We analyze three different methods to validate and intercompare satellite measurements of atmospheric composition, and apply them to tropospheric ozone retrievals from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) and the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI). The first method (in situ method) uses in situ vertical profiles for absolute instrument validation; it is limited by the sparseness of in situ data. The second method (CTM method) uses a chemical transport model (CTM) as an intercomparison platform; it provides a globally complete intercomparison with relatively small noise added by model error. The third method (averaging kernel smoothing method) involves smoothing the retrieved profile from one instrument with the averaging kernel matrix of the other; it also provides a global intercomparison but dampens the actual difference between instruments and adds noise from the a priori. Application to a full year (2006) of TES and OMI data shows mean positive biases of 5.3 parts per billion volume (ppbv) (10%) for TES and 2.8 ppbv (5%) for OMI at 500 hPa relative to in situ data from ozonesondes. We show that the CTM method (using the GEOS-Chem CTM) closely approximates results from the in situ method while providing global coverage. It reveals that differences between TES and OMI are generally less than 10 ppbv (18%), except at northern mid-latitudes in summer and over tropical continents. The CTM method allows for well-constrained CTM evaluation in places where the satellite observations are consistent. We thus find that GEOS-Chem underestimates tropospheric ozone in the tropics, reflecting a combination of possible factors, and overestimates ozone in the northern subtropics and southern mid-latitudes, likely because of excessive stratospheric influx.