Every category where a model named AWS CloudFormation 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
Infrastructure as code	Cloud and infrastructure	0%	7 of 46	16%	38	accepted challenger

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for AWS CloudFormation yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated AWS CloudFormation across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	3	2	0	5
GPT-5.4 mini	4	1	0	5
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	1	1
Perplexity Sonar	4	0	0	4
Grok 4.1 Fast	2	0	2	4
Mistral Small	2	0	0	2
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	1	1	3
Llama 4 Maverick	2	0	0	2
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	0	0
Kimi K2	2	0	1	3
GLM 4.7 FlashX	3	2	0	5
MiniMax M2.5	3	0	1	4

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

Direct18 labelsNone

Paraphrase22 labelsNone

Comparative24 labelsNone

Budget-constrained19 labelsNone

Scale-constrained16 labelsNone

Negative29 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative128 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 0 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.

“tools like AWS CloudFormation or Azure Bicep are excellent for their native environments, using a tool that is too narrowly focused may limit your flexibility” Mistral Small · IaC · negative prompt · alternative

“If you're heavily invested in a single cloud (AWS or Azure), the native tools (CloudFormation or ARM) are excellent” Mistral Small · IaC · paraphrase prompt · alternative

“if your company is fully committed to AWS ... CloudFormation is a solid, cost-free option” MiniMax M2.5 · IaC · direct prompt · alternative

“Choose CloudFormation / Bicep / native cloud IaC if: You are mostly or entirely on one cloud” GPT-5.4 mini · IaC · direct 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.

“Pitfalls: Vendor lock-in (AWS-only), verbose JSON/YAML, no native state locking, monolithic templates hard to maintain” Grok 4.1 Fast · IaC · negative prompt · soft negative

“CloudFormation/AWS CDK | Native AWS, free | Single-cloud | AWS-only shops” Grok 4.1 Fast · IaC · scale prompt · soft negative

“CloudFormation | AWS-only lock-in, verbose templates, limited debugging” MiniMax M2.5 · IaC · negative prompt · soft negative

“AWS-only: Deep vendor lock-in; multi-cloud or migration becomes painful” Kimi K2 · IaC · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as AWS CloudFormation, over the 128 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and AWS CloudFormation was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Terraform123 of 12883Not in the top three

Pulumi114 of 12812Not in the top three

Ansible75 of 1289Not in the top three

OpenTofu74 of 12835Not in the top three

AWS CDK48 of 1282Not in the top three

Puppet37 of 1281Not in the top three

Crossplane35 of 1280Not in the top three

Azure Resource Manager templates34 of 1280Not in the top three

Chef34 of 1280Not in the top three

Azure Bicep32 of 1280Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. 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 AWS CloudFormation. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 96 of the 128 answers that named AWS CloudFormation and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

pulumi.com62

apiiro.com52

guideflow.com41

spacelift.io40

cortex.io37

checkthat.ai31

firefly.ai31

claranet.com27

reddit.com24

toolradar.com23

368 of the 368 domain citations in answers naming AWS CloudFormation came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

apiiro.com/blog/best-iac-tools52

pulumi.com/blog/infrastructure-as-code-tools52

guideflow.com/blog/infrastructure-as-code-tools41

cortex.io/post/best-infrastructure-as-code-iac-tools37

checkthat.ai/answers/what-are-the-best-infrastructure-as-code-tools29

spacelift.io/blog/infrastructure-as-code-tools23

computingforgeeks.com/best-infrastructure-as-code-iac-cloud-automation-tools22

devopsplatforms.com/buying-guides/best-iac-tools19

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as AWS CloudFormation

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as AWS CloudFormation; a claim can dispute any of them.

CloudFormation 12

Is this your product?

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 AWS CloudFormation'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 AWS CloudFormation, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at awscloud.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.