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Radiation plays an important role in several processes, being of particular interest to energy efficiency and safety of staff and facilities, mainly in the aerospace industry. In this context, along the last years mathematical models have been developed and reported in the literature aiming to obtain reliable predictions of thermal radiation in combustion applications. Some simplified models consider that thermal radiation emmited by a flame is mainly governed by the flame temperature, while other ones also account for the contribution of the combustion products. On the other hand, more detailed models include both flame geometry and composition. Many efforts have been made by several scientists in order to develop these models, however, there is no validation applied in different operating conditions found in the literature. Thus, the novelty brought by this work consists in an assessment on the comparison between the experimental data of thermal radiation emitted by jet non-premixed flames and the results obtained by calculations applying these models on several flame conditions, encompassing a wide range of applications: laminar and turbulent flames, buoyancy and momentum-driven flames, low-carbon and high-carbon fuels. Such assessments are important to assist combustion system designers on selecting the most adequate thermal radiation model during the project of a combustion system or process. The results found in the current investigation pointed out to a good agreement between experimental data and predictions obtained by detailed models, which consider flame geometry and radiative properties. On the other hand, simplified models must be avoided if accurate predictions of radiation are being sought, despite this, they can be employed as engineering tools for risk analysis, once, in general, they provided higher predictions when compared to the experiments, resulting in a safety factor to engineers and designers.