Every category where a model named Control D 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
DNS filtering	Network and edge	2%	5 of 94	0%	24	accepted challenger

Movement

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

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Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	1	0	1
GPT-5.4 mini	0	1	0	1
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	4	0	4
Perplexity Sonar	0	3	0	3
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	1	0	1
Mistral Small	0	0	0	0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	1	1	2
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	0	0	1
Kimi K2	0	2	1	3
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	3	0	3
MiniMax M2.5	1	1	1	3
GPT-6 Luna	0	1	0	1
Muse Glimmer 30B	0	1	0	1

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

Direct9 labels1

Paraphrase2 labelsNone

Comparative16 labels2not counted in share

Budget-constrained18 labels1

Scale-constrained7 labelsNone

Negative16 labels3not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative68 labels in all, every segment counted; 2 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.

“For Privacy-Focused Filtering: Control D (offers customizable tiers, strong privacy stance, modern protocols)” Qwen 3.7 Flash · DNS filtering · negative prompt · first choice

“or Control D if you want predictable low-cost pricing at around $2/endpoint/month” MiniMax M2.5 · DNS filtering · budget prompt · first choice

“Consider Control D or SafeDNS if your priority is highly customizable filtering... but the results here put them behind DNSFilter and Cloudflare” Perplexity Sonar · DNS filtering · direct prompt · alternative

“Best truly low-cost alternative: Control D — offers affordable plans with a $1.99/month Pro plan” Perplexity Sonar · DNS filtering · 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 Control D, over the 68 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Control D was named but was not.

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ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

DNSFilter56 of 6821Compare →

Cloudflare Gateway42 of 6812Compare →

Cisco Umbrella40 of 684Compare →

NextDNS33 of 682Compare →

Quad926 of 688Not among the top eight

WebTitan15 of 681Not among the top eight

CleanBrowsing12 of 681Not among the top eight

AdGuard DNS11 of 680Not among the top eight

SafeDNS10 of 681Not among the top eight

OpenDNS8 of 681Not 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 Control D. 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 68 of the 68 answers that named Control D and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

controld.comYour site63

cybersecuritynews.com43

dnsfilter.com36

aimultiple.com35

sourceforge.net35

cyberpress.org31

devopsschool.com25

expertinsights.com25

itechguides.com25

g2.com22

277 of the 340 domain citations in answers naming Control D came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

aimultiple.com/dns-security35

cybersecuritynews.com/best-dns-security-solutions29

controld.com/blog/best-dns-security-solutions26

devopsschool.com/blog/top-10-dns-filtering-platforms-features-pros-cons-comparison24

geekflare.com/cybersecurity/best-dns-filtering-software21

cybersecuritynews.com/bst-protective-dns-services20

simplyit.biz/resources/best-dns-filtering-small-business-202620

controld.com/blog/dns-filtering-services19

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

controld.com ranks 3 on Google for the category's searches. In the answers, Control D takes 2% of first choices and DNSFilter takes 59%.

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In search

Google, US estimates

Position for “dns filtering service”

Position for “dns filtering services”

–

not in the top ten

Searches for its name, Google: 5,400 a month (“control d”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 1,658 a month
Organic visits to its site: about 21,852 a month
Searches its site ranks for: 3,736 · 152 in the top three
Sites linking to it: 3,660
Paid Google search: No ads found in the estimate; that does not mean it runs none

Ads on Google

None found in Google's ad transparency records for the US

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

rank 5 of 94 in DNS filtering

Segment leader

59%

DNSFilter

First choices: 2 across its categories
Named in: 68 answers
Its own site cited: in 68 of the answers that named it

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.

What it publishes

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Addresses on controld.com

1,723

subdomains included

Content

1,335

counted in the table below

Documentation

293

Product · Integration

17 · 0

Kind	Pages	Last 90 days	Latest	Categories named
Template or tool	1,039	0	2026-02-05	CDN
Blog	182	9	2026-08-28	CDN
Comparison	61	1	2026-07-30
Glossary or explainer	30	0	2025-11-21
Podcast or video	15	6	2026-09-17
Case study	5	0	2026-05-18
Report or ebook	2	0	2023-09-15
Conference or event	1	undated

Most recent

2026-09-17Podcast episode 16 micah czigan podcast or video
2026-09-07Podcast episode 15 konrads klints podcast or video
2026-08-28Control d tailscale partnership blog
2026-08-19Podcast episode 14 mohana balakrishnan podcast or video
2026-08-05Byod dns security policy blog
2026-08-01Podcast episode 13 paul bleicher podcast or video

How it is countedHide how it is counted

Every page controld.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 CDN (12); 0 name the category 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.

Follow Control D

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

Control D is its own company.

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In its own words

Stated by the vendor, not checked

Positioning: DNS filtering for Every OS
controld.com
For: engineering teams, MSPs, and universities worldwide
controld.com
Price stated: Flat fee per endpoint. Start free. controld.com
Starting price: 30 controld.com
Free plan or trial: Start Free Trial controld.com
Certifications: SOC 2 CertifiedISO 27001 CertifiedISO 27701 CertifiedGDPR CompliantSOC2 Type II CompliantSSPA Compliant
Hosting: 3 Data Storage RegionsNew York (US)Amsterdam (Netherlands)Sydney (Australia)
Customers named: GitHubNetwork Information Technologies, LLCPinnacle ICTPennsylvania College of TechnologyGood Heart TechnologyMassey Hall & Roy Thomson Hall7 Security Group
Not stated on the pages read: Integrations

What Control D's own pages state, read October 5, 2026: controld.com, controld.com/plans, controld.com/compliance, controld.com/features/analytics, controld.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 Control D'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 Control D, 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 Control D by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Control D 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 Control D, 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.