1 category · RankedBackstage
Standing by category
| Category | Function | Share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Quadrant | Since September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Internal developer portals | Developer platform | 23% | 2 of 52 | 42% | 67 | criticized challenger |
Movement
By model
How each model treated Backstage across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.ShowHide
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 4 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Grok 4.20 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| Mistral Small | 4 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 5 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 |
| Kimi K2 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 6 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 6 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 6 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
By framing
What the models said for it
Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.
“Backstage - an open-source developer portal framework created by Spotify that acts as a central interface for services, documentation, and engineering workflows.” Llama 4 Maverick · Developer portals · paraphrase prompt · first choice
“Compare a self-managed Backstage option, a managed Backstage option such as Roadie, and configurable commercial portals such as Port and Cortex.” GPT-6 Luna · Developer portals · scale prompt · first choice
“Backstage is often treated as the portal framework standard and a starting point for teams that want full control” Perplexity Sonar · Developer portals · comparative prompt · first choice
“Backstage holds nearly 90% market share as the industry "front door," but it remains a framework, not a finished product.” Mistral Small · Developer portals · comparative 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.
“Strongly Avoid ... Backstage is a framework, not a finished product. Many organizations treat it as such and end up disappointed.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Developer portals · negative prompt · hard negative
“At 500 people, avoid self-hosting raw Backstage unless you have a dedicated, well-funded Developer Experience team.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Developer portals · scale prompt · hard negative
“Why Not Backstage for Mid-Sized Companies? ... it's generally not ideal for mid-sized B2B companies” Kimi K2 · Developer portals · paraphrase prompt · hard negative
“generally not recommended for mid-market companies unless you have a dedicated platform team” Kimi K2 · Developer portals · direct prompt · hard negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Backstage, over the 197 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Backstage was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
What carried it into the answer
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 182 of the 197 answers that named Backstage and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
730 of the 730 domain citations in answers naming Backstage came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
backstage.io is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Backstage takes 23% of first choices and Port takes 53%.ShowHide
Search and answers
In search
Google, US estimates- Searches for its name, Google
- 110,000 a month (“backstage”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 7,081 a month
- Organic visits to its site
- about 2,929 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 639 · 98 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 3,025
- Paid Google search
- No ads found in the estimate; that does not mean it runs none
In answers
This edition- First choices
- 37 across its categories
- Named in
- 197 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 182 of the answers that named it
Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read October 5, 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
ShowHide| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blog | 63 | 0 | 2026-04-20 | ||
| Glossary or explainer | 5 | 0 | 2020-03-01 |
Most recent
- 2026-04-20Backstagecon kubecon 26 amsterdam blog
- 2026-02-25Get a jump on contribfest blog
- 2025-12-30Backstage wrapped 2025 blog
- 2025-11-25Backstagecon kubecon 25 atlanta blog
- 2025-10-15Backstage contribfest kubecon guide blog
- 2025-08-08Migrating legacy services to a modern developer portal blog
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page backstage.io 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. Read September 29, 2026.
Names read as Backstage
Follow Backstage
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
Backstage is its own company.ShowHide
The company
In its own words
Stated by the vendor, not checked- Positioning
- an open source framework for building developer portals
- For
- your product teams
- Certifications
- a Cloud Native Computing Foundation incubation project
- Not stated on the pages read
- Price, starting price, free plan or trial, integrations, hosting, customers
What Backstage's own pages state, read October 5, 2026: backstage.io, backstage.io/docs/integrations. A claimed page can correct any of them.
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 Backstage'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 Backstage, 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 Backstage by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Backstage 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 Backstage, 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.
Badges
Wins only: a badge exists where Backstage is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.ShowHide
Badges
Backstage is among the products AI models recommend first in Internal developer portals this edition. Each badge says so in the buyer's words, names the edition, and links to the standing. The next edition issues a new badge; this one stays true as a record of October 2026.
Badges read on light and dark pages. Alt text carries the claim, the category, the edition and the index, so it stays a citation where the image does not load.