G2 finished buying Capterra, Software Advice and GetApp from Gartner on February 5, 2026, for about $110 million. Combined with G2 itself, that is four of the internet’s most recommended software review platforms now sitting inside one company.
Guides published this year still list all four as separate options among seven or so top choices for comparing business software. None mention that comparing G2 against Capterra now means comparing one company’s numbers against itself.
A $110 Million Deal Behind the Buyer’s Guide
G2 announced the acquisition on January 29, 2026. G2 formally agreed to acquire the software discovery and recommendation platforms Capterra, Software Advice, and GetApp from Gartner, a move the company called a transformational moment for the software industry. Neither side mentioned a price that day.
The number surfaced two weeks later. Gartner’s most recent Form 10-K, filed on February 12, 2026, shows that the company completed the sale of its Digital Markets business on February 5, 2026, describing the consideration as approximately $110.0 million, before customary purchase price adjustments. That filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is the only public document that puts a number on the deal.
This acquisition represents a transformational moment for G2 and, more importantly, the global B2B software industry.
Godard Abel, G2’s co-founder and chief executive, said in the deal announcement posted on G2’s own newsroom. Abel previously built two enterprise software companies that were sold to bigger rivals, BigMachines to Oracle and SteelBrick to Salesforce.
Gartner had run Capterra, Software Advice and GetApp for more than a decade under the internal name Gartner Digital Markets. Gartner’s decision to sell marked a change in direction; the research firm had owned the brands since 2015. The divestiture signaled a shift in Gartner’s strategy toward its core research and advisory business, stepping away from the review and marketplace segment it once ran as Gartner Digital Markets.
Where the Seven Platforms Stand Now
A 2026 buyer’s guide to comparison platforms typically lines up G2, TrustRadius, Software Finder, Capterra, SelectHub, GetApp and Software Advice as seven separate doors into the same market. After February, three of those doors lead into the same building as a fourth.
| Platform | Owner as of 2026 | How It Makes Money | Best Known For |
|---|---|---|---|
| G2 | G2 (parent company, independent) | Ads, subscriptions, new pay-per-lead product | Peer reviews, comparison grids |
| Capterra | G2 (bought from Gartner, Feb. 2026) | Pay-per-click vendor leads | Broad SMB software directory |
| Software Advice | G2 (bought from Gartner, Feb. 2026) | Pay-per-lead advisor referrals | Guided, one-on-one buying advice |
| GetApp | G2 (bought from Gartner, Feb. 2026) | Shared click budget with Capterra and Software Advice | Cloud app feature comparisons |
| TrustRadius | Independent | Vendor subscriptions for research access | Long-form enterprise reviews |
| SelectHub | Not part of the G2-Gartner deal | Vendor subscriptions and lead referrals | Analyst-driven procurement scoring |
| Software Finder | Not part of the G2-Gartner deal | Vendor subscriptions and advisor referrals | Personalized shortlists, free consultations |
TrustRadius has stayed outside the consolidation. Rivals like TrustRadius, PeerSpot and SourceForge remain independent, even as the combined G2 network grows.
How These Sites Get Paid
Buyers never pay to browse any of these directories. Vendors do, and that funding model shapes what a shopper actually sees first.
- Pay-per-click bidding. Capterra uses a pay-per-click model in which vendors bid based on software category and listing position. GetApp and Software Advice run on the same shared budget.
- Pay-per-lead referrals. G2’s own announcement promises a new pay-per-lead offering that converts buyer intent into sales-ready leads at a global scale.
- Paid badges. One vendor pricing guide published this year lists G2’s Leader badge starting around $2,999 a year, on top of whatever a company already spends chasing reviews.
- Sponsored placement. Vendors pay for premium placements and sponsored content across the major directories, a practice one competing comparison site lists as a concern rather than a footnote.
None of this makes an individual review fake. The review collection methodology has not changed; reviewers are still verified and submissions still moderated. It does mean the order buyers see results in is a business decision, not a neutral one.
How the Deal Looks From Three Different Desks
Ask three different parties about the same acquisition and the answers barely overlap.
- G2’s framing: by bringing together four of the leading software discovery platforms, the company says it is creating the definitive system of record for B2B software in the age of AI.
- LeadGenius’s read: the B2B intent-data firm called the same deal a hostile takeover of your next buying decision.
- Blastra’s take: the vendor-guidance newsletter calls it a concentration problem; the two biggest B2B software discovery networks are now one company, and when one owner controls pricing, rankings and policies across four platforms, vendors have fewer places to go if something changes.
All three descriptions are talking about the same $110 million transaction. None of them are wrong.
The Market These Platforms Serve Keeps Growing
The irony is that demand for comparison shopping has never been higher, even as the number of independent referees shrinks.
In 2025, 52.7% of EU enterprises used paid cloud computing services, a 7.4 percentage point increase compared with 2023. Adoption was particularly high among large enterprises, where 84.67% reported purchasing such services in 2025. That data comes from the European Union’s statistics office tracking enterprise cloud adoption, and it lines up with a separate EU finding that more than half of enterprises now run at least one specialized business application, a share that jumps from roughly 41% among small firms to 89% among large ones.
More software categories means more decisions, and more decisions is exactly the traffic these platforms are built to capture. The stakes attached to one vendor decision are not abstract. Starbucks has said it wants to save $400 million by replacing Microsoft and IBM software running parts of its back office, the kind of bet that starts with exactly the sort of shortlist these platforms build.
Why Human Advisors Still Get the Call
Software Advice and Software Finder both lean on free, one-on-one consultations as their pitch. That model looked old-fashioned next to AI-driven recommendation engines a year ago. It looks sturdier now.
The share of respondents saying their organizations use AI in at least one business function has risen to 88 percent, compared with 78 percent a year earlier. Yet at the enterprise level, most companies are still in the experimenting or piloting stages, with only about one-third reporting they have begun scaling their AI programs. That gap comes from McKinsey’s latest global survey on the state of AI, based on nearly 2,000 respondents across 105 countries.
Software procurement sits inside that pilot-stage gap. Whether an AI agent can meaningfully replace a human advisor’s research depends partly on whether a business has its data strategy sorted out before it lets a model make the shortlist. Most have not gotten there yet, which is exactly why free advisor calls remain a selling point rather than a relic.
Fewer Owners Means Less Leverage for Vendors
Buyers absorb the consolidation mostly as a footnote. Vendors absorb it as a negotiation.
The combined platforms now encompass about 6 million verified customer reviews, reach more than 200 million annual software buyers globally, and serve more than 10,000 software vendors with marketing solutions across roughly 2,000 software and service categories. That scale comes from G2’s official announcement of the completed acquisition. A vendor that used to spread its listing budget across four competing platforms now negotiates with one sales team that owns all four price sheets.
Concentration among reviewers is not a new fight for business software. Equipment makers just lost a similar one: regulators used an order that cracked a decade of software lock-in at John Deere. Short term, nothing changes operationally for G2’s new properties; the platforms still run separate logins, dashboards and taxonomies. Each still has different categories, ranking systems and badge programs, and unifying all of that across four platforms when Gartner never fully did it across three is an ambitious promise.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Happened to Gartner Digital Markets?
Gartner sold the unit outright. The research firm had run Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice as Gartner Digital Markets for over a decade before selling the whole business to G2 in February 2026, choosing to focus on its core analyst and advisory work instead.
Do G2 and Capterra Reviews Sync Together Now?
Not yet. G2 reviews do not yet appear on Capterra, GetApp or Software Advice; syncing between G2 and the former Gartner sites is an expected next step that has not shipped. Reviews among Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice themselves have synced automatically for years.
Which Software Comparison Platforms Are Still Fully Independent?
TrustRadius, PeerSpot and SourceForge were not part of the G2-Gartner transaction and continue to operate under separate ownership, giving buyers a genuine outside check on any ranking that comes out of the newly combined G2 network.
Is It Free for Buyers to Use These Comparison Sites?
Yes, across every platform in this category. The revenue comes entirely from the vendor side, through click fees, lead fees, badge fees or subscription tiers, which is exactly why the sorting logic buyers see is worth a second look rather than an assumption.
How Do These Platforms Verify That Reviews Are Real?
Most rely on business email checks, LinkedIn verification or proof of purchase before a review goes live. Those checks confirm a reviewer is a real customer. They do not control where that review ranks against a paying competitor’s listing.
Should Businesses Stop Using Capterra After the G2 Deal?
No single platform should be a business’s only input, before or after this acquisition. Pulling a second, genuinely independent source, such as TrustRadius or a direct vendor reference call, matters more now that four of the seven familiar names report to one owner.
