond to relevant AI risks across real-world environments and at scale?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the solution protect sensitive data and demonstrate strong security, privacy, and responsible practices within its own operation?
Effectiveness: What measurable improvements has the solution delivered in risk reduction, compliance, accountability, incident response, or organizational confidence in AI?
Governance, Transparency & Oversight: How effectively does the solution support policies, permissions, approvals, audit trails, explainability, human intervention, and visibility into the behavior and actions of AI models or agents?

Best Translation & Localization Technology Solution

Recognizes the best technology solution that uses machine translation, AI, automation, or language intelligence to help organizations translate, localize, and deliver accurate multilingual content and experiences at scale.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does it meaningfully advance translation and localization through AI, adaptive models, workflow automation, multimodal capabilities, or other innovations?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How easily can organizations integrate, configure, and manage the solution within existing content, product, and localization workflows?
Performance & Reliability: How accurately and consistently does the solution perform across supported languages, dialects, content types, and use cases? Does it operate reliably and efficiently at scale?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the solution protect sensitive content, address bias, provide appropriate transparency and human oversight, and support responsible AI practices?
Effectiveness: How well does the solution preserve meaning, terminology, tone, context, and cultural nuance? What evidence demonstrates improvements in translation quality, localization speed, audience reach, productivity, or cost?

Best Sovereign AI Solution - NEW

Recognizes the best solution enabling organizations to maintain meaningful control over where and how their AI models, data, agents, and infrastructure are deployed and operated.

Eligible solutions may support on-premises, private-cloud, sovereign-cloud, edge, hybrid, or air-gapped environments while addressing data residency, jurisdictional control, security, regulatory compliance, operational resilience, or infrastructure independence.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution’s approach to sovereign AI deployment and operation?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How easily can organizations deploy, manage, update, and scale the solution across private, hybrid, edge, or isolated environments?
Performance & Resilience: Does the solution deliver reliable performance, availability, and operational continuity under the constraints of its intended environment?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the solution protect sensitive data, manage access, secure AI assets, and support applicable privacy and regulatory requirements?
Effectiveness: What measurable improvements has the solution delivered in security, compliance, deployment flexibility, operational resilience, or organizational independence?
Sovereignty, Control & Auditability: How effectively can customers control where models and data operate, who can access them, which dependencies are used, and how activity is documented for compliance and accountability?

Education Technology

Best Administration & School Operations Solution

Recognizes the best non-instructional solution for managing the operational and administrative functions of educational institutions. Eligible solutions may include student information systems, enrollment and registration, scheduling, finance and purchasing, records management, facilities management, compliance and reporting, administrative communications, and integrated enterprise management platforms. Solutions primarily focused on recruiting, staffing, substitute coverage, or employee lifecycle management see Best Education Workforce Management Solution.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does it meaningfully improve how educational institutions manage administrative or operational functions?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for administrators and staff? How easily can institutions configure, integrate, implement, and maintain it?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform consistently and accurately across different institution sizes, workflows, devices, and periods of peak demand?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the solution protect institutional, student, and family data; support applicable privacy requirements; and use AI responsibly where relevant? How effectively does the solution support required documentation, reporting, auditing, and regulatory compliance, including special education requirements when applicable?
Effectiveness: How much does the solution improve efficiency, reduce administrative burden, strengthen service delivery, or save institutions time and money?

Best AI Learning & Instruction Solution — NEW

Honors the best AI-powered solution for teaching and learning, including adaptive instruction, intelligent feedback, and AI-assisted content and assessment.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators, students, and administrators? How easily can schools implement it, including rostering, LMS integration, and training?
Performance & Reliability: How accurate, consistent, and instructionally sound are the AI’s outputs in real classroom use? How effectively does the solution identify, prevent, and correct errors that could confuse or mislead learners?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student, educator, and institutional data and disclose collection, retention, sharing, deletion, and AI training practices? Does it support applicable privacy requirements, age-appropriate content and interactions, bias mitigation, meaningful educator oversight, and processes for reporting and correcting harmful outputs?
Effectiveness: What credible evidence demonstrates improved learning or instructional outcomes? How effectively does AI support its intended instructional task, including personalization or adaptive feedback where relevant, while saving educators time and keeping them informed and in control?
AI Integration & Adaptivity: How effectively does the AI personalize instruction, feedback, or support based on individual learner needs and progress?

Best AI Solution for Education Operations & Student Success — NEW

Honors the best AI-powered solution improving how educational institutions operate and support students, including enrollment, advising, early-warning analytics, scheduling, student services, and administrative efficiency.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution in advancing education operations or student support?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for its intended users? How easily can institutions integrate it with SIS, CRM, advising, scheduling, identity, or other relevant systems and workflows?
Performance & Reliability: How accurate, consistent, and reliable are its AI-generated predictions, recommendations, and automated processes?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect institutional and user data and provide transparency and control over collection, sharing, and AI training use? Does it mitigate bias, explain AI-supported decisions, and maintain meaningful human review and oversight?
Effectiveness: What evidence demonstrates administrative efficiency, improved service delivery, or better student persistence and success? For student-support solutions,

Best AI Skills Development Product

Honors the best product that builds learners’ understanding of AI, its application and responsible use. Eligible solutions may serve students, professionals, or other learners.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for its intended learners and facilitators? How easily can schools, institutions, employers, or individuals adopt it within their learning environments?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably across its intended learning environments, supported devices, connectivity conditions, and levels of use? Is its AI learning content accurate and current?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect learner data, support accessibility, and provide responsible, age-appropriate experiences, including safe AI use and applicable privacy requirements?
Effectiveness: What evidence demonstrates growth in learners’ AI understanding and practical, critical, and responsible use? How effectively do authentic learning activities develop understanding of concepts such as bias, transparency, and societal impact?

Best Assessment Solution

Honors the most innovative and effective solution for assessing student learning, providing data-driven insights and tools that inform instructional decisions and improve student outcomes. Includes formative, diagnostic, benchmark, and summative assessment across subjects and grade levels.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance in how student learning is measured and acted on?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators and students? How easily does it integrate with existing curricula, instructional practices, and systems across subjects and grade levels?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real conditions, delivering accurate, valid measurement consistently across varied devices, bandwidth, and testing volumes?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and assessment integrity, maintain privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: How well does the solution measure learning and improve outcomes? Does it deliver timely, actionable feedback and insight that informs instruction and supports student growth?
Data, Analytics & Reporting: How effectively does the solution track and present performance over time, with insights that are clear, meaningful, and actionable for students, educators, and administrators?
Personalization & Adaptivity: How well does the solution adapt to individual learners, offering personalized assessments or recommendations based on performance? How well does the solution serve learners of diverse abilities, languages, and circumstances?

Best Career & Technical Education Solution

Honors the best product or platform that supports career awareness, exploration, technical education, and workforce preparation. Eligible solutions may help students discover career pathways, develop practical and industry-relevant skills, participate in hands-on or simulated workplace experiences, earn recognized credentials, and prepare for employment or further education.

Solutions may include CTE curriculum and platforms, career exploration and pathway-planning tools, virtual labs, workforce simulations, and immersive learning experiences delivered through augmented reality, virtual reality, extended reality, or other emerging technologies.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does it meaningfully improve career exploration, technical education, skills development, or workforce preparation?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators, students, administrators, and industry partners? How easily can schools implement it, including rostering, LMS integration, equipment requirements, training, and classroom management?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably? Is the content current and aligned with workforce needs, industry standards, employer expectations, and recognized certifications or credentials?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy, provide safe and age-appropriate experiences, promote equitable access, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: How effectively does the solution connect career exploration to relevant courses, credentials, work-based learning, and employment opportunities? Does it provide meaningful experiences that help students understand and prepare for real careers?
Industry Alignment & Credentials: Is the content current and aligned with workforce needs, industry standards, employer expectations, and recognized certifications or credentials?

Best Collaborative Solution for Teachers

Recognizes the best online solution designed to provide social learning, collaborative and community support for PK-12 or higher education teachers and administrators. This Includes tools for communication, professional learning experiences, resource centers, collaboration and planning tools and other interactive, social media solutions and tech tools between and among teachers, staff, administration, and community.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators and administrators? How easily can institutions adopt it and integrate it with existing communication, planning, and professional learning workflows?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform consistently and reliably across supported staff workflows, devices, connectivity conditions, and levels of use?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect educator and institutional data, manage access, support accessibility, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: Do educators collaborate more and demonstrably improve their practice through the solution? How effectively can educators connect, share, plan, and work together in real time?

Best College Readiness Solution

Honors the best solution designed to prepare students for success in higher education. The winning solution help students build the academic, social, and life skills needed for a smooth transition to higher education.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance in how students are prepared for the transition to college?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive and accessible is the solution for students of all backgrounds and learning needs? How easily does it integrate with existing frameworks such as high school curricula and guidance counselor tools? How well does the solution serve learners of diverse abilities, languages, and circumstances?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably across supported devices and connectivity conditions as use expands across schools and institutions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for students, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: Does the solution measurably improve college readiness, leading to better academic performance and graduation rates? How well does the solution build the academic, career, and social-emotional skills students need? Can the solution adapt to individual needs, and how effectively does it engage and motivate students to stay on track?

Best Customer Experience Solution for Education

Recognizes the best solution that helps educational institutions improve student, family, faculty, or staff service experiences through coordinated communications, self-service, personalized support, and efficient service delivery.

Judging Criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance in how education institutions deliver experience and support to students, educators, and administrators?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the interface for students, educators, and administrators? How efficient are onboarding and training, and how smoothly does the solution integrate with other educational tools such as LMS and SIS platforms? How well does the solution serve users of diverse abilities, languages, and circumstances, including accessibility standards?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably at scale in real conditions, accommodating a growing user base from small classrooms to large institutions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student and institutional data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for students, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: How measurably does the solution improve user satisfaction and retention, creating a positive and lasting impact on the experience? Does the solution provide timely, proactive support across channels, and does it actively gather user feedback and act on it to improve continuously? How effectively does the solution tailor services to different users and engage them in a meaningful way to improve user outcomes?

Best Education Professional Development Solution

Recognizes the best solution that helps educational organizations deliver, track, and manage employee, faculty, and staff training. Eligible solutions may support compliance, safety, onboarding, reskilling, or other role-specific training. The primary focus is institution-managed training and its delivery, administration, and reporting.

Category guidance: Choose this category for institution-managed staff training, including compliance, safety, onboarding, and role-specific training. Platforms primarily supporting sustained educator practice, coaching, or professional credentials should enter Best Professional Learning Platform.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance in how educational organizations deliver and manage professional development?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution across the platforms it serves? How easily can organizations deliver content on demand and asynchronously, with appropriate controls over timing, access, and content? How well can the solution be tailored to different content areas, roles, district needs, and outcomes, including customized pathways that personalize the learning experience?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably at scale in real conditions, delivering varied content types (text, images, audio, video) consistently across devices? How robust are the range and quality of training content, and how well do learners receive feedback and reinforcement, including the ability to interact through text, audio, and video?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect employee and organizational data, meet privacy expectations, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: How well does the solution build educator and staff skills? Does it deliver useful reporting for the organization and the learner, including standards alignment for professional learning and evidence of mastery?

Best Education Workforce Management Solution

Recognizes the best solution for helping schools, districts, and educational institutions recruit, hire, schedule, deploy, develop, and retain employees. Eligible solutions may include substitute management and placement, applicant tracking and hiring, workforce scheduling, talent management, employee engagement, performance management, leadership development, workforce planning, and retention.

Judging Criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does it offer a meaningful new approach to education staffing, workforce development, or employee retention?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for administrators, employees, applicants, and substitutes? How easily can institutions integrate it with existing HR, payroll, scheduling, or identity-management systems?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution consistently and accurately support time-sensitive and complex workforce processes, including hiring, placement, scheduling, communication, and reporting?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the solution protect applicant and employee data, promote fair and transparent workforce decisions, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What measurable results does the solution deliver in areas such as time-to-hire, substitute coverage, staffing efficiency, employee development, retention, leadership capacity, or administrative workload? How effectively does the solution provide actionable workforce data and help institutions anticipate and respond to staffing needs?

Best English Language Arts Instructional Solution

Recognizes the best instructional solution for reading, writing or literature curricula and content for students in the PK-8 market. Includes solutions for learners at all levels, through managed classroom/course-based instruction or online supplemental instruction.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators, students, and administrators? How easily can schools implement it, including rostering, LMS integration, and training?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks? Is content aligned to relevant ELA standards for the target audience?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated growth in reading, writing, and critical literacy does the solution produce? Does the solution hold interest while building critical thinking and depth?

Best Evidence Management Solution

Recognizes the best solution for collecting, organizing, and using evidence of student learning, including portfolios, work samples, feedback, performance data, and competency records. The solution should support progress tracking, reporting, and educational decision-making. Products primarily administering assessments should enter Best Assessment Solution.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance in how evidence of student learning is gathered, organized, and used?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive and accessible is the system for all stakeholders (teachers, students, parents, administrators)? How easily does it implement and fit the needs of diverse users? How well does the solution serve users of diverse abilities, languages, and circumstances, including accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG) and universal design?
Performance & Reliability: Does the system perform reliably at scale, keeping data accurate, complete, and up to date as it manages student information from varied sources?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the system protect student data and comply with privacy regulations (FERPA/COPPA), and does it use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: How well does the solution turn evidence of learning into progress tracking, reporting, and decisions that improve outcomes? How well does the system organize student data from multiple sources and deliver robust, actionable reporting and analytics for teachers, administrators, and policymakers?

Best Game-Based Learning Solution

Recognizes the best solution using games, game mechanics, esports, or immersive experiences to motivate learners and achieve meaningful learning and skill-development outcomes.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does it meaningfully advance game-based learning, immersive education, or scholastic esports?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators, students, coaches, and administrators? How easily can schools implement it, including rostering, LMS integration, equipment requirements, training, scheduling, and program management?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real learning and competitive environments across varied devices, bandwidth levels, locations, and usage demands?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the solution protect student data and privacy, provide a safe and age-appropriate environment, support healthy participation and digital citizenship, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: Does participation produce measurable learning, skill development, or student growth beyond engagement alone? How effectively do game mechanics, immersive elements, or competitive experiences sustain interest, encourage participation, and motivate continued effort? How closely are game mechanics, immersive experiences, or esports activities connected to defined learning objectives or skill-development outcomes? How effectively does the solution develop teamwork, communication, leadership, strategic thinking, resilience, inclusion, or career-relevant skills?

Best Global EdTech Solution — NEW

Recognizes the best solution serving learners, educators or institutions across multiple countries or in markets outside North America. Eligible solutions show meaningful adoption beyond their home market, or were built for the needs of a specific non-US region. Solutions may serve PK–12, higher education, workforce or lifelong learning.

Eligibility: Active customers or users in at least two countries, or headquartered and primarily operating outside the US and Canada.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original is the solution’s approach to serving diverse education systems, languages or markets?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How well does it adapt to local curricula, standards, languages and school structures? Does it work across varied devices, bandwidth and connectivity conditions?
Performance & Reliability: Does it perform consistently across regions, including low-connectivity and high-demand settings?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: Does it meet regional privacy and data rules (e.g., GDPR, data residency requirements)? Does it handle culturally sensitive content responsibly?
Effectiveness: What evidence shows improved learning, access or efficiency in the markets it serves, especially under resourced ones?

Best Higher Education Solution - NEW

Recognizes the best technology solution built for colleges and universities: enrollment and admissions, student information systems, retention and advising, learning and academic delivery, and campus and administrative operations. Serves institutions and the students, faculty, and staff they support.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance in how higher education institutions operate or serve students?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for students, faculty, and staff? How easily does it integrate with existing institutional systems such as the SIS, LMS, and single sign-on? How well does the solution meet the distinct needs of higher education, adapting to different institution types and the scale at which they operate? How well does the solution serve students and staff of diverse abilities, languages, and circumstances, including accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG) and universal design?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably at scale across a large, diverse campus population and peak-usage periods such as registration and start of term?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student and institutional data, meet privacy and regulatory requirements (e.g., FERPA), and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What measurable improvement does the solution deliver for the institution, whether in operational efficiency, enrollment, student retention and success, or academic outcomes?

Best Home Education Solution

Honors the best educational platform, tool, or resource designed to support learning in a home education environment. Whether it supports parents teaching their children at home, students engaged in online learning, or families supplementing traditional schooling with remote resources, this solution provides the essential tools and resources to foster an effective, flexible, and engaging learning experience at home.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance in how families support learning at home?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How user-friendly is the platform for both parents and students, including setup and navigation? How well does it support parents with guidance and teaching resources? How well does the solution serve learners of diverse abilities, languages, and circumstances, including accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG) and universal design?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real home conditions, across varied devices and connectivity, and scale with the learner across age levels and multiple children? How comprehensive, standards-aligned, and diverse is the curriculum and the range of high-quality materials the solution offers?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student and family data and privacy (COPPA/FERPA where applicable), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated learning progress does the solution produce, and how well does it track progress and provide feedback that improves outcomes? How well does the solution adapt to individual learning needs and prior knowledge, needs, and pace, and how effectively does it engage learners with interactive content that sustains motivation?

Best Hybrid/Blended Learning Solution

Recognizes the best solution supporting learning across in-person, blended, and fully virtual environments, delivering consistent, engaging instruction wherever learning happens.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators, students, and administrators? How easily can schools implement it, including rostering, LMS integration, and training? How well does the solution support in-person, blended, and fully online delivery, including full virtual programs?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks? How consistent is the experience across environments, devices, and connectivity conditions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: Does learning continue effectively and equitably across in-person, blended, and fully virtual settings?

Best Instructional Intervention Tool

Recognizes the best solution that identifies specific learning gaps and delivers targeted instructional support to help students close them. Eligible products should support progress monitoring and adjustment of instruction based on learner needs.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the tool? Does it incorporate recent learning research and innovative educational approaches that meaningfully advance how gaps are identified and closed?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the tool and its interface, with a learning curve appropriate to the student's age and experience? How easily can schools implement it, and how accessible is support for students and educators? How well does the tool serve learners and educators of diverse abilities, languages, and circumstances, including accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG) and universal design?
Performance & Reliability: Does the tool perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the tool protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: How well does the tool identify learning gaps and close them? What demonstrated improvement in student skills and confidence does it produce, supported by appropriate data and reporting? How well does the tool meet students at their skill level, whether behind, on track, or ahead, and adapt to diverse learning needs while aligning to grade- and age-appropriate standards? How engaging and enjoyable is the tool for learners, and does it build confidence as skills develop?

Best Learning Management System

Recognizes the best digital learning platform or LMS designed for K-8, 9-12 and/or higher education markets. These online learning platforms allow educators and administrators to develop, design, and manage course content, allow students to access and interact with content and provide data management and reporting tools.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the platform for educators, students, and administrators? How easily can institutions implement it, including rostering, SIS integration, identity management, content migration, and training? How simply and completely does the LMS integrate with institutional systems, content, and assessment tools?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: How does the platform enable and improve teaching and learning across the institutions it serves? How useful and role-appropriate are its reports and administrative controls?

Best Learning Solution for Students with Special Needs

Recognizes the best solution specifically designed to benefit students with unique educational needs, including those with physical or learning disabilities, those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), or those who are gifted and talented in the PK-12 or higher education market. Includes solutions that are 508 compliant and provide instructional materials that are accessible, with accommodations enabled, or developed under the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators, students, and administrators? How easily can schools implement it, including rostering, LMS integration, and training? How complete and well-executed are accommodations (e.g., text-to-speech, screen-reader support) and UDL design?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated progress do individual learners make toward their own goals, including IEP goals where applicable? How well can instruction, assessment, and feedback be tailored to individual needs?

Best Mathematics Instructional Solution

Honors the best mathematics instructional solution that provides both managed classroom or course-based instruction, as well as online supplemental instruction, supporting all students in learning and applying mathematics concepts and methods.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators, students, and administrators? How easily can schools implement it, including rostering, LMS integration, and training?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks? Is content aligned to math standards and coherently sequenced?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated growth in mathematical understanding and achievement does the solution produce? How timely, personalized, and actionable are assessments and feedback?

Best Multilingual Learner Solution

Recognizes the best solution supporting multilingual learners, including English language learners (ELLs), through language acquisition curricula, supplemental instruction, and assessment that personalizes learning and empowers educators.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators, students, and administrators? How easily can schools implement? How well does the solution serve learners and educators of diverse abilities, languages, and circumstances, including accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG) and universal design?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable? How well does the solution respect learners’ home languages and cultures while building proficiency in the target language and access to academic content?
Effectiveness: What progress in language proficiency and access to grade-level content does the solution produce?

Best Parent Engagement Platform

Recognizes the best platform designed to strengthen communication, partnership, and engagement between schools and families. This includes tools that support two-way communication, attendance alerts, behavior updates, learning progress dashboards, resource sharing, and parent-teacher collaboration.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators, students, administrators, parents? How easily can schools implement it, including rostering, LMS integration, and training? How effectively does the platform reach all families across languages, devices, and levels of digital access?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated improvement in family engagement, attendance, and school-home trust does the platform produce?

Best Personalized Learning Solution

Recognizes the best solution that adapts learning content, pace, pathways, or support to individual learner needs and progress. The solution should help educators make informed instructional decisions while enabling students to work toward clear learning goals.

Products emphasizing distinctive AI-powered instruction should consider Best AI Learning & Instruction Solution.

Judging Criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators, students, and administrators? How easily can schools implement it, including rostering, LMS integration, and training?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated growth do individual learners achieve against their own starting points and goals? How effectively does the solution assess each learner and adapt content, pace, and pathways? Does it give teachers timely, specific insight to target instruction and intervention?

Best PK / Early Learning Solution

Recognizes the best digital or blended curriculum product providing or supporting learning for early learning. Includes applications designed for tablets and/or desktop computers, in areas such as pre-literacy and numeracy content, assessment and reporting, for use at home or in early childhood development settings.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How well is the experience designed for early learners, including non-readers, and how easily can families and educators put it to use?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks? Is the solution grounded in early-childhood research and matched to how young children learn?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated development of early literacy, numeracy, and foundational skills does the product produce?

Best Productivity & Workflow Tool for Teachers

Recognizes the best solution designed to improve educator productivity, reduce administrative burden, and streamline instructional or day-to-day workflows. Eligible solutions may support planning, grading, feedback, communication, resource creation, classroom management, documentation, automation, or AI-powered teacher assistance. The solution should save educators meaningful time, improve instructional effectiveness, and reduce friction in their daily work.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does it meaningfully improve how teachers plan, manage, or deliver instruction?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators? How easily can schools implement and integrate it into existing systems and workflows?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform accurately, consistently, and reliably across common classroom and school environments?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the solution protect educator and student data, provide transparency about data use, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What measurable reduction in workload or time spent on recurring tasks does the solution deliver, and how does that benefit instruction or student support?
Instructional Quality & Educator Control: Does the solution produce accurate, appropriate, and instructionally sound outputs while keeping educators informed and in control?

Best Professional Learning Platform

Recognizes the best platform for advancing the continuous learning, skill development, and career growth of educators, administrators, or other education professionals. Eligible solutions may provide professional development content, personalized learning pathways, collaboration tools, coaching, credentialing, progress tracking, or other resources that help users improve their practice and achieve individual or institutional goals.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the platform? Does it use personalization, interactive learning, collaboration, coaching, credentialing, or other capabilities to meaningfully advance professional development?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive and accessible is the platform for learners and administrators? How easily can organizations implement, configure, and integrate it with existing learning, assessment, or collaboration systems?
Performance & Reliability: Does the platform deliver a consistent, high-quality experience across varied devices, environments, and levels of usage? Can it scale reliably to serve different organizations and learner populations?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the platform protect user data and privacy, support accessibility, maintain the quality and credibility of its content, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What evidence demonstrates that the platform improves knowledge, skills, professional practice, engagement, credential attainment, or career growth? Does it provide meaningful reporting and progress tracking for learners and organizations?

Best Science Instructional Solution

Recognizes the best instructional product for teaching science in PK–12, higher education, or adult learning. Eligible solutions should primarily develop scientific knowledge and practices in areas such as physical science, life science, earth and space science, environmental science, or other scientific disciplines.

Solutions may include comprehensive or supplemental curriculum, digital courseware, XR, VR, virtual or hands-on labs, simulations, assessments, and other resources that support science instruction, inquiry, experimentation, and evidence-based reasoning.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does it meaningfully advance the teaching and learning of science?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators, students, and administrators? How easily can schools implement it, including rostering, LMS integration, curriculum mapping, and educator training?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real learning environments across varied devices, bandwidth levels, and usage demands? If it includes labs or simulations, are they accurate, stable, and instructionally sound? Is the content accurate, current, and aligned with relevant science standards? Can it be adapted to different curricula, courses, and instructional needs?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the solution protect student data and privacy, provide safe and age-appropriate experiences, represent scientific information responsibly, and use AI appropriately where applicable?
Effectiveness: Does the solution demonstrate growth in scientific knowledge, reasoning, inquiry, or the application of scientific practices? How effectively does the solution engage students in questioning, experimentation, observation, data analysis, evidence-based reasoning, and scientific explanation?

Best Science of Reading Solution

Recognizes the best instructional solution based on the Science of Reading research. Curricula in this category have explicit, systematic, and cumulative approaches to teaching foundational reading skills, including phonological awareness, print concepts, fluency, phonics, and word recognition for grades K-5.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators, students, and administrators? How easily can schools implement it, including rostering, LMS integration, and training?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks? Does the solution implement explicit, systematic, cumulative instruction consistent with the research?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated gains in foundational reading skills does the solution produce?
Data & Teacher support: How well does it equip teachers with embedded guidance and progress data?

Best Social Studies & Humanities Solution

Recognizes the best instructional solution for social studies, social sciences, and humanities curricula for students in the PK-12 or higher education markets. Includes history, geography, government and civics, economics, and related areas such as media and news literacy, delivered through managed classroom or course-based instruction and online supplemental instruction. Provides deep, personalized learning experiences, supports standards alignment, and reflects current curriculum practice.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning in social studies and the humanities?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for administrators, educators, students, and families? How easily does it integrate curriculum, third-party content, and standards information, and perform across devices and content formats? How well does the solution serve learners of diverse abilities, languages, and circumstances, including accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG) and universal design?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated growth in students' knowledge, critical thinking, and civic understanding does the solution produce, supported by clear, actionable reporting and assessment?Do activities promote critical thinking and age-appropriate depth, and do they capture and sustain student and educator interest with relatable, current content?
Standards Alignment & Coherence: Is content aligned to relevant standards and coherently sequenced across the grade levels and courses it serves?

Best STEM Solution

Recognizes the best solution that enhances STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) learning for students. The winning solution provides deep and personalized learning experiences for students, supports standards alignment and reflects current curriculum practice.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators, students, and administrators? How easily can schools implement it, including rostering, LMS integration, and training?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated growth in STEM skills, practices, and problem solving does the solution produce? How meaningfully does the solution integrate two or more STEM disciplines? How well does it engage learners in building, making, coding, and solving real problems?

Best Student Capacity-Building Solution

Recognizes the best tool for learners in PK-12 or higher education markets that can be used to increase attention, responsibility, independence and engagement in their learning tasks. Includes Social emotional learning, project based learning, digital tools that use up-to-date research to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the learner’s skills, interest and time on task by optimizing engagement and supporting personalized instruction.

Judging criteria

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators and students? How easily can schools implement it, including rostering, LMS integration, and training?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks? How well is the solution grounded in current learning-sciences and social-emotional research, translating it into practices that build durable learning skills?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated improvement in learners' attention, independence, engagement, and time on task does the solution produce?
Accessibility & Inclusion (group criterion): How well does the solution serve learners and educators of diverse abilities, languages, and circumstances, including accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG) and universal design?

Best Student Wellbeing & SEL Solution

Honors the best tool that effectively promotes emotional intelligence, mental well-being, and mindfulness within educational settings.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators, students, and administrators? How easily can schools implement it, including rostering, LMS integration, and training?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks? Is the solution grounded in research-backed SEL and wellbeing methods?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated improvement in student wellbeing, resilience, engagement, or school climate does the solution produce?

Best Suite of Connected & Integrated Solutions

Recognizes the best collection of interconnected tools or platforms designed to work together seamlessly, providing a unified experience for educators, students, and administrators. This suite should offer a range of complementary features that enhance productivity, efficiency, and learning outcomes across multiple aspects of the educational experience.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the suite? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the suite across its components for educators, students, and administrators? How easily can schools adopt it? How well does the suite serve learners and educators of diverse abilities, languages, and circumstances, including accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG) and universal design?
Performance & Reliability: Does the suite perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks? How well does the range of features span the aspects of the educational experience the suite claims to serve, and how coherently do they reinforce one another?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the suite protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated improvement in productivity, efficiency, and learning outcomes does the suite produce across the areas it serves?
Integration & Unified Experience: How seamlessly do the components work together, sharing data and workflows to deliver a genuinely unified experience rather than separately bundled products?

Best Tutoring Solution

Honors the best tutoring platform or tool that delivers individualized academic support, adaptive guidance, or instructional assistance, whether through artificial intelligence, human tutors, or a combination of both. Solutions may include on-demand tutoring, intelligent feedback systems, subject-specific support, live or virtual tutoring programs, or personalized learning assistants that enhance learning acceleration and equity.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it a meaningful advance for teaching and learning?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for educators, students, and administrators? How easily can schools implement it, including rostering, LMS integration, and training?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform reliably in real classroom conditions, across varied devices, bandwidth, and usage peaks? Are explanations, hints, and guidance clear, accurate, and instructionally sound?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect student data and privacy (FERPA/COPPA), keep experiences safe for minors, and use AI responsibly where applicable? For AI tutoring, does it provide age-appropriate interactions, controls against misleading or harmful responses, and appropriate educator or caregiver oversight?
Effectiveness: What measurable academic growth does the solution produce for the students it tutors? · How well does the solution adjust to individual needs, pacing, and performance?

Industry Specific AI

Best AI Solution for Customer Service

Recognizes the best AI-powered solution designed to improve customer service, support, and engagement. Eligible solutions may support self-service, virtual agents, agent assistance, intelligent routing, case management, knowledge delivery, quality assurance, workforce optimization, customer insights, or other service workflows across voice, chat, email, messaging, and digital channels. The winning solution demonstrates a responsible and effective use of AI that improves service quality, operational efficiency, and the customer experience.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does its use of AI represent a meaningful advance for customers, service professionals, or organizations—not novelty alone?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for customers, service professionals, and administrators? How quickly can organizations implement, integrate, and adopt it within existing service platforms, data sources, channels, and workflows to realize value?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform consistently and at scale, with the accuracy, speed, stability, and quality expected in real-world customer-service environments? Does it handle varied customer needs and appropriately escalate interactions when human assistance is required?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect customer and organizational data, maintain security and privacy, and support responsible AI practices? Does it provide appropriate transparency, accuracy controls, bias mitigation, human oversight, and safeguards against misleading or inappropriate responses?
Effectiveness: How well does the solution achieve its intended purpose and deliver meaningful results? What evidence demonstrates improvements in resolution time, service quality, customer satisfaction, agent productivity, accessibility, operational efficiency, or cost?

Best AI Solution for Financial Services

Recognizes the best AI-powered solution designed to improve the delivery, management, security, or accessibility of financial services. Eligible solutions may support banking, lending, payments, investment and wealth management, insurance, fraud detection, risk management, regulatory compliance, customer service, financial operations, or other industry-specific workflows. The winning solution demonstrates a responsible and effective use of AI that delivers meaningful value for financial institutions, professionals, businesses, or consumers.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does its use of AI represent a meaningful advance for financial institutions, professionals, businesses, or consumers—not novelty alone?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for its intended users? How quickly can organizations implement, integrate, and adopt it within existing financial systems, data sources, and workflows to realize value?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform consistently and at scale, with the accuracy, speed, stability, and quality expected in real-world financial environments?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect sensitive financial and personal data, maintain security and privacy, and support applicable regulatory requirements? Does it demonstrate appropriate transparency, explainability, bias mitigation, fraud prevention, and human oversight?
Effectiveness: How well does the solution achieve its intended purpose and deliver meaningful results? What evidence demonstrates improvements in financial outcomes, risk management, fraud reduction, compliance, operational efficiency, accessibility, cost, or customer experience?

Best AI Solution for Healthcare

Recognizes the best AI-powered solution designed to improve healthcare delivery, clinical decision-making, patient outcomes, or healthcare operations. Eligible solutions may support areas such as patient engagement and management, diagnostics, clinical workflows, electronic health records, billing, compliance, staffing, care coordination, or administrative efficiency. The winning solution demonstrates responsible use of AI, meaningful benefits for its intended users, and measurable impact in real-world healthcare settings.

Choose this category when AI is central to the differentiated healthcare capability being evaluated. Products emphasizing broader healthcare technology or overall product value should consider Best Healthcare Technology Solution.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does its use of AI represent a meaningful advance for patients, providers, administrators, or healthcare organizations—not novelty alone?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for its intended users? How quickly can healthcare organizations implement, integrate, and adopt it within existing systems and workflows, including EHRs and healthcare data standards where applicable?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform consistently and at scale, with the accuracy, speed, stability, and quality expected in real-world healthcare environments? Is its performance supported by appropriate testing or validation?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect sensitive health information and demonstrate responsible AI practices appropriate to its use? Consider patient safety, transparency, bias mitigation, accessibility, human oversight, regulatory compliance, and the communication of risks and limitations. How well does it protect patient privacy and data security throughout its operation?
Effectiveness: How well does the solution achieve its intended purpose and deliver meaningful results? What evidence demonstrates improvements in patient care, clinical or operational outcomes, access, efficiency, cost, or user experience?

Best AI Solution for Human Resources & Workforce Management

Recognizes the best AI-powered solution designed to improve how organizations recruit, support, develop, engage, and manage their workforce. Eligible solutions may support talent acquisition, candidate matching, onboarding, employee service, workforce planning, skills intelligence, learning and development, performance management, career mobility, retention, scheduling, or other human resources and workforce workflows. The winning solution demonstrates a responsible and effective use of AI that improves organizational performance while supporting fair, transparent, and human-centered workforce practices.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does its use of AI represent a meaningful advance for employees, candidates, HR professionals, managers, or organizations—not novelty alone?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for its intended users? How quickly can organizations implement, integrate, and adopt it within existing HR systems, workforce data, and organizational workflows to realize value?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform consistently and at scale, with the accuracy, speed, stability, and quality expected in real-world workforce environments? Does it produce dependable results across different roles, locations, and employee populations?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect sensitive employee and candidate data, maintain security and privacy, and support applicable employment requirements? Does it demonstrate appropriate transparency, explainability, bias testing and mitigation, accessibility, human oversight, and accountability—particularly when informing employment-related decisions?
Effectiveness: How well does the solution achieve its intended purpose and deliver meaningful results? What evidence demonstrates improvements in hiring, employee experience, workforce productivity, skills development, retention, organizational decision-making, efficiency, or cost?

Best AI Solution for Legal Services

Recognizes the best AI-powered solution designed to improve the delivery, management, or accessibility of legal services. Eligible solutions may support lawyers, law firms, courts, corporate legal departments, government agencies, or other legal-service providers in areas such as legal research, case management, contract analysis, document drafting and automation, e-discovery, compliance, due diligence, and predictive analytics. The winning solution demonstrates a responsible and effective use of AI that meaningfully improves the efficiency, accuracy, quality, or accessibility of legal work.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does its use of AI represent a meaningful advance for legal professionals, organizations, courts, or clients—not novelty alone?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for its intended users? How quickly can organizations implement, integrate, and adopt it within existing legal systems, data sources, and workflows to realize value?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform consistently and at scale, with the accuracy, speed, stability, and quality expected in real-world legal work?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect confidential, privileged, and sensitive information? Does it demonstrate appropriate transparency, source verification, bias mitigation, human oversight, and responsible practices for its intended legal use?
Effectiveness: How well does the solution achieve its intended purpose and deliver meaningful results? What evidence demonstrates improvements in legal accuracy, efficiency, risk management, cost, accessibility, or client service?

Best AI Solution for Marketing

Recognizes the best AI-powered solution designed to improve how organizations understand, reach, engage, and retain their audiences. Eligible solutions may support market and customer intelligence, audience segmentation, campaign planning and execution, personalization, media optimization, lead generation, marketing automation, attribution, analytics, or other marketing workflows. The winning solution demonstrates a responsible and effective use of AI that delivers measurable improvements in marketing performance, efficiency, or customer engagement.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does its use of AI represent a meaningful advance for marketers, organizations, or customers—not novelty alone?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for its intended users? How quickly can organizations implement, integrate, and adopt it within existing marketing systems, data sources, and workflows to realize value?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform consistently and at scale, with the accuracy, speed, stability, and quality expected in real-world marketing environments?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the solution protect customer and organizational data, maintain security and privacy, and support responsible marketing practices? Does it appropriately address consent, transparency, bias, content authenticity, brand safety, and human oversight?
Effectiveness: How well does the solution achieve its intended purpose and deliver meaningful results? What evidence demonstrates improvements in campaign performance, audience engagement, personalization, conversion, efficiency, customer experience, or return on investment?

Industry Specific Technology

Best Financial Data & Analytics Solution

Recognizes the best solution that provides financial and market data, analytics, and insights for professionals in the financial and capital markets industries.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for finance professionals, and how well does it integrate into the workflows where financial decisions are made?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at enterprise scale in real-world conditions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect business and customer data, meet enterprise security and privacy expectations, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: Does the product demonstrably improve investment, credit, and risk decisions?
Data Depth, Accuracy & Timeliness: How comprehensive, reliable, and current is the financial data and content?exchange, commodities, and mergers & acquisitions.

Best FinTech Solution

Recognizes the best solution that enhances financial services by improving efficiency, security, and accessibility. The winning innovation may impact areas such as payments, lending, investments, insurance, advisory services, security, blockchain, or other financial services.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Is it leveraging cutting-edge technology or disruptive financial strategies that meaningfully advance the market it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for financial professionals and consumers alike? How quickly can customers implement it, integrate it with other financial platforms and tools, and access it across relevant devices?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform consistently and at scale, with the accuracy and availability financial services demand in real-world conditions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How strong are the solution's safeguards, including encryption, fraud prevention, compliance auditing, and regulatory alignment? Does it protect sensitive financial data and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: How well does the solution address a critical financial need? What measurable improvement in efficiency, cost, security, or accessibility does it deliver for its users?
Customization & Personalization: How well does the solution adapt to different users, institutions, and financial needs, including the reporting and insight each requires?

Best Government Technology Solution - NEW

Recognizes the best product or platform purpose-built to help government agencies and public-sector organizations modernize operations, improve public services, increase transparency, and deliver more accessible and responsive experiences to the communities they serve.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does it meaningfully modernize government operations, public services, civic engagement, infrastructure, or public-sector decision-making?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for public employees and community members? How effectively does it address legacy systems, interoperability, procurement requirements, training, and organizational change?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform dependably in complex public-sector environments, including periods of high demand? Can it meet requirements for availability, scalability, continuity, and mission-critical service delivery?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the solution protect sensitive data, support public-sector requirements, promote accessibility and fairness, and provide transparency and accountability in its use of technology and AI?
Effectiveness: What measurable improvements has the solution produced in public-service delivery, constituent experience, transparency, operational efficiency, responsiveness, cost savings, or community outcomes?

Best Healthcare Technology Solution

Recognizes the best technology solution for healthcare, including AI-powered clinical, operational, and patient-facing products. Serves providers, payers, and patients across clinical care, operations, patient engagement, and administration.

Products whose primary distinction is AI-powered clinical or operational capability should consider Best AI Solution for Healthcare.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for clinicians, staff, and patients, and how smoothly does it implement, including EHR and health-data integration?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at enterprise scale in real-world conditions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How fully does the solution protect health information and meet healthcare requirements (e.g., HIPAA), with responsible practices suited to clinical stakes?
Effectiveness: What measurable improvement in care quality, patient outcomes, or operations does the solution deliver?
Fit to Clinical & Operational Workflow: How well does the solution fit real care-setting workflows while minimizing burden on clinicians and staff?

Best Legal Technology Solution

Recognizes the best technology for legal professionals and legal operations, including AI-powered products for research, case and practice management, contract analysis, document automation, and e-discovery.

Choose this category for overall legal product value. Products whose primary distinction is AI-powered legal capability should consider Best AI Solution for Legal Services.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for business users? How quickly can organizations implement it, integrate it with existing systems, and drive adoption?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at enterprise scale in real-world conditions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How strongly does the solution protect privileged and confidential client information, with responsible AI practice suited to legal work?
Effectiveness: Is legal work completed faster, at lower cost, and at equal or higher quality?
Accuracy & Defensibility: How reliable are outputs for professional legal use, and how well does the solution support verification and citation?

Best Property Intelligence Solution

Honors the solution that best enables users to access, leverage, and utilize property information to make targeted and informed decisions on a property or a portfolio of properties.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for business users? How quickly can organizations implement it, integrate it with existing systems, and drive adoption?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at enterprise scale in real-world conditions? How accurate, current, and comprehensive is the underlying property data?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect business and customer data, meet enterprise security and privacy expectations, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: Does the solution demonstrably improve property decisions for owners, investors, lenders, and other stakeholders?
Data Quality & Coverage: How accurate, current, and comprehensive is the underlying property data?

Best Supply Chain & Logistics Solution

Recognizes the best solution for managing supply chains and logistics: planning, procurement, inventory, transportation, warehousing, and end-to-end visibility.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for business users? How quickly can organizations implement it, integrate it with existing systems, and drive adoption?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at enterprise scale in real-world conditions? How well does the solution provide end-to-end visibility and help organizations anticipate and absorb disruption?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect business and customer data, meet enterprise security and privacy expectations, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What measurable improvement in cost, speed, inventory, service levels, and resilience does the solution deliver?

Best Tech for Social Impact

Honors the best technology product, platform, or service designed to meaningfully address critical social challenges and improve outcomes for individuals, families, or communities. This category recognizes solutions that expand access to essential resources, advance equity, strengthen community well-being, or support underserved populations through innovative, responsible, and impactful use of technology.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for business users? How quickly can organizations implement it, integrate it with existing systems, and drive adoption?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at enterprise scale in real-world conditions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect business and customer data, meet enterprise security and privacy expectations, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What measurable, sustained improvement does the solution deliver for the people and communities it serves? Is the solution viable long term, able to maintain or deepen its impact?
Equity & Access: How well does the solution reduce barriers for underserved groups, including affordability of implementation?

Technology Startups (CODiE Breakers)

Reserved for companies with less than $1 million in annual revenue or founded less than five years ago. Eligible nominations receive a 50% discount on posted pricing.

Best AI Powered Startup

Recognizes an emerging education technology company using AI to improve teaching, learning, student support, educational access, or institutional effectiveness. Eligible companies may serve K–12, higher education, workforce development, professional learning, or lifelong learning.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the company’s use of AI? Does it represent a meaningful advance for educators, learners, or institutions?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution, and how easily can schools, educators, administrators, or learners implement and adopt it?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform accurately, consistently, and effectively in real-world educational settings?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the company address student and educator privacy, security, transparency, accessibility, bias, and the responsible use of AI?
Effectiveness: What evidence demonstrates improved educational outcomes, engagement, access, efficiency, or educator capacity?
Growth Potential: How well positioned is the company to grow sustainably and expand its educational impact, considering market demand, its business model, and the scalability of its solution?

Best AI B2B Technology Startup

Recognizes an emerging technology company using AI to solve meaningful business challenges, improve operations, enhance customer or employee experiences, or create new business capabilities. Eligible solutions may serve organizations across industries and business functions.

To be eligible, AI must be the core of the product rather than a feature added to an otherwise conventional solution. Companies whose product is primarily non-AI but has AI-assisted features should nominate in Best B2B Technology Startup.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the company’s use of AI compared with existing alternatives? Does it represent a meaningful advance for its target customers?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for its intended users? How easily can customers implement, integrate, and adopt it?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform accurately and consistently in real-world business settings, with quality that can hold as usage grows?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the company protect customer data, support accessibility, and address transparency, governance, bias, and responsible AI use?
Effectiveness: What evidence demonstrates improvements in efficiency, operations, decision-making, customer or employee experiences, or business performance?
Growth Potential: How well positioned is the company to grow sustainably and expand its business impact, considering market demand, its business model, and the scalability of its solution?

Best B2B Technology Startup

Honors the best emerging company whose solutions help organizations improve efficiency, operations, decision-making, customer engagement, or performance.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the company’s technology or approach compared with existing alternatives? Does it represent a meaningful advance for its target customers?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for its intended users? How easily can customers implement, integrate, and adopt it?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform accurately and consistently in real-world business settings, with quality that can hold as usage grows?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the company protect customer data, support accessibility, and demonstrate responsible practices, including responsible AI use where applicable?
Effectiveness: What stage-appropriate evidence demonstrates improvements in efficiency, operations, decision-making, customer or employee experiences, or business performance?
Growth Potential: How well positioned is the company to grow sustainably and expand its business impact, considering market demand, its business model, and the scalability of its solution?

Best K–12 EdTech Startup

Honors an emerging company transforming K–12 teaching, learning, student support, or school operations.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the company’s technology or approach compared with existing alternatives? Does it represent a meaningful advance for K–12 educators, students, or schools?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for its intended users? How easily can customers implement, integrate, and adopt it?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform accurately and consistently in real-world K–12 settings, with quality that can hold as usage grows?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the company protect student and educator data, support accessibility and safe experiences for minors, and demonstrate responsible practices, including responsible AI use where applicable?
Effectiveness: What stage-appropriate evidence demonstrates improvements in learning, engagement, access, student support, educator capacity, or school operations?
Growth Potential: How well positioned is the company to grow sustainably and expand its impact in K–12 education, considering market demand, its business model, and the scalability of its solution?

Best Higher Education EdTech Startup

Honors an emerging company transforming higher education and lifelong learning through innovative technology serving colleges, universities, postsecondary institutions, and adult learners.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the company’s technology or approach compared with existing alternatives? Does it represent a meaningful advance for postsecondary institutions or adult learners?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for its intended users? How easily can customers implement, integrate, and adopt it?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution perform accurately and consistently in real-world higher education or adult learning settings, with quality that can hold as usage grows?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the company protect student and institutional data, support accessibility, and demonstrate responsible practices, including responsible AI use where applicable?
Effectiveness: What stage-appropriate evidence demonstrates improvements in learning, student success, access, engagement, workforce readiness, or institutional effectiveness?
Growth Potential: How well positioned is the company to grow sustainably and expand its impact in higher education and lifelong learning, considering market demand, its business model, and the scalability of its solution?

Workplace Technology

Best Application Integration & Automation Platform

Recognizes the best platform for connecting applications, APIs, and business systems through prebuilt connectors, API-led integration, and event-driven automation. The winning solution enables workflows and business processes to operate reliably across multiple tools with minimal custom development.

Eligible solutions include integration platforms as a service (iPaaS), application-to-application integration, API management supporting application connectivity, and cross-application workflow automation. Solutions primarily focused on data pipelines, ETL/ELT, change data capture, streaming, replication, or delivering data to warehouses and lakes should enter Best Data Integration & Delivery Platform.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the platform’s approach to application integration and automation? Does it meaningfully improve how organizations connect systems and coordinate business processes?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How easily can teams design, configure, deploy, and manage integrations and automated workflows? How much specialized development or training is required?
Performance & Reliability: Do integrations and workflows operate consistently at scale? How effectively does the platform manage errors, retries, usage spikes, system changes, and service interruptions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the platform secure APIs, credentials, connected systems, and data in transit? Does it provide appropriate access controls, governance, monitoring, and auditability?
Effectiveness: How much integration and development effort does the platform eliminate? How reliably do connected applications, workflows, and business processes operate together in production?
Connectivity & Extensibility: How broad, deep, and current is the platform’s support for applications and APIs? How easily can teams customize existing connectors or connect systems that are not yet supported?

Best Compliance & Risk Management Solution

Recognizes the best solution for regulatory compliance, governance, and risk management.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for business users? How quickly can organizations implement it, integrate it with existing systems, and drive adoption?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at enterprise scale in real-world conditions? How well does the solution cover relevant regulations and keep pace as they change?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect business and customer data, meet enterprise security and privacy expectations, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: Does the solution produce stronger audit outcomes, lower compliance burden, and measurably reduced risk? How complete and defensible are its audit trails, evidence collection, and reporting?

Best Customer Experience Platform

Honors the best platform for delivering personalized customer experiences across touchpoints, improving satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for business users? How quickly can organizations implement it, integrate it with existing systems, and drive adoption?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at scale in real-world conditions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect business and customer data, meet enterprise security and privacy expectations, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated improvement in satisfaction, loyalty, retention, and engagement does the platform produce? How effectively does the platform turn customer understanding into relevant, personalized experiences?

Best Customer Service Solution

Recognizes the best tool, platform, or service that helps businesses enhance their customer service and support. This includes help-desk services, live chat, chatbots, social media tools, and technology-enabled service providers. Note: It is helpful to provide solution access to the judges during the review period for this category.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for business users? How quickly can organizations implement it, integrate it with existing systems, and drive adoption?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at scale in real-world conditions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect business and customer data, meet enterprise security and privacy expectations, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: Does the solution produce faster, more complete resolution, higher satisfaction, and lower cost to serve? How well does the solution serve both customers seeking help and the teams providing it?

Best Cybersecurity Solution

Honors the best solution for preventing, detecting, and responding to cyberattacks, breaches, and vulnerabilities, including zero-trust architectures, identity security, and threat intelligence.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for security analysts, administrators, or other intended users? How easily can it integrate with existing security tools and workflows and support effective adoption?
Performance & Reliability: How dependably does the solution perform in production: detection efficacy, low false positives, and speed at attack scale?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How strong is the vendor’s own security posture and handling of sensitive telemetry?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated prevention, detection, and response outcomes measurably reduce customer risk? How effectively does the solution identify and mitigate threats, including novel and AI-enabled attacks? How quickly and completely does it support containment, remediation, and recovery?

Best Data & Analytics Platform

Recognizes the best platform for collecting, managing, analyzing, and acting on data, spanning business intelligence, advanced and predictive analytics, AI-enhanced insight, and reliable data delivery.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for business users? How quickly can organizations implement it, integrate it with existing systems, and drive adoption? How well does the platform ingest, unify, and manage data from diverse sources? Can both technical and non-technical users understand and act on results?
Performance & Reliability: How accurate, current, and dependable are the platform’s pipelines and analytical results at customer volume and speed?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect business and customer data, meet enterprise security and privacy expectations, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: Are insights accurate, actionable, and proven to drive better, faster decisions?

Best Data Integration & Delivery Solution

Recognizes the best solution for moving, transforming, synchronizing, and delivering data reliably across operational and analytical systems. The winning solution enables organizations to make timely, accurate, and usable data available for analytics, artificial intelligence, business operations, and other downstream applications.

Solutions primarily focused on connecting applications and APIs to automate workflows and business processes should enter Best Application Integration & Automation Platform.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the platform’s approach to data integration and delivery? Does it meaningfully advance how organizations move, transform, or make data available?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How easily can teams connect sources and destinations, build and manage pipelines, define transformations, and monitor data movement? How much specialized engineering or configuration is required?
Performance & Reliability: Does the platform deliver data consistently at the volume, speed, and latency required? How effectively does it handle schema changes, failures, recovery, and increasing workloads?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the platform protect data in transit and at rest? Does it support access controls, governance, lineage, regulatory compliance, and appropriate handling of sensitive information?
Effectiveness: How much data-engineering effort does the platform eliminate? What measurable improvements does it deliver in data availability, freshness, operational efficiency, analytics, or AI readiness?
Data Fidelity & Delivery: Does the platform deliver complete, accurate, consistent, and timely data across supported sources and destinations? How effectively does it preserve data integrity and identify or resolve delivery issues?

Best DevOps Solution

Recognizes the best solution supporting collaboration between development and operations, including CI/CD, automation, monitoring, testing, release management, and deployment.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product versus established tools? Does it meaningfully advance how technical teams work?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for technical teams? How quickly can it be adopted into existing toolchains and environments? How effectively does it give development, operations, and security shared visibility and workflow?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform reliably under production load, with the uptime, speed, and stability its customers require?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect code, credentials, and data, with security-by-design appropriate to infrastructure software?
Effectiveness: What measurable improvement in delivery speed, release quality, and stability does the solution produce?
Automation & Workflow Coverage: How much of the delivery lifecycle does the solution automate, and how well?
Cross-Team Collaboration: How effectively does it give development, operations, and security shared visibility and workflow?

Best Employee Experience Platform - NEW

Recognizes the best employee-facing platform for engagement, communications, recognition, and workplace experience.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the platform for employees at every level, and how quickly does it earn genuine everyday use?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at scale in real-world conditions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the platform protect employee and business data, meet enterprise security and privacy expectations, and use AI responsibly where applicable, including in the analysis of employee feedback and sentiment?
Effectiveness: What demonstrated improvement in engagement, satisfaction, and retention does the platform produce? ? How effectively does the platform turn employee signals into actionable insight for managers and leadership?

Best IT Ops Solution

Recognizes the best product for monitoring, managing, and optimizing IT infrastructure and services across networks, applications, and cloud environments.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product versus established tools? Does it meaningfully advance how technical teams work?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for technical teams? How quickly can it be adopted into existing toolchains and environments?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform reliably under production load, with the uptime, speed, and stability its customers require? How effectively does the solution provide real-time insight into systems, networks, and applications?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect code, credentials, and data, with security-by-design appropriate to infrastructure software?
Effectiveness: How much does the solution improve uptime, reduce incidents, and shorten time to resolution? How well does it support rapid identification, escalation, and resolution, including automated remediation?

Best Knowledge Management & Search Solution

Recognizes the best technology that helps organizations capture, organize, and deliver knowledge for faster access, learning, and decision-making. The solution makes information easily searchable, usable, and shareable across teams or systems.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for business users? How quickly can organizations implement it, integrate it with existing systems, and drive adoption?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at scale in real-world conditions? How accurate and relevant are search results and, where applicable, AI-generated answers? Does the platform respect source permissions and provide citations or source links that let users verify information? How effectively does the platform centralize knowledge and keep it current and trustworthy?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect business and customer data, meet enterprise security and privacy expectations, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: Is information found faster, is time to answer reduced, and is organizational knowledge genuinely used rather than lost?

Best Marketing Platform

Recognizes the best platform for planning, executing, automating, and measuring marketing across channels, including campaign management, demand generation, and marketing analytics.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for business users? How quickly can organizations implement it, integrate it with existing systems, and drive adoption?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at scale in real-world conditions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect business and customer data, meet enterprise security and privacy expectations, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What measurable marketing outcomes does the platform drive: reach, engagement, pipeline, conversion, and return on spend? How well does the platform unify marketing data and attribute results?

Best No-Code / Low-Code Platform

Recognizes the best platform for building applications with minimal traditional programming, serving both business users and professional developers.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product versus established tools? Does it meaningfully advance how technical teams work?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How genuinely can non-technical users build and deploy working applications? How quickly do citizen and professional developers reach productive use?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform reliably under production load, with the uptime, speed, and stability its customers require?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect code, credentials, and data, with security-by-design appropriate to infrastructure software?
Effectiveness: What real applications do users build and deploy, and how much development time does the platform save?

Best Payments & Commerce Technology

Recognizes the best solution for secure payments and commerce: processing, gateways, wallets, checkout, and commerce enablement online and in person.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for business users? How quickly can organizations implement it, integrate it with existing systems, and drive adoption? How broad is support for payment methods, currencies, channels, and commerce scenarios?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at scale in real-world conditions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How fully does the solution protect transactions and consumer financial data and meet payment-industry standards (e.g., PCI DSS)?
Effectiveness: What measurable results does the solution deliver for merchants and consumers? For example: more completed checkouts, fewer legitimate transactions declined, lower fraud losses, reduced payment costs, and smoother purchasing experiences.

Best Sales & Revenue Operations Solution

Recognizes the best solution that helps organizations manage, automate, and optimize the revenue lifecycle, from prospecting, pipeline management, and forecasting to deal execution and alignment across sales, marketing, and customer success.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the solution? Does it introduce meaningful advances in sales intelligence, automation, forecasting, pipeline management, revenue analytics, or cross-functional coordination?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for sales, marketing, customer success, finance, and operations teams? How easily does it integrate with existing CRM, marketing, finance, and communication systems?
Performance & Reliability: Does the solution deliver accurate, timely, and dependable insights and automation across complex revenue workflows? Can it perform reliably as data volumes, users, and organizational needs grow?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the solution protect customer and prospect data, manage access, support compliance, and provide transparency and appropriate oversight for AI-generated insights or recommendations?
Effectiveness: What measurable improvements does the solution produce in productivity, forecast accuracy, conversion rates, sales-cycle length, retention, revenue growth, or cross-functional alignment?

Best Talent Management Solution

Recognizes the best solution that automates any aspect of human resources management and talent acquisition, including recruiting, onboarding, HRIS, benefits administration, payroll, learning, analytics, and performance appraisal.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for business users? How quickly can organizations implement it, integrate it with existing systems, and drive adoption?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at scale in real-world conditions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect business and customer data, meet enterprise security and privacy expectations, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: Does the solution produce faster, higher-quality hiring, smoother HR operations, and measurable workforce outcomes?
How effectively does the solution support its intended HR or talent workflows, including coordinated data and processes across the lifecycle stages it serves? How robust and actionable are its analytics for HR and business leaders?

Best Workflow Automation Platform

Recognizes the best platform for automating business tasks, approvals, and workflows across teams.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for business users? How quickly can organizations implement it, integrate it with existing systems, and drive adoption?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at scale in real-world conditions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect business and customer data, meet enterprise security and privacy expectations, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: How much time, throughput, and manual effort does the platform measurably save across the processes it automates?
Process Coverage & Flexibility: How broad a range of processes can the platform automate, and how easily can workflows be designed and adapted?

Best Workforce Learning & Upskilling Platform - New

Recognizes the best platform for developing workforce skills including corporate learning, upskilling and reskilling, skills assessment, and career-aligned development.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and differentiated is the product? Is the innovation a meaningful advance for the organizations it serves?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the product for business users? How quickly can organizations implement it, integrate it with existing systems, and drive adoption?
Performance & Reliability: Does the product perform consistently at enterprise scale in real-world conditions?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How well does the product protect business and customer data, meet enterprise security and privacy expectations, and use AI responsibly where applicable?
Effectiveness: What evidence shows learners actually gain and apply new skills: completion, assessment, certification, or on-the-job impact? How well does the platform tailor learning to individual roles, skill gaps, and career goals?

Overall Excellence

Best Accessibility & Inclusive Design Solution

Recognizes the best product or platform that makes technology more accessible, usable, and equitable for people with disabilities through inclusive design, standards compliance, assistive capabilities, and adaptive functionality.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original and meaningful are the solution’s accessibility capabilities? Does it advance inclusive technology beyond basic compliance or address needs that have historically been underserved?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive is the solution for people with a range of disabilities? How easily can organizations implement, configure, evaluate, and maintain its accessibility features?
Performance & Reliability: Do the solution’s accessibility and adaptive features function consistently across supported devices, platforms, browsers, input methods, and assistive technologies?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: Does the solution protect user privacy, avoid exclusionary or stigmatizing experiences, and meaningfully include people with disabilities in research, design, testing, and ongoing improvement?
Effectiveness: How successfully does the solution remove barriers and improve access, independence, participation, or usability? What evidence demonstrates conformance with relevant accessibility standards and positive outcomes for users?

Product of the Year

Honors the product that demonstrates exceptional overall excellence and represents the highest level of achievement among CODiE finalists. The winning product combines meaningful innovation, intuitive implementation, reliable performance, responsible practices, and measurable customer and market impact.

Judging criteria:

Innovation: How original, differentiated, and forward-thinking is the product? Does it represent a meaningful advancement over other solutions in the market?
Ease of Use & Implementation: How intuitive and satisfying is the user experience? How easily can customers implement, integrate, configure, and scale the product as their needs evolve?
Performance & Reliability: How effectively does the product fulfill its intended purpose? Does it deliver consistent, high-quality performance across expected users, platforms, environments, and levels of use?
Trust: Security, Privacy & Responsible Practice: How effectively does the product protect security and privacy, promote accessibility and inclusion, and demonstrate ethical and responsible design and use?
Effectiveness: What measurable value does the product deliver to customers or stakeholders? Consider adoption, customer outcomes, return on investment, market influence, and evidence of sustained impact.