Embodiments herein describe an upgrade system that provides suggestions for upgrades using a confidence metric. In one embodiment, the upgrade system tracks network elements in multiple network fabrics to determine whether an upgrade performed on a first network element was successful. The upgrade system can generate one or more vectors that store various data about the network elements such as enabled features, telemetry data, control plane faults, system settings, locations of the network elements in a fabric, and the like. By evaluating these vectors, the upgrade system can derive a reliability confidence metric regarding the upgrade. If the reliability confidence metric exceeds a threshold, this indicates the upgrade was successful. The upgrade system can then compare vectors for different network elements to determine whether to apply the same upgrade to similar network elements.