Small business▼−4Since September 2026: 4% → 0%, −4 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 4% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 7 pointsRank 9 → 84 of 84
2 categories · RankedApache Pulsar
83Judge labels
1First choices
26Negative labels
14 / 14Models named it
2Categories
October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.8, every buyer segment counted.
Best standing
2% in Streaming for mid-market buyers
Rank 8 of 98 in the mid-market standingaccepted challenger
0 of 14 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 21% of its 33 labels there were negative.
What the models named instead of Apache Pulsar →By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.
Small business88 of 88
0%18 labels
criticized challenger
Mid-market8 of 98
2%33 labels
accepted challenger
Enterprise14 of 81
0%29 labels
criticized challenger
In streaming · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading
Standing by category
Every category where a model named Apache Pulsar for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.
| Category | Function | Share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Quadrant | Since September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Streaming platforms | Data platform | 2% | 8 of 98 | 21% | 33 | accepted challenger | =heldSince September 2026: 2% → 2%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
| Telemetry pipelines | IT operations and endpoint | 0% | 41 of 124 | 0% | 3 | under 10 labels · led by OpenTelemetry Collector at 37% |
Movement
Since September 2026, Apache Pulsar held within the floor in all two categories: no change cleared 11 points.
Best category · Streaming · by segment
Mid-market=heldSince September 2026: 2% → 2%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
2%from 2% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 11 → 8 of 94
Enterprise▼−2Since September 2026: 2% → 0%, −2 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 2% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 9 pointsRank 7 → 13 of 64
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Streaming | 2% | 2% | =heldSince September 2026: 2% → 2%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 11 → 8 of 98 |
| Telemetry pipelines | 0% | 0% | newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now. | New this edition | Rank 41 of 124, unchanged |
Shares here are read over the models both editions asked, so they can differ by a point or two from the standing above, which counts every model in this edition.
The floor is 11 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. Movement is read over the twelve models both editions asked; GPT-6 Luna, Muse Glimmer 30B joined this edition and are in the standing but not yet in the comparison. How the floor is measured · The editions
By model
How each model treated Apache Pulsar across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.ShowHide
By model
How each model treated Apache Pulsar across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.
ShowHide| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 5 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 4 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Kimi K2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
By framing
Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.
FramingLabels by classFirst choices
Direct6 labelsNone
Paraphrase0 labelsNone
Comparative29 labelsNone
Budget-constrained6 labels1
Scale-constrained14 labelsNone
Negative28 labelsNone
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative83 labels in all, every segment counted; 1 of the 1 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.
What the models said for it
Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.
“## Top Recommendation: Apache Pulsar (Self-Hosted)” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Streaming · budget prompt · first choice
“A cloud-native, multi-tenant event streaming platform designed for high scalability, geo-replication, and flexible messaging patterns.” Muse Glimmer 30B · Streaming · comparative prompt · alternative
“Geo-replication, tiered storage, multi-tenancy, separate compute/storage | Higher resource use (3 layers), smaller ecosystem” Grok 4.20 · Streaming · comparative prompt · alternative
“Choose Apache Pulsar if you need multi-tenancy, geo-replication, or the flexibility of both queue and streaming semantics” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Streaming · comparative prompt · alternative
And against it
Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.
“Avoid: ... self‑hosted Pulsar (unless you’re a large enterprise)” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Streaming · negative prompt · hard negative
“Pulsar introduces unnecessary operational overhead” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Streaming · negative prompt · hard negative
“Apache Pulsar is not recommended for small-scale applications or those without strict multi-tenancy needs.” Llama 4 Maverick · Streaming · negative prompt · soft negative
“Less mature ecosystem/connectors than Kafka. Struggles with large messages/high throughput in tests.” Grok 4.20 · Streaming · negative prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Apache Pulsar, over the 83 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Apache Pulsar was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Apache Pulsar, over the 83 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Apache Pulsar was named but was not.
ShowHideProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.
What carried it into the answer
The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Apache Pulsar. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 72 of the 83 answers that named Apache Pulsar and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
devopsschool.com43
dacast.com28
redpanda.com28
automq.com24
airbyte.com23
guideflow.com23
apidog.com22
confluent.io22
textql.com22
linkedin.com19
254 of the 254 domain citations in answers naming Apache Pulsar came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
apache.org is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Apache Pulsar takes 2% of first choices and Confluent Cloud takes 39%.ShowHide
Search and answers
apache.org is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Apache Pulsar takes 2% of first choices and Confluent Cloud takes 39%.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimatesPosition for “event streaming platform”
–
not in the top ten
Position for “event streaming platforms”
–
not in the top ten
- Searches for its name, Google
- 880 a month (“apache pulsar”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 26 a month
- Organic visits to its site
- about 1,144,025 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 44,247 · 10,306 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 174,267
- Paid Google search
- No ads found in the estimate; that does not mean it runs none
Ads on GoogleDetailLess1 ads · 1 text · 0 shown in the last 30 days
First shown March 2025, as GridGain Systems, verified. 1 more by other advertisers linking to it.
On Google's pages: 1
In answers
This editionShare of first choices
2%
rank 8 of 98 in streaming
Segment leader
39%
Confluent Cloud
- First choices
- 1 across its categories
- Named in
- 83 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 72 of the answers that named it
Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read September 28, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
What it publishes
ShowHide
What it publishes
ShowHideAddresses on apache.org
2,858
subdomains included
Content
1,384
counted in the table below
Documentation
375
Product · Integration
16 · 0
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| News or press | 1,081 | 12 | 2026-09-03 | ||
| Blog | 228 | 1 | 2026-07-01 | ||
| Template or tool | 38 | undated | |||
| Report or ebook | 14 | undated | |||
| Conference or event | 10 | 0 | 2026-06-09 | ||
| Glossary or explainer | 9 | undated | |||
| Case study | 2 | undated | |||
| Webinar or virtual event | 2 | undated |
Most recent
- 2026-09-03Security scanning at foundation scale news or press
- 2026-09-02Asf plus one newsletter august 2026 news or press
- 2026-09-01The apache software foundation advances open source infrastructure and celebrates community growth in fy26 news or press
- 2026-09-01The apache software foundation announces keynote speakers for community over code glasgow 2026 news or press
- 2026-08-27The apache software foundation announces new top level projects 6 news or press
- 2026-08-18Apache geode 2 0 part iii lessons learned and the path forward news or press
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page apache.org exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. An event counts as online when its address or title says so (webinar, on demand, virtual or online summit); a conference, summit, trade show, expo or roadshow that does not say so is counted as a conference or event, which on a vendor's site is mostly in person. Read September 29, 2026.
Names read as Apache Pulsar
What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Apache Pulsar; a claim can dispute any of them.
Pulsar 9Apache Pulsar (self‑hosted) 1
Follow Apache Pulsar
An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.
Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.
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Claim this page
Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Apache Pulsar's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Apache Pulsar, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.
What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives
A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Apache Pulsar by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Apache Pulsar is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
- the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
- its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
- who was chosen in the answers that did not name Apache Pulsar, and every reason the record gives;
- a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
- one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.