IT AI Index

Index › Vendors › Coalfire · September 2026 Edition

1 category · Named, not ranked

Coalfire

12Judge labels

0First choices

0Negative labels

6 of 12Models named it

1Category

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.2, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

5 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Coalfire was named 5 times in PTaaS, where Cobalt led with 44%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business27 of 57

under the label threshold

Mid-market20 of 76

under the label threshold

Enterprise13 of 73

under the label threshold

In ptaas · 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 Coalfire 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
Penetration testing as a service	Security operations	0%	20 of 76	0%	5	under 10 labels · led by Cobalt at 44%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Coalfire 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 Coalfire across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	1	0	1
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	0	0
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	1	1
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	0	0
Mistral Small	0	0	0	0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0	1	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	1	0	2
Kimi K2	0	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0	0
MiniMax M2.5	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

Direct3 labelsNone

Paraphrase1 labelNone

Comparative7 labels1not counted in share

Budget-constrained1 labelNone

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative0 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative12 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 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.

“For Regulated Enterprises: Use Coalfire for compliance needs” Qwen 3.7 Flash · PTaaS · comparative prompt · first choice

“Coalfire excels in regulated industries like finance, healthcare, and government with deep audit and standards expertise” Claude Haiku 4.5 · PTaaS · comparative prompt · alternative

“The Best for Compliance & Sales Enablement: Coalfire” Qwen 3.7 Flash · PTaaS · 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.

No model argued against it.

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Coalfire, over the 12 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Coalfire was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Cobalt12 of 125Not in the top three

Synack12 of 121Not in the top three

NetSPI10 of 123Not in the top three

Bishop Fox9 of 121Not in the top three

HackerOne8 of 120Not in the top three

Bugcrowd7 of 120Not in the top three

Rapid76 of 121Not in the top three

Astra Security5 of 120Not in the top three

NCC Group5 of 120Not in the top three

BreachLock4 of 120Not 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 Coalfire. 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 10 of the 12 answers that named Coalfire and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

synack.com10

deepstrike.io9

underdefense.com8

getastra.com7

stingrai.io7

redbotsecurity.com6

softwaresecured.com6

techrepublic.com6

cybri.com5

soc2auditors.org5

Sixty-nine of the sixty-nine domain citations in answers naming Coalfire came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

synack.com/blog/best-penetration-testing-companies10

underdefense.com/blog/penetration-testing-services8

deepstrike.io/blog/top-penetration-testing-companies6

getastra.com/blog/penetration-testing/companies6

redbotsecurity.com/penetration-testing-companies6

techrepublic.com/article/best-penetration-testing-companies6

soc2auditors.org/penetration-testing-firms5

softwaresecured.com/post/top-10-penetration-testing-vendors5

Pages are listed as the models cited 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 Coalfire'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 Coalfire, 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 coalfire.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.