The Forrester Wave™: Bot And Agent Trust Management Software, Q2 2026: Key Findings & DataDome’s Recognition as a Leader

Today, Forrester published The Forrester Wave™: Bot And Agent Trust Management Software, Q2 2026—and it marks a milestone not just for DataDome, but for the entire industry. For the first time, Forrester has renamed this category from “Bot Management” to “Bot and Agent Trust Management,” formally recognizing that the market has evolved beyond blocking bots to managing trust across all digital traffic: humans, bots, and AI agents.

DataDome is named a Leader in this evaluation, receiving the highest score in the Current Offering category among evaluated vendors at 4.12 out of 5. We received the highest possible score of 5 (which Forrester defines as “superior relative to others in this evaluation”) across 12 of 24 Current Offering & Strategy criteria.

Access the full Forrester Wave™ report here.

What is The Forrester Wave™?

The Forrester Wave™ is one of the most rigorous independent evaluations in the technology industry. Forrester analysts assess vendors across detailed criteria spanning current offering, strategy, and customer feedback. Forrester defines a score of 5 as “superior relative to others in this evaluation”—the highest score possible.

A newly expanded category for the AI era

Forrester’s decision to rebrand this evaluation from “Bot Management” to “Bot and Agent Trust Management” reflects a fundamental shift in how businesses must think about automated traffic.

The rise of AI agents—from LLM-powered crawlers to agentic commerce tools and autonomous browsing assistants—means that the old binary of “block or allow” no longer works. Businesses need to understand the intent, provenance, and trustworthiness of every entity that touches their digital properties. This is exactly the shift DataDome has been building toward.

DataDome received the highest possible score (5) in the AI Agent Trust Management criterion. Forrester evaluated how well solutions identify, track, and configure trustworthy bots and agents, continuously verify trusted relationships, and alert customers when a previously trusted agent becomes untrustworthy. We believe this result validates DataDome’s investment in intent-based detection, agent reputation scoring, and granular policy controls for AI traffic.

Key finding 1: Intent visibility is the new competitive frontier

Understanding what traffic is trying to do—not just what it is—has become the most critical capability in this market.

DataDome received the highest possible score of 5 in Intent Visibility. Forrester evaluated how well products natively analyze inbound traffic to determine a human, bot, or agent’s intent, and how well they determine and report on an agent’s provenance, including whether it originated from an LLM, an agentic browser, or a custom-built agent.

For DataDome, this score reflects its approach of analyzing what traffic is trying to do rather than relying on surface-level signals, providing security and business teams with clear visibility into the “who, what, and why” behind every request. This is what it means to be always ahead: not just blocking known threats, but understanding what’s coming before it becomes a problem.

Key finding 2: Protecting transactions and marketing integrity for legitimate customers

As bots and AI agents become more sophisticated, the downstream business impacts extend well beyond security. Inventory hoarding, ad fraud, and analytics pollution directly affect revenue, customer experience, and marketing ROI.

DataDome scored 5/5 in both the Transaction Assurance and Protection and Marketing Analytics Assurance criteria. We believe this means Forrester recognized DataDome’s ability to let legitimate customers transact seamlessly while blocking malicious fraud attacks—and to protect the integrity of marketing analytics by ensuring ad spend, attribution data, and campaign metrics reflect real human engagement.

These scores matter to us because they demonstrate that DataDome’s value extends beyond the security team to directly support e-commerce, marketing, and business operations leaders.

Key finding 3: Scraping management is vital in the age of LLMs

LLM-powered web scrapers have fundamentally changed the content protection landscape. Businesses need to do more than just block scrapers. They need granular controls to allow, throttle, block, or monetize access on a per-scraper, per-content basis.

DataDome scored 5/5 in the Web and LLM Scraping Management criterion, which Forrester evaluated based on the ability to identify and manage web and LLM scrapers, set granular policies, and integrate monetization options. For publishers and content platforms, this capability is particularly valuable: it turns AI traffic from a threat into a potential revenue stream.

Key finding 4: A platform designed for operational excellence

Beyond detection capabilities, Forrester evaluated how well products serve the teams that use them day to day. DataDome received the highest possible score in the following criteria:

• Management UI: This criterion recognized vendors’ centralized management capabilities, including the ability to view applications by group, automatically discover endpoints, and deliver a superior user experience—validated by reference customers.

• Bot and Agent Detection Explainability: Detailed, readable explanations of why a request was identified as a human, bot, or agent—tailored to the customer’s specific applications.
• Customizable Reports and Dashboards: Tools for creating and modifying reports with different metrics and visualizations, including GenAI integrations to create views or summarize dashboards.

• Security Operations Integrations: Out-of-the-box SIEM and SOAR integrations with granular configuration of which events and data fields to send.
  

DataDome believes these scores reflect its philosophy that powerful detection means nothing if it doesn’t translate into operational clarity for security, fraud, and business teams.

Key finding 5: A future-ready strategy depends on innovation, a strong partner ecosystem, and customer adoption

Within the Strategy category, DataDome received a 4.00 out of 5, with the highest possible score in the following criteria:

• Innovation: A score of 5 in this criterion recognized vendors’ forward-thinking approach, investment in next-generation features, and market-leading ideas. We believe this score reflects our commitment to staying ahead of evolving threats—from AI agent abuse to novel fraud techniques.
• Partner Ecosystem: Vendors with a score of 5 in this criterion differentiate in terms of partner types, status, awards and/or proof points that demonstrate value to customers across a wide range of use cases.
• Adoption: Vendors with a score of 5 in this criterion are recognized for having an above-average adoption in strategy, assets, investment, and proof points for the same elements.

DataDome: a Leader in Bot and Agent Trust Management

Being named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Bot And Agent Trust Management is, for us, a recognition of where this market is heading and confirmation that DataDome has been building for this moment. The shift from bot blocking to trust orchestration across humans, bots, and AI agents is not a future trend. It is happening now.

For our customers, this recognition means confidence that the platform protecting your digital business is independently recognized as a leader, with the highest score in the Current Offering category in the evaluation. The market has changed. The criteria have changed. DataDome is a leader anyway, because we’ve always built for what’s next.

For organizations evaluating their options, we invite you to see the full results for yourself. Access the full Forrester Wave™ report today.

Forrester does not endorse any company, product, brand, or service included in its research publications and does not advise any person to select the products or services of any company or brand based on the ratings included in such publications. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. This report is part of a broader collection of Forrester resources, including interactive models, frameworks, tools, data, and access to analyst guidance. For more information, read about Forrester’s objectivity here.