Every category where a model named Certbot 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
Certificate lifecycle management	Identity and access	2%	12 of 104	0%	5	under 10 labels · led by Sectigo Certificate Manager at 27%

Movement

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

By model

How each model treated Certbot 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	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0	0
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	1	0	1
Mistral Small	0	1	1	2
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	0	0	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	0	0
Kimi K2	0	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0	0
MiniMax M2.5	0	1	0	1
GPT-6 Luna	0	0	0	0
Muse Glimmer 30B	0	0	0	0

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

Direct1 labelNone

Paraphrase6 labels1

Comparative3 labelsNone

Budget-constrained7 labels5

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative5 labels1not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative22 labels in all, every segment counted; 6 of the 7 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.

“Spend zero dollars on Certbot/Let's Encrypt first.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Certificate management · budget prompt · first choice

“Free ACME client for auto-issuance/renewal. Quick setup, but lacks enterprise discovery/inventory” Grok 4.1 Fast · Certificate management · paraphrase prompt · alternative

“If you only have a handful of public sites and prefer a free, community‑driven solution.” MiniMax M2.5 · Certificate management · paraphrase prompt · alternative

“If you need a simple, free solution for web servers: Certbot is the best choice.” Mistral Small · Certificate management · budget 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.

No model argued against it.

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Certbot, over the 22 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Certbot was named but was not.

ShowHide

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

AWS Certificate Manager12 of 221Not among the top eight

Sectigo Certificate Manager10 of 224Not among the top eight

Sectigo SCM Pro9 of 223Not among the top eight

ZeroSSL9 of 220Not among the top eight

Keyfactor Command7 of 220Not among the top eight

DigiCert CertCentral6 of 221Not among the top eight

Let's Encrypt6 of 221Not among the top eight

Certify The Web5 of 220Not among the top eight

Smallstep Certificate Manager5 of 220Not among the top eight

DigiCert Trust Lifecycle Manager4 of 221Not among the top eight

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 Certbot. 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 20 of the 22 answers that named Certbot and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

qcecuring.com12

g2.com11

worldmetrics.org11

sectigo.com10

gitnux.org9

infisical.com9

devopsschool.com7

digicert.com6

guideflow.com6

guptadeepak.com6

No domain is on file for Certbot, so its own site is not marked.

Pages cited

qcecuring.com/blog/best-clm-platforms-202611

g2.com/categories/certificate-lifecycle-management-clm/small-business8

infisical.com/blog/best-certificate-management-tools8

devopsschool.com/blog/top-10-certificate-management-tools-features-pros-cons-comparison6

guptadeepak.com/tools/top-5-pki-certificate-lifecycle-management-tools-20266

checkthat.ai/answers/what-are-the-best-certificate-authority-solutions5

gitnux.org/best/certificate-lifecycle-management-software5

guideflow.com/blog/ssl-certificate-management-software5

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

Where Certbot stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.

ShowHide

In search

Google, US estimates

Searches for its name, Google: 2,900 a month (“certbot”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 342 a month
Its own site: No site of its own on file, so no site figures

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

rank 12 of 104 in certificate management

Segment leader

27%

Sectigo Certificate Manager

First choices: 6 across its categories
Named in: 22 answers
Its own site cited: No site on file to match

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.

Names read as Certbot

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

Certbot (EFF) + a small management wrapper (e.g., Certify the Web) 1Certbot (Let's Encrypt) 1Certbot (with Let's Encrypt) 1

Follow Certbot

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.

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 Certbot'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 Certbot, 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 Certbot by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Certbot 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 Certbot, 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.