Small business▼−3Since September 2026: 5% → 2%, −3 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
2%from 5% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 8 pointsRank 5 → 6 of 68
Azure · 1 category · RankedAzure Kubernetes Service
201Judge labels
19First choices
44Negative labels
14 / 14Models named it
1Category
October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.8, every buyer segment counted.
Best standing
19% in Managed Kubernetes for enterprise buyers
Rank 4 of 52 in the mid-market standingaccepted challenger
3 of 14 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 17% of its 71 labels there were negative.
What the models named instead of Azure Kubernetes Service →By buyer segmentStrongest at enterprise.
Small business6 of 76
2%60 labels
criticized challenger
Mid-market4 of 52
12%71 labels
accepted challenger
Enterprise3 of 52
19%70 labels
accepted challenger
In managed kubernetes · 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 Azure Kubernetes Service 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managed Kubernetes platforms | Cloud and infrastructure | 12% | 4 of 52 | 17% | 71 | accepted challenger | ▲+4Since September 2026: 8% → 12%, +4 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
Movement
Since September 2026, Azure Kubernetes Service held within the floor in its one category: no change cleared 11 points.
Best category · Managed Kubernetes · by segment
Mid-market▲+4Since September 2026: 8% → 12%, +4 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
12%from 8% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 7 pointsRank 5 → 3 of 46
Enterprise▲+8Since September 2026: 12% → 20%, +8 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
20%from 12% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 3 pointsRank 3 of 47, unchanged
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managed Kubernetes | 8% | 12% | ▲+4Since September 2026: 8% → 12%, +4 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 5 → 4 of 52 |
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 Azure Kubernetes Service 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 Azure Kubernetes Service 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 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 6 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 6 |
| Mistral Small | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 1 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| Kimi K2 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
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
Direct35 labels3
Paraphrase38 labels5
Comparative34 labels3not counted in share
Budget-constrained26 labels7
Scale-constrained31 labels4
Negative37 labels4not counted in share
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative201 labels in all, every segment counted; 19 of the 26 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.
“For most teams, the shortlist is Amazon EKS, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).” GPT-6 Luna · Managed Kubernetes · comparative prompt · first choice
“Azure AKS (free control plane) and DigitalOcean Kubernetes are top choices for small businesses” Mistral Small · Managed Kubernetes · budget prompt · first choice
“The leading managed Kubernetes platforms are Amazon EKS, Google GKE, and Azure AKS” MiniMax M2.5 · Managed Kubernetes · comparative prompt · first choice
“For most mid-market B2B companies, Amazon EKS, GKE, or AKS are the top choices” Mistral Small · Managed Kubernetes · direct prompt · first choice
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 EKS / AKS / GKE if you need low operational overhead on a tight budget or want maximum portability.” Muse Glimmer 30B · Managed Kubernetes · negative prompt · hard negative
“Avoid for tight budgets: Big 3 (GKE/AKS/EKS) due to control plane fees” Grok 4.20 · Managed Kubernetes · budget prompt · hard negative
“AKS upgrades have historically been the most painful of the major three cloud providers, though they have improved.” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Managed Kubernetes · negative prompt · soft negative
“Their user experience can be complex and overwhelming, and their pricing models may hide additional costs.” Mistral Small · Managed Kubernetes · negative prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Azure Kubernetes Service, over the 201 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Azure Kubernetes Service was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Azure Kubernetes Service, over the 201 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Azure Kubernetes Service 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 Azure Kubernetes Service. 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 188 of the 201 answers that named Azure Kubernetes Service and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
spot.rackspace.com81
it-ai-index.com75
digitalocean.com72
northflank.com71
linkedin.com66
medium.com66
blog.railway.com65
dev.to64
portainer.io59
mirantis.com51
670 of the 670 domain citations in answers naming Azure Kubernetes Service came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
azure.microsoft.com is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Azure Kubernetes Service takes 12% of first choices and Google Kubernetes Engine takes 43%.ShowHide
Search and answers
azure.microsoft.com is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Azure Kubernetes Service takes 12% of first choices and Google Kubernetes Engine takes 43%.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimatesPosition for “managed kubernetes platform”
–
not in the top ten
Position for “managed kubernetes platforms”
–
not in the top ten
- Searches for its name, Google
- 1,300 a month (“azure kubernetes service”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 23 a month
- Organic visits to its site
- about 1,848,766 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 23,434 · 7,837 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 108,076
- Paid Google search
- 4 searches its ads show for, about 394 clicks and $6,123 a month (estimate)
Ads on Google
None found in Google's ad transparency records for the US
In answers
This editionShare of first choices
12%
rank 4 of 52 in managed kubernetes
Segment leader
43%
Google Kubernetes Engine
- First choices
- 19 across its categories
- Named in
- 201 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 188 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 azure.microsoft.com
10,132
subdomains included
Content
1,935
counted in the table below
Documentation
29
Product · Integration
402 · 5
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Template or tool | 1,093 | undated | |||
| Blog | 596 | 17 | 2026-09-28 | SIEM | |
| Report or ebook | 72 | undated | |||
| Podcast or video | 68 | undated | |||
| Glossary or explainer | 62 | undated | |||
| Webinar or virtual event | 19 | undated | |||
| Comparison | 19 | 1 | 2026-08-27 | ||
| Case study | 5 | 1 | 2026-07-23 | ||
| News or press | 1 | 1 | 2026-09-29 |
Most recent
- 2026-09-29Announcements news or press
- 2026-09-28Microsoft foundry blog
- 2026-09-24Ship agents faster with expanded model choice voice agents and continuous optimization blog
- 2026-09-24Foundry agent service blog
- 2026-09-23Your architecture diagram is not your resilience blog
- 2026-09-23Designing agent first platforms what changes when agents do the work blog
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page azure.microsoft.com 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 Azure Kubernetes Service
What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Azure Kubernetes Service; a claim can dispute any of them.
Azure AKS 25Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) 15AKS 13Azure AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) 3Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) 3AKS (Azure) 2Microsoft AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) 2AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) 1AKS (Microsoft) 1AKS Standard 1AWS EKS / AKS / GKE 1Azure AKS (Automatic) 1Microsoft Azure AKS (with AKS Automatic) 1
Follow Azure Kubernetes Service
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.
The company
Azure is the company behind Azure Kubernetes Service.ShowHide
The company
Azure is the company behind Azure Kubernetes Service.
ShowHideOn record
Company records- Also from Azure
- Azure ACR, Azure AD Conditional Access, Azure AD Graph API, Azure AI Document Intelligence, Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Gateway, Azure AI Search, Azure API Management and 79 more
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 Azure Kubernetes Service'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 Azure Kubernetes Service, 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 Azure Kubernetes Service by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Azure Kubernetes Service 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 Azure Kubernetes Service, 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.