Small business▲+11Since September 2026: 89% → 100%, +11 points. Past the 11-point floor: movement. Read over the models both editions asked.
100%from 89% in September 2026
Cleared the floor by 0 pointsRank 1 of 35, unchanged
7 categories · RankedCloudflare
482Judge labels
229First choices
37Negative labels
14 / 14Models named it
7Categories
October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.8, every buyer segment counted.
Best standing
100% in DDoS for small business buyers
Rank 1 of 58 in the mid-market standingendorsed leader
10 of 14 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 6% of its 69 labels there were negative.
What the models named instead of Cloudflare →By buyer segmentStrongest at small business.
Small business1 of 38
100%76 labels
endorsed leader
Mid-market1 of 58
82%69 labels
endorsed leader
Enterprise1 of 41
57%64 labels
endorsed leader
In ddos · 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 Cloudflare 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DDoS protection | Network and edge | 82% | 1 of 58 | 6% | 69 | endorsed leader | ▼−9Since September 2026: 93% → 84%, −9 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
| Content delivery networks | Network and edge | 68% | 1 of 49 | 8% | 72 | endorsed leader | ▼−15Since September 2026: 80% → 65%, −15 points. Past the 11-point floor: movement. Read over the models both editions asked. |
| DNS filtering | Network and edge | 0% | 11 of 94 | 0% | 9 | under 10 labels · led by DNSFilter at 59% | |
| Client-side protection | Security operations | 0% | 32 of 120 | 0% | 4 | under 10 labels · led by cside at 13% | |
| AI security platforms | Security operations | 0% | 61 of 233 | 0% | 3 | under 10 labels · led by SentinelOne Singularity at 11% | |
| Cloud hosting | Cloud and infrastructure | 0% | 51 of 85 | 50% | 2 | under 10 labels · led by Amazon Web Services at 32% | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
| DDI and IP address management | Network and edge | 0% | 40 of 115 | 0% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by BlueCat Micetro at 15% |
Movement
Since September 2026, Cloudflare moved past the floor in one of seven categories: CDN, −15 points to 65%. It held within the floor in the other six.
Best category · DDoS · by segment
Mid-market▼−9Since September 2026: 93% → 84%, −9 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
84%from 93% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 2 pointsRank 1 of 52, unchanged
Enterprise▼−24Since September 2026: 80% → 56%, −24 points. Past the 11-point floor: movement. Read over the models both editions asked.
56%from 80% in September 2026
Cleared the floor by 13 pointsRank 1 of 41, unchanged
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CDN | 80% | 65% | ▼−15Since September 2026: 80% → 65%, −15 points. Past the 11-point floor: movement. Read over the models both editions asked. | Moved past the floor | Rank 1 of 49, unchanged |
| DDoS | 93% | 84% | ▼−9Since September 2026: 93% → 84%, −9 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 1 of 58, unchanged |
| DNS filtering | 0% | 0% | newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now. | New this edition | Rank 11 of 94, unchanged |
| Client-side protection | 0% | 0% | newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now. | New this edition | Rank 32 of 120, unchanged |
| AI security | 0% | 0% | newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now. | New this edition | Rank 61 of 233, unchanged |
| Cloud hosting | 0% | 0% | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 40 → 51 of 85 |
| DDI and IPAM | 0% | 0% | newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now. | New this edition | Rank 40 of 115, unchanged |
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 Cloudflare 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 Cloudflare 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 | 8 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 13 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 6 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 8 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 11 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 13 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 7 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 9 |
| Grok 4.20 | 9 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 14 |
| Mistral Small | 5 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 10 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 10 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 15 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 3 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 7 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 8 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 15 |
| Kimi K2 | 9 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 13 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 8 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 13 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 9 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 8 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 11 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 8 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 10 |
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
Direct81 labels66
Paraphrase83 labels65
Comparative92 labels65not counted in share
Budget-constrained83 labels74
Scale-constrained59 labels24
Negative84 labels27not counted in share
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative482 labels in all, every segment counted; 229 of the 321 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.
“Cloudflare is a strong all-around CDN and security platform for organizations that want acceleration, DNS, DDoS mitigation, WAF, Zero Trust services, and edge computing features in one ecosystem” Claude Haiku 4.5 · CDN · comparative prompt · first choice
“Cloudflare: *The "All-in-One" Choice.* Excellent if you want a massive feature set ... Great developer experience, but enterprise pricing negotiations can sometimes feel rigid.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · CDN · scale prompt · first choice
“the best default choice is usually Cloudflare because it combines broad CDN performance, strong built-in security, and a relatively accessible business tier” Perplexity Sonar · CDN · direct prompt · first choice
“look for established, globally distributed enterprise security providers (such as Cloudflare, Akamai, Imperva, Radware, AWS Shield, or Google Cloud Armor)” Gemini 3.5 Flash · DDoS · negative 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.
“13 outages in 8 days (Aug 2026 report)—niche but avoid for mission-critical” Grok 4.20 · Cloud hosting · negative prompt · hard negative
“Cloudflare's lower tiers work well for basic volumetric attacks, but for sophisticated application-layer attacks, you will often need to upgrade to Enterprise or manually tune complex rate-limiting rules.” Claude Haiku 4.5 · DDoS · negative prompt · soft negative
“Over‑protective bot protection that flags legitimate users... When to be cautious: If your organization cannot tolerate even brief outages” GLM 4.7 FlashX · DDoS · negative prompt · soft negative
“Major outages (2024‑2025)... When to be cautious - If your application is mission‑critical, consider a multi‑CDN or fail‑over strategy.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · CDN · negative prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Cloudflare, over the 480 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Cloudflare was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Cloudflare, over the 480 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Cloudflare 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 Cloudflare. 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 430 of the 480 answers that named Cloudflare and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
blog.blazingcdn.com134
esecurityplanet.com133
fastly.com121
cybersecuritynews.com109
radware.com108
cloudflare.comYour site93
g2.com92
myrasecurity.com87
flowtriq.com83
indusface.com83
950 of the 1,043 domain citations in answers naming Cloudflare came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
Where Cloudflare stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.ShowHide
Search and answers
Where Cloudflare stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimatesPosition for “ddos protection service”
2
Position for “ddos protection services”
2
- Searches for its name, Google
- 550,000 a month (“cloudflare”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 10,897 a month
- Organic visits to its site
- about 4,995,413 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 116,199 · 19,289 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 335,074
- Paid Google search
- No ads found in the estimate; that does not mean it runs none
In answers
This editionShare of first choices
82%
rank 1 of 58 in ddos
First choices
229
across its categories
- Named in
- 480 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 430 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 cloudflare.com
15,567
subdomains included
Content
1,623
counted in the table below
Documentation
8,041
Product · Integration
76 · 1
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blog | 690 | 71 | 2026-09-28 | SASE, SIEM | |
| Glossary or explainer | 458 | undated | SASE | ||
| Case study | 262 | undated | |||
| Report or ebook | 71 | 23 | 2026-09-28 | ||
| Template or tool | 46 | 12 | 2026-08-14 | ||
| Webinar or virtual event | 32 | 1 | 2026-07-22 | ||
| Podcast or video | 29 | undated | SASE | ||
| Comparison | 23 | 0 | 2026-06-30 | SASE | |
| News or press | 7 | undated | |||
| Conference or event | 5 | 0 | 2026-04-23 |
Most recent
- 2026-09-28Introducing the cold start blog
- 2026-09-28Vinext nextjs on vite blog
- 2026-09-28Cloudflare cf cli launch blog
- 2026-09-28Forge open source generation pipeline blog
- 2026-09-28How fast is the web blog
- 2026-09-28Emdash cms plugin registry blog
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page cloudflare.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. Of its titles that name a category, most name SASE (11); 0 name its categories the models place it in. 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 Cloudflare
What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Cloudflare; a claim can dispute any of them.
Cloudflare Business 2Cloudflare DDoS Protection 2Cloudflare Free 2CloudFlare 1Cloudflare (1.1.1.1 with Gateway) 1Cloudflare (Page Shield) 1Cloudflare (R2, Workers) 1Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 1Cloudflare 1.1.1.3 1Cloudflare Free / Pro 1Cloudflare Free/Pro 1Cloudflare Pro 1
Follow Cloudflare
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
Cloudflare is its own company.ShowHide
The company
Cloudflare is its own company.
ShowHideIn its own words
Stated by the vendor, not checked- Positioning
- Build for the agent era
- For
- developers, startups and the world’s largest enterprises
- Price stated
- Free plan $0/month; Pro $20/mo billed annually or $25/mo billed monthly; Business $200/mo billed annually or $250/mo billed monthly; Contract Custom billed annually; Zero Trust Free $0 forever; Pay-as-you-go $7/user/month; Contract Custom annual price per user; Developer platform Free and Paid starts at $5/month cloudflare.com
- Starting price
- $0 cloudflare.com
- Free plan or trial
- Start building for free; No credit card needed cloudflare.com
- Certifications
- PCI DSS 4.0
- Hosting
- 335+ cities around the world330+ cities instantlyCloudflare's global network
- Customers named
- ShopifyCharacter.AIIntercomDoorDashDiscordZendeskLovablenpm
- Not stated on the pages read
- Integrations
What Cloudflare's own pages state, read September 28, 2026: cloudflare.com, cloudflare.com/plans, cloudflare.com/solutions/security, cloudflare.com/products/d1, cloudflare.com/case-studies. A claimed page can correct any of them.
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 Cloudflare'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 Cloudflare, 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 Cloudflare by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Cloudflare 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 Cloudflare, 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 Cloudflare 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
Wins only: a badge exists where Cloudflare is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.
ShowHideDDoS protection
AI models recommend Cloudflare first in DDoS protection 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.
Wide · 320 × 104 Website, beside other badges
Square · 240 × 240 LinkedIn, slides
Compact · 200 × 56 Email signature, footer
Content delivery networks
AI models recommend Cloudflare first in Content delivery networks 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.
Wide · 320 × 104 Website, beside other badges
Square · 240 × 240 LinkedIn, slides
Compact · 200 × 56 Email signature, footer
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.