ABOUT / AN OPEN WAY TO VERIFY
Achievements travel.
Trust should, too.
A badge should belong to the person who earned it — not just the platform that issued it. We make the credential easier to examine, wherever it comes from.
Open Badges 3.0. Free to use. No account needed.
01 / WHY THIS EXISTS
A badge is a picture.
A credential is a promise.
An achievement loses value when its recipient cannot take it elsewhere — or when the next person has no practical way to check it.
Open standards make credentials portable. Independent verification makes them easier to examine. Open Badge Validator connects those ideas: a free way to look beyond the image, without signing into the issuing platform.
We are not here to decide which achievements matter. We are here to make the technical evidence a little more understandable.
From the badge to the evidence02 / SMALL PRINCIPLES. IMPORTANT DIFFERENCES.
Open is more than a format.
It’s how this should work.
A few straightforward choices shape the product. They make the checks more useful — and their boundaries easier to see.
Independent by design.
No preferred-issuer list. We apply the same technical checks to compatible credentials, whether they come from a small training provider or a major platform.
The credential is the starting point.Free to check.
There is no account to create and no payment step. Verification should be accessible to the recipient, the hiring manager and anyone else who needs to understand a badge.
No account. No paywall.Clear about the details.
A single green tick is not enough. We show passed, failed and skipped checks, alongside warnings and error messages, so you can understand what the result actually says.
A report, not a black box.Yours to keep.
Your credential is processed for the validation request, without an application database of uploaded badges, URLs or reports. The achievement remains yours to share and interpret.
Verification without an archive.03 / BUILT ON OPEN WORK
Good ideas deserve
the right credit.
We didn’t invent the standards. This tool brings the community’s work into a practical place to check an Open Badge credential.
We are an independent tool — not 1EdTech, W3C, a certification authority or an endorsement program.
Explore the Open Badges standardOpen Badges 3.0
Stewarded by 1EdTech. A common model for sharing an achievement as a verifiable credential.
Meet the standardW3C Verifiable Credentials
The wider model that connects an issuer, a subject, a claim and a way to evaluate its proof.
Read the model
04 / CHECKED. NOT COLLECTED.
Your badge stays yours.
So does your judgment.
The application does not keep a database or file store of submitted credentials or reports. It processes a request and returns the result.
Verification may contact the issuer hosts and other resources referenced by the credential. Those hosts can see requests, and hosting infrastructure can retain ordinary access and security logs. We think that distinction is worth explaining, not hiding.
The full privacy picture05 / CONFIDENCE, WITH CONTEXT
A technical check.
Not the final word.
A valid credential is a useful signal. Knowing what it can’t establish is just as important as knowing what passed.
The credential itself.
- Whether the original can be read and its required fields are present.
- Whether a supported cryptographic proof can be verified.
- Dates and available revocation or suspension information.
- Which checks passed, failed or could not be completed.
The value of the claim.
- That the issuer is credible, accredited or officially endorsed.
- That the recipient actually completed the activity described.
- That every external resource was available or every check applied.
- That a format failure means an Open Badges 2.0 badge is counterfeit.
06 / KEEP THE CONVERSATION OPEN
Found something we can do better?
Report a reproducible issue, ask about a result or share an idea. Include the check name, error code and input format — but please don’t send confidential credentials.
A LITTLE CERTAINTY GOES A LONG WAY.
Your achievement.
Made verifiable.
Free for everyone. Open to every issuer.