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Index › Research › Buyer segments · October 2026 Edition
Buyer segments · October 2026 Edition

In 112 of 136 categories, the product the models put first changes with the size of the company asking.

Every category is asked on behalf of three buyers: a small B2B company, a mid-market B2B company, an enterprise B2B company. Each buyer gets its own standing, computed within its segment and never pooled. This page reads the 136 standings side by side: twenty-four categories have one leader for every buyer, seventy-one change leader once across the three, and forty-one have a different leader for each.

How often the leader changes

24one leader for every buyer
71the leader changes once across the three
41a different leader for each buyer

A product leads somewhere in 264 cases across the 136 categories; 167 of those products lead in exactly one segment of one category and nowhere else. The public standing on each category page is the mid-market one; the other segments are one link away on every category page and are never added to it.

What this measures is the answer, not the buyer: the same models, asked the same six ways, told a different company size. Whether that reflects the products or the models' reading of them is not something the index can say.

Every category, every buyer

The leader and its share of first choices in each segment. A share is within its own segment: fourteen models, six framings, eighty-four answers.
CategorySmall businessMid-marketEnterprise
AI SOC agents Dropzone AI 19% Dropzone AI 24% Dropzone AI 14%one leader
AI coding GitHub Copilot 63% GitHub Copilot 75% GitHub Copilot 82%one leader
App shielding Appdome 23% Appdome 33% Appdome 33%one leader
Bot management Cloudflare Bot Management 60% Cloudflare Bot Management 56% Cloudflare Bot Management 37%one leader
Client-side protection cside 14% cside 13% cside 17%one leader
CPaaS Twilio 37% Twilio 43% Twilio 44%one leader
CDN Cloudflare 85% Cloudflare 68% Cloudflare 46%one leader
DDoS Cloudflare 100% Cloudflare 82% Cloudflare 57%one leader
Data center networking Arista Networks 11% Arista Networks 27% Arista Networks 34%one leader
DLP Microsoft Purview DLP 35% Microsoft Purview DLP 46% Microsoft Purview DLP 57%one leader
Error monitoring Sentry 69% Sentry 76% Sentry 75%one leader
XDR Microsoft Defender XDR 25% Microsoft Defender XDR 40% Microsoft Defender XDR 44%one leader
IaC Terraform 55% Terraform 57% Terraform 53%one leader
Insider risk Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management 25% Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management 22% Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management 44%one leader
Developer portals Port 45% Port 53% Port 25%one leader
Managed DNS Cloudflare DNS 78% Cloudflare DNS 84% Cloudflare DNS 60%one leader
Firewalls Fortinet FortiGate 51% Fortinet FortiGate 73% Fortinet FortiGate 37%one leader
NoSQL MongoDB 69% MongoDB 74% MongoDB 56%one leader
Awareness training KnowBe4 20% KnowBe4 45% KnowBe4 74%one leader
Source control GitHub 72% GitHub 70% GitHub 54%one leader
Streaming Confluent Cloud 21% Confluent Cloud 39% Confluent Cloud 61%one leader
Time series DBs TimescaleDB 57% TimescaleDB 63% TimescaleDB 47%one leader
UEM Microsoft Intune 28% Microsoft Intune 39% Microsoft Intune 85%one leader
WAF Cloudflare WAF 79% Cloudflare WAF 69% Cloudflare WAF 59%one leader
AI security Microsoft Defender for Cloud 33% SentinelOne Singularity 11% SentinelOne Singularity 9%two leaders
API gateways Kong Gateway 34% Kong Gateway 53% Apigee 38%two leaders
API management Kong Gateway 28% Kong Gateway 37% Apigee 48%two leaders
APM New Relic 53% New Relic 46% Dynatrace 47%two leaders
ASPM Aikido Security 71% Aikido Security 37% ArmorCode 20%two leaders
Artifact registries GitHub Packages 33% JFrog Artifactory 14% JFrog Artifactory 40%two leaders
ASM Intruder 26% Intruder 49% Cortex Xpanse 29%two leaders
Backup and DR Acronis Cyber Protect 23% Veeam Data Platform 38% Veeam Data Platform 32%two leaders
BAS Vanta 13% Cymulate 24% Cymulate 24%two leaders
Password managers Bitwarden 49% 1Password 47% 1Password 44%two leaders
Business phones Nextiva 31% RingCentral 29% RingCentral 38%two leaders
CI/CD GitHub Actions 75% GitHub Actions 68% GitLab CI/CD 42%two leaders
Certificate management Sectigo Certificate Manager 12% Sectigo Certificate Manager 27% Keyfactor Command 28%two leaders
FinOps Vantage 41% Vantage 45% IBM Apptio Cloudability 49%two leaders
Cloud hosting DigitalOcean Droplets 34% Amazon Web Services 32% Amazon Web Services 42%two leaders
CSPM Microsoft Defender for Cloud 21% Wiz 37% Wiz 54%two leaders
CNAPP Aikido Security 29% Wiz 37% Wiz 48%two leaders
Compliance automation Vanta 35% Drata 34% Vanta 37%two leaders
Container security Trivy 22% Trivy 22% Prisma Cloud 25%two leaders
DNS filtering DNSFilter 51% DNSFilter 59% Cisco Umbrella 43%two leaders
Data observability Metaplane 31% Metaplane 31% Monte Carlo 41%two leaders
DSPM Microsoft Purview 36% Microsoft Purview 18% Varonis Data Security Platform 22%two leaders
Data virtualization Starburst Galaxy 17% Denodo 28% Denodo 86%two leaders
Data warehouses Google BigQuery 63% Snowflake 49% Snowflake 62%two leaders
Deception Thinkst Canary 30% Thinkst Canary 37% Acalvio ShadowPlex 47%two leaders
DAST OWASP ZAP 43% OWASP ZAP 29% Invicti 62%two leaders
ETL Airbyte 36% Fivetran 40% Fivetran 49%two leaders
Email security Microsoft Defender for Office 365 27% Microsoft Defender for Office 365 32% Proofpoint Email Protection 48%two leaders
Embedded analytics Metabase 46% Metabase 22% GoodData 16%two leaders
Endpoint protection Microsoft Defender for Cloud 50% Microsoft Defender for Endpoint 22% Microsoft Defender for Endpoint 44%two leaders
Enterprise AI ChatGPT 47% ChatGPT 25% Microsoft 365 Copilot 40%two leaders
EA tools Archi 20% SAP LeanIX 25% SAP LeanIX 43%two leaders
Enterprise browsers Google Password Manager 33% Google Password Manager 26% Island Enterprise Browser 35%two leaders
Enterprise storage Dell PowerStore 11% Dell PowerStore 16% Pure Storage FlashArray 42%two leaders
Feature flags Flagsmith 32% Flagsmith 25% LaunchDarkly 63%two leaders
ITSM Freshservice 47% Freshservice 58% ServiceNow ITSM 65%two leaders
IGA Microsoft Entra ID Governance 18% Microsoft Entra ID Governance 25% SailPoint Identity Security Cloud 54%two leaders
ITDR Huntress Managed ITDR 84% Huntress Managed ITDR 51% Microsoft Defender for Identity 38%two leaders
Incidents incident.io 35% incident.io 32% PagerDuty 57%two leaders
Infra monitoring Site24x7 16% Datadog 28% Datadog 41%two leaders
LLM gateways LiteLLM 31% LiteLLM 31% Portkey 26%two leaders
Load balancers HAProxy 20% HAProxy 29% F5 BIG-IP 40%two leaders
Managed Kubernetes DigitalOcean Kubernetes 55% Google Kubernetes Engine 43% Google Kubernetes Engine 31%two leaders
MFT Files.com 57% Files.com 43% IBM Sterling Secure File Transfer 16%two leaders
Managed databases Amazon RDS 24% Amazon RDS 45% Amazon Aurora 26%two leaders
Master data Profisee MDM 23% Profisee MDM 41% Informatica MDM 43%two leaders
M365 management Microsoft 365 Admin Center 25% CoreView 20% CoreView 31%two leaders
MFA Cisco Duo 40% Cisco Duo 47% Microsoft Entra ID 41%two leaders
NAC Portnox Cloud 45% Portnox Cloud 35% Cisco Identity Services Engine 31%two leaders
NHI management JumpCloud 20% JumpCloud 14% CyberArk Identity Security Platform 20%two leaders
OT/IoT security Microsoft Defender for IoT 40% Microsoft Defender for IoT 21% Claroty xDome 35%two leaders
Object storage Backblaze B2 47% Backblaze B2 46% Amazon S3 44%two leaders
Observability Grafana 39% Grafana 27% Datadog 37%two leaders
PTaaS Cobalt 17% Cobalt 45% NetSPI 46%two leaders
Proxy and web data Decodo 40% Decodo 41% Oxylabs 42%two leaders
RMM Atera 45% NinjaOne 47% NinjaOne 48%two leaders
Remote support Zoho Assist 38% Splashtop Remote Support 23% Splashtop Remote Support 27%two leaders
RPA Microsoft Power Automate 72% Microsoft Power Automate 51% UiPath 58%two leaders
SIEM Blumira 34% Microsoft Sentinel 38% Microsoft Sentinel 41%two leaders
SOAR Tines 44% Tines 41% Cortex XSOAR 41%two leaders
Secrets Doppler 39% HashiCorp Vault 31% HashiCorp Vault 61%two leaders
Secure code training SecureFlag 26% SecureFlag 26% Secure Code Warrior 33%two leaders
Server virtualization Proxmox VE 64% Proxmox VE 42% Nutanix AHV 37%two leaders
SAST Semgrep 53% Semgrep 36% Checkmarx One 54%two leaders
Telemetry pipelines OpenTelemetry Collector 44% OpenTelemetry Collector 37% Cribl Stream 44%two leaders
TPRM UpGuard 39% UpGuard 55% ProcessUnity 19%two leaders
Threat intel MISP 18% MISP 12% Recorded Future Intelligence Cloud 73%two leaders
Vector databases pgvector 49% pgvector 35% Pinecone 59%two leaders
Video conferencing Zoom Workplace 48% Zoom Workplace 42% Microsoft 57%two leaders
Uptime monitoring UptimeRobot 45% UptimeRobot 24% Dynatrace 24%two leaders
Workforce identity JumpCloud 48% Microsoft Entra ID 46% Microsoft Entra ID 49%two leaders
AI IT agents Freshdesk 18% Freshservice 9% ServiceNow Now Assist 48%three leaders
AI governance Strac 31% Credo AI 18% IBM watsonx.governance 22%three leaders
AIOps Atera 19% New Relic 17% Dynatrace 39%three leaders
API security 42Crunch 12% Wallarm API Security 10% Akamai API Security 33%three leaders
Business continuity SafetyCulture 46% LogicManager 24% Fusion Risk Management 27%three leaders
Colocation InterServer 24% TierPoint 22% Equinix 59%three leaders
Comms archiving Google Vault 20% Smarsh Enterprise Archive 20% Proofpoint Enterprise Archive 27%three leaders
CIAM Clerk 30% Frontegg 21% Auth0 47%three leaders
Cyber risk quant FairCRQ 9% CyberSaint CyberStrong 25% SAFE Security 56%three leaders
DDI and IPAM SolarWinds IP Address Manager 18% BlueCat Micetro 15% Infoblox 24%three leaders
Data catalogs OpenMetadata 18% Atlan 44% Collibra 41%three leaders
DCIM NetBox 29% Sunbird DCIM 27% Schneider Electric EcoStruxure IT 18%three leaders
Data masking IRI FieldShield 22% DATPROF 17% Delphix 27%three leaders
DEX Uniswap 14% ControlUp 13% Nexthink Infinity 44%three leaders
DRP Guardz 28% UpGuard BreachSight 22% ZeroFox 29%three leaders
EDI Orderful 35% TrueCommerce EDI 32% Cleo Integration Cloud 40%three leaders
EDR Microsoft Defender for Cloud 47% Microsoft Defender for Endpoint 30% CrowdStrike Falcon Insight 52%three leaders
GRC Vanta 30% Hyperproof 19% MetricStream 24%three leaders
ITAM Snipe-IT 51% Freshservice 31% ServiceNow IT Asset Management 56%three leaders
IT documentation Notion 30% Hudu 17% Confluence 21%three leaders
IT financial mgmt QuickBooks Online 14% Nicus ITFM Platform 9% IBM Apptio 29%three leaders
Identity verification Veriff 23% Persona 21% Sumsub 17%three leaders
Document processing Docsumo 22% Nanonets 32% ABBYY Vantage 43%three leaders
Logs Better Stack 32% Datadog Log Management 28% Splunk 46%three leaders
ML platforms Google Vertex AI 19% Azure Machine Learning 21% Databricks Mosaic AI 44%three leaders
MDR Huntress Managed EDR 78% Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response 37% CrowdStrike Falcon Complete 35%three leaders
Microsegmentation Zero Networks Segment 16% ColorTokens Xshield 25% Illumio Segmentation 56%three leaders
NDR Security Onion 15% ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer 21% Vectra AI 17%three leaders
Network monitoring Paessler PRTG Network Monitor 40% Auvik 26% SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor 16%three leaders
Patching Action1 55% ManageEngine Patch Manager Plus 29% Microsoft Intune 17%three leaders
PAM ManageEngine PAM360 33% Delinea Secret Server 37% CyberArk Privileged Access Manager 56%three leaders
Process mining Microsoft Power Automate 25% Apromore 19% Celonis Process Intelligence Platform 67%three leaders
SASE Cloudflare One 69% Cato Networks 35% Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE 26%three leaders
SD-WAN Cisco Meraki SD-WAN 42% Fortinet Secure SD-WAN 50% Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN 50%three leaders
SaaS management Substly 19% Torii 34% Zylo 59%three leaders
SSPM Nudge Security 20% Wing Security 30% AppOmni 40%three leaders
SCA Snyk Open Source 39% Trivy 31% Black Duck 23%three leaders
Virtual desktops V2 Cloud 26% Azure Virtual Desktop 22% Citrix DaaS 28%three leaders
Vuln management Intruder 45% Rapid7 InsightVM 30% Qualys VMDR 32%three leaders
Orchestration Make 24% Prefect 21% Apache Airflow 26%three leaders
ZTNA Cloudflare One 58% Twingate 39% Zscaler Private Access 53%three leaders

Cite this

IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition: buyer segments. it-ai-index.com/research/buyer-size/. Published under CC BY 4.0. Every figure on this page is computed from the published edition and changes with it; the edition and its date are the citation.

The output is the models' output. Nothing here says the models can be steered, and nothing here is a recommendation by the index.