8 categories · RankedCloudflare
522Judge labels
287First choices
30Negative labels
12 of 12Models named it
8Categories
September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.2, every buyer segment counted.
Best standing
93% in DDoS for mid-market buyers
Rank 1 of 51 in the mid-market standingendorsed leader
10 of 12 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 2% of its 66 labels there were negative.
By buyer segmentStrongest at mid-market.
Small business1 of 41
89%71 labels
endorsed leader
Mid-market1 of 51
93%66 labels
endorsed leader
Enterprise1 of 31
80%59 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DDoS protection | Network and edge | 93% | 1 of 51 | 2% | 66 | endorsed leader |
| Content delivery networks | Network and edge | 80% | 1 of 40 | 9% | 64 | endorsed leader |
| Web application firewalls | Network and edge | 55% | 1 of 87 | 0% | 33 | endorsed leader |
| Cloud hosting | Cloud and infrastructure | 0% | 42 of 78 | 50% | 2 | under 10 labels · led by Amazon Web Services at 29% |
| LLM gateways and observability | Data platform | 0% | 25 of 63 | 0% | 2 | under 10 labels · led by LiteLLM at 38% |
| API gateways | Developer platform | 0% | 31 of 51 | 0% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by Kong Gateway at 61% |
| Email security | Security operations | 0% | 22 of 71 | 0% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Defender for Office 365 at 31% |
| Zero trust network access | Network and edge | 0% | 25 of 71 | 0% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by Cloudflare One at 35% |
Movement
This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Cloudflare 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 Cloudflare across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 10 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 13 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 7 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 9 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 13 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 18 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Grok 4.1 Fast | 14 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 17 |
| Mistral Small | 10 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 14 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 12 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 15 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 4 | 2 | 7 | 1 | 14 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 12 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 16 |
| Kimi K2 | 12 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 15 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 11 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 15 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 13 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 14 |
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
Direct85 labels74
Paraphrase100 labels86
Comparative87 labels67not counted in share
Budget-constrained97 labels86
Scale-constrained75 labels41
Negative78 labels30not counted in share
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative522 labels in all, every segment counted; 287 of the 384 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.
“For most 500‑person organizations, a cloud‑based, always‑on, unmetered provider (Cloudflare, EdgeOne, or a hybrid cloud‑on‑prem solution) will give you the best blend” GLM 4.7 FlashX · DDoS · scale prompt · first choice
“Cloudflare remains the most popular CDN choice in 2026, offering an exceptional combination of performance, security, and accessibility with its generous free tier.” Claude Haiku 4.5 · CDN · comparative prompt · first choice
“### 1. The All-Rounder: Cloudflare ... Choose Cloudflare if you need to consolidate vendors (DNS + Security + CDN) and your IT team is relatively small.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · CDN · direct prompt · first choice
“Cloudflare (Application Security): Excellent for mid-market. It bundles DNS, CDN, WAF, Bot Management, and DDoS mitigation into a single control panel” Gemini 3.5 Flash · WAF · scale 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.
“Cloudflare's CDN, as it may slow down your website, and pointing your DNS to Cloudflare can make timely recovery unlikely in case of an outage.” Llama 4 Maverick · CDN · negative prompt · hard negative
“Providers to be cautious about: Cloudflare, Akamai, Fastly, Amazon CloudFront ... frequently criticized by developers for its aggressive approach to bot detection” Qwen 3.7 Flash · CDN · negative prompt · soft negative
“All major CDNs studied (including Cloudflare, Microsoft Azure, Amazon, and Fastly) have been found to have back-end TLS connections vulnerable to security issues” Claude Haiku 4.5 · CDN · negative prompt · soft negative
“Cloudflare | Frequent outages ... US-based (CLOUD Act data access risks for EU/GDPR). Potential slowdowns vs. direct hosting.” Grok 4.1 Fast · CDN · negative prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Cloudflare, over the 517 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.
ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
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 Cloudflare. 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 414 of the 517 answers that named Cloudflare and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
cyberpress.org186
cybersecuritynews.com174
blog.blazingcdn.com119
fastly.com119
flowtriq.com108
gartner.com98
geekflare.com94
yewsafe.com81
expertinsights.com78
esecurityplanet.com75
1,132 of the 1,132 domain citations in answers naming Cloudflare came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
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 (Free Tier) 2Cloudflare DDoS Protection 2Cloudflare (Free Plan) 1Cloudflare Free 1Cloudflare Pro/Business 1Cloudflare's CDN 1
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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 cloudflare.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.
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