Small business▼−6Since September 2026: 21% → 15%, −6 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
15%from 21% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 5 pointsRank 2 of 71, unchanged
1 category · RankedCobalt
120Judge labels
35First choices
9Negative labels
14 / 14Models named it
1Category
October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.8, every buyer segment counted.
Best standing
45% in PTaaS for mid-market buyers
Rank 1 of 82 in the mid-market standingendorsed leader
9 of 14 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 2% of its 41 labels there were negative.
What the models named instead of Cobalt →By buyer segmentStrongest at mid-market.
Small business1 of 76
17%37 labels
accepted challenger
Mid-market1 of 82
45%41 labels
endorsed leader
Enterprise3 of 67
12%42 labels
accepted challenger
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 Cobalt 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Penetration testing as a service | Security operations | 45% | 1 of 82 | 2% | 41 | endorsed leader | ▼−1Since September 2026: 44% → 44%, −1 point. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
Movement
Since September 2026, Cobalt held within the floor in its one category: no change cleared 11 points.
Best category · PTaaS · by segment
Mid-market▼−1Since September 2026: 44% → 44%, −1 point. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
44%from 44% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 10 pointsRank 1 of 74, unchanged
Enterprise▼−5Since September 2026: 15% → 10%, −5 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
10%from 15% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 6 pointsRank 3 of 63, unchanged
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PTaaS | 44% | 44% | ▼−1Since September 2026: 44% → 44%, −1 point. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 1 of 82, 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 Cobalt 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 Cobalt 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 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Grok 4.20 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
| Mistral Small | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Kimi K2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
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
Direct30 labels13
Paraphrase31 labels18
Comparative35 labels8not counted in share
Budget-constrained19 labels4
Scale-constrained3 labelsNone
Negative2 labels1not counted in share
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative120 labels in all, every segment counted; 35 of the 44 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.
“I would recommend considering Cobalt or Software Secured, as they are specifically highlighted as top choices for mid-market organizations” Qwen 3.7 Flash · PTaaS · paraphrase prompt · first choice
“For Growing Tech Companies: Go with Cobalt. The ability to run frequent tests on your API and web app helps you ship faster” Qwen 3.7 Flash · PTaaS · comparative prompt · first choice
“For compliance-driven mid-market: Cobalt, Packetlabs, or BreachLock are the most frequently recommended choices.” Claude Haiku 4.5 · PTaaS · direct prompt · first choice
“For most mid-market companies, Cobalt.io and BreachLock are especially popular due to their PTaaS models” Mistral Small · PTaaS · direct 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.
“crowdsourced like HackerOne/Cobalt work for speed but less for deep compliance” Grok 4.20 · PTaaS · direct prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Cobalt, over the 120 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Cobalt was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Cobalt, over the 120 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Cobalt 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 Cobalt. 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 114 of the 120 answers that named Cobalt and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
synack.com70
underdefense.com68
deepstrike.io61
techrepublic.com59
stingrai.io54
getastra.com44
brightdefense.com39
beaglesecurity.com38
softwaresecured.com28
cobalt.ioYour site26
461 of the 487 domain citations in answers naming Cobalt came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
Where Cobalt stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.ShowHide
Search and answers
Where Cobalt stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimatesPosition for “penetration testing service”
–
not in the top ten
Position for “penetration testing services”
–
not in the top ten
- Searches for its name, Google
- 135,000 a month (“cobalt”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 27,732 a month
- Organic visits to its site
- about 23,655 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 4,797 · 267 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 4,171
- Paid Google search
- No ads found in the estimate; that does not mean it runs none
In answers
This editionShare of first choices
45%
rank 1 of 82 in ptaas
First choices
35
across its categories
- Named in
- 120 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 114 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 cobalt.io
1,678
subdomains included
Content
1,162
counted in the table below
Documentation
148
Product · Integration
20 · 0
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blog | 696 | 16 | 2026-09-24 | PTaaS, MFA | |
| News or press | 237 | 3 | 2026-09-02 | PTaaS | |
| Webinar or virtual event | 110 | 0 | 2025-12-10 | Compliance automation, TPRM | |
| Case study | 34 | 1 | 2026-09-17 | ||
| Glossary or explainer | 32 | 0 | 2026-05-13 | PTaaS | |
| Conference or event | 22 | 0 | 2026-03-09 | ||
| Comparison | 19 | 0 | 2025-12-16 | SAST | |
| Template or tool | 8 | 0 | 2026-06-26 | PTaaS | |
| Report or ebook | 2 | undated | |||
| Podcast or video | 2 | 0 | 2025-08-29 |
Most recent
- 2026-09-24Automated agentic autonomous the ai pentesting vocabulary problem blog
- 2026-09-17From internet exposure to operational disruption a red team view of connected infrastructure blog
- 2026-09-17Case study how a bracket bypassed a denylist and exposed a database password case study
- 2026-09-16How cobalt brings real time exploit and threat intelligence to vulnerability findings blog
- 2026-09-15Pentester spotlight edu garcia blog
- 2026-09-02Cobalt recognized for fourth consecutive year in three gartner hype cycle reports news or press
Events in person
Last twelve months
- March 23, 2026 to March 26, 2026RSAC 2026Moscone Center, North Hall, Booth N4519, San Francisco, United States · exhibited
As the event pages on cobalt.io state them, read September 28, 2026.
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page cobalt.io 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. 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 Cobalt
What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Cobalt; a claim can dispute any of them.
Cobalt.io 10
Follow Cobalt
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
Cobalt is its own company.ShowHide
The company
Cobalt is its own company.
ShowHideIn its own words
Stated by the vendor, not checked- Positioning
- Offensive security services from human-led to autonomous pentesting.
- For
- Small businesses, Enterprises, Developers, Security Analysts, Technology Architects, Software Managers
- Price stated
- Explore the flexible Cobalt credit model that scales to your needs cobalt.io/platform
- Integrations claimed
- 50 cobalt.io
- Certifications
- SOC 2ISO 27001HIPAAPCI DSS
- Hosting
- USAEU
- Customers named
- PersonioSmarshSnow SoftwareDropboxToastPendoSentara HealthcareAircall
- Not stated on the pages read
- Starting price, free plan or trial
What Cobalt's own pages state, read September 28, 2026: cobalt.io, trust.cobalt.io, cobalt.io/platform, cobalt.io/customers, cobalt.io/partners. 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 Cobalt'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 Cobalt, 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 Cobalt by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Cobalt 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 Cobalt, 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 Cobalt 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 Cobalt is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.
ShowHideAI models recommend Cobalt first in Penetration testing as a service 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.