Every category where a model named CAST AI 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
Cloud cost management	Cloud and infrastructure	0%	19 of 79	17%	18	accepted challenger
Managed Kubernetes platforms	Cloud and infrastructure	0%	34 of 48	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Google Kubernetes Engine at 39%

Movement

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

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

Direct15 labelsNone

Paraphrase2 labelsNone

Comparative15 labelsNone

Budget-constrained8 labelsNone

Scale-constrained6 labelsNone

Negative10 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative56 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.

“Cast AI automatically rightsizes your nodes, deletes idle resources, and migrates workloads to spot instances” Gemini 3.5 Flash · FinOps · scale prompt · alternative

“For Kubernetes-specific optimization, CAST AI and Kubecost are purpose-built cloud cost optimization tools” Claude Haiku 4.5 · FinOps · comparative prompt · alternative

“Choose CAST AI if your primary goal is to cut compute bills automatically” Qwen 3.7 Flash · FinOps · comparative prompt · alternative

“Choose Kubecost or CAST AI if Kubernetes is your main spend driver.” Perplexity Sonar · FinOps · 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.

“Moderate Caution: Specific Limitations ... Scaling issues during traffic spikes causing disruptions” Kimi K2 · FinOps · negative prompt · soft negative

“Some users report scaling issues during traffic spikes and high pricing for small clusters” MiniMax M2.5 · FinOps · negative prompt · soft negative

“skip pure optimizers like CAST AI/ProsperOps unless K8s/commitments are 80% of spend” Grok 4.1 Fast · FinOps · scale prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as CAST AI, over the 56 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and CAST AI was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Vantage40 of 5618Not in the top three

CloudZero39 of 568Not in the top three

IBM Apptio Cloudability34 of 569Not in the top three

Kubecost33 of 560Not in the top three

ProsperOps25 of 560Not in the top three

AWS Cost Explorer24 of 567Not in the top three

VMware Tanzu CloudHealth24 of 561Not in the top three

Microsoft Cost Management22 of 563Not in the top three

Flexera One20 of 561Not in the top three

nOps20 of 560Not 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 CAST AI. 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 46 of the 56 answers that named CAST AI and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

cloudzero.com38

cloudaware.com33

gartner.com29

nops.io23

usage.ai22

amnic.com18

learn.g2.com18

vantage.sh16

openmetal.io13

newrelic.com12

222 of the 222 domain citations in answers naming CAST AI came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

cloudzero.com/blog/cloud-cost-management-tools35

gartner.com/reviews/market/cloud-financial-management-tools29

cloudaware.com/blog/cloud-cost-management-tools28

nops.io/blog/cloud-cost-management-software-tools21

learn.g2.com/best-cloud-cost-management-software18

usage.ai/blogs/finops/tools/best-tools17

amnic.com/blogs/cloud-cost-management-tools14

newrelic.com/blog/observability/best-cloud-cost-management-tools12

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as CAST AI

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

Cast AI 5

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 CAST AI'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 CAST AI, 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 castai.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.