Every category where a model named Barracuda 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
Web application firewalls	Network and edge	0%	9 of 87	20%	15	accepted challenger
SD-WAN	Network and edge	0%	52 of 53	100%	2	under 10 labels · led by Fortinet Secure SD-WAN at 41%
Security awareness training	Security operations	0%	58 of 65	50%	2	under 10 labels · led by KnowBe4 at 42%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Barracuda 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 Barracuda 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	1	1	0	2
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	0	0
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	1	1
Mistral Small	1	1	0	2
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	1	2	4
Llama 4 Maverick	1	0	0	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	1	1
Kimi K2	0	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	2	0	2	4
MiniMax M2.5	3	1	0	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

Direct4 labelsNone

Paraphrase4 labelsNone

Comparative11 labelsNone

Budget-constrained2 labels1

Scale-constrained5 labelsNone

Negative16 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative42 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.

“Simplicity-focused mid-market teams | Especially attractive if you already run Barracuda email/network security.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · WAF · direct prompt · alternative

“Barracuda's WAF extends its keep-it-simple philosophy to application security with sensible defaults” Claude Haiku 4.5 · WAF · paraphrase prompt · alternative

“Barracuda WAAP offers a comparable feature set with appliance or SaaS options.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · WAF · paraphrase prompt · alternative

“Other options include Barracuda, which is suitable for mid-market organizations” Llama 4 Maverick · WAF · 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.

“Avoid Barracuda hardware appliances (both WAF and ESG) due to the demonstrated inability to remediate compromised devices.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · WAF · negative prompt · hard negative

“Gartner different reports ... consistently rank these as "weakest" across use cases” Grok 4.1 Fast · SD-WAN · negative prompt · hard negative

“Legacy on‑prem appliances (e.g., older Barracuda, ...) – often criticized for high false‑positive rates, poor cloud integration, and expensive licensing models” GLM 4.7 FlashX · WAF · negative prompt · soft negative

“Older "slide-based" SAT tools (e.g., legacy versions of some Barracuda, Cisco, or lesser-known providers)” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Awareness training · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Barracuda, over the 42 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Barracuda was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Imperva16 of 420Not in the top three

Cloudflare15 of 429Not in the top three

Akamai13 of 420Not in the top three

AWS WAF12 of 421Not in the top three

Cisco8 of 420Not in the top three

Fastly7 of 420Not in the top three

Cloudflare WAF6 of 425Not in the top three

Fortinet6 of 422Not in the top three

F56 of 420Not in the top three

ModSecurity6 of 420Not 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 Barracuda. 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 39 of the 42 answers that named Barracuda and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

cybersecuritynews.com15

expertinsights.com13

cyberpress.org12

gartner.com11

openappsec.io11

g2.com8

imperva.com7

techtarget.com7

wafplanet.com7

cipherssecurity.com5

Ninety-six of the ninety-six domain citations in answers naming Barracuda came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

cyberpress.org/waf-solutions-by-business-size11

openappsec.io/post/best-waf-solutions-in-2024-2025-real-world-comparison10

expertinsights.com/network-security/the-top-web-application-firewalls9

cybersecuritynews.com/best-web-application-firewall-solutions8

cybersecuritynews.com/best-web-application-firewall-solutions/amp5

dcconnectglobal.com/sd-wan-providers-compared-20265

imperva.com/blog/best-waap-solutions5

softwaretestinghelp.com/web-application-firewall-waf5

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Barracuda

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

Barracuda (WAAP) 1Barracuda (WAF & ESG appliances) 1

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 Barracuda'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 Barracuda, 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 barracuda.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.