Small business▼−2Since September 2026: 2% → 0%, −2 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 2% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 9 pointsRank 6 → 39 of 42
1 category · RankedCrossplane
57Judge labels
0First choices
12Negative 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
0% in IaC for mid-market buyers
Rank 9 of 59 in the mid-market standingaccepted challenger
0 of 14 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 9% of its 23 labels there were negative.
What the models named instead of Crossplane →By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.
Small business43 of 47
0%11 labels
criticized challenger
Mid-market9 of 59
0%23 labels
accepted challenger
Enterprise12 of 69
0%23 labels
accepted challenger
In iac · 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 Crossplane 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure as code | Cloud and infrastructure | 0% | 9 of 59 | 9% | 23 | accepted challenger | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
Movement
Since September 2026, Crossplane held within the floor in its one category: no change cleared 11 points.
Best category · IaC · by segment
Mid-market=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 9 → 6 of 51
Enterprise=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 8 → 10 of 57
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IaC | 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 9 of 59, 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 Crossplane 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 Crossplane 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 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 4 |
| Kimi K2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 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
Direct9 labelsNone
Paraphrase6 labelsNone
Comparative19 labelsNone
Budget-constrained2 labelsNone
Scale-constrained11 labelsNone
Negative10 labelsNone
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative57 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 0 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.
“Crossplane (which leverages Kubernetes) are also strong, but Terraform's flexibility ... make it the most versatile” Mistral Small · IaC · direct prompt · alternative
“Kubernetes-Native (Control Planes): Crossplane. Best for: Companies deeply committed to Kubernetes.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · IaC · scale prompt · alternative
“Multi‑cloud teams wanting Kubernetes‑native control planes; building internal developer platforms” GLM 4.7 FlashX · IaC · comparative prompt · alternative
“Kubernetes-first platform teams: sometimes Pulumi or Crossplane is a better fit” GPT-5.4 mini · IaC · paraphrase 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.
“It introduces Kubernetes and control-plane complexity; it's not usually the simplest starting point” GPT-6 Luna · IaC · comparative prompt · soft negative
“Requires K8s cluster; overkill unless you're all-in on K8s platforms.” Grok 4.20 · IaC · paraphrase prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Crossplane, over the 57 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Crossplane was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Crossplane, over the 57 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Crossplane 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 Crossplane. 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 48 of the 57 answers that named Crossplane and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
pulumi.com43
guideflow.com25
spacelift.io23
checkthat.ai17
firefly.ai14
cio.economictimes.indiatimes.com13
cortex.io13
facets.cloud13
gartsolutions.com13
sentinelone.com11
185 of the 185 domain citations in answers naming Crossplane came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
crossplane.io is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Crossplane takes 0% of first choices and Terraform takes 57%.ShowHide
Search and answers
crossplane.io is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Crossplane takes 0% of first choices and Terraform takes 57%.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimatesPosition for “infrastructure-as-code tool”
–
not in the top ten
Position for “infrastructure-as-code tools”
–
not in the top ten
- Searches for its name, Google
- 1,900 a month (“crossplane”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 217 a month
- Organic visits to its site
- about 3,194 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 95 · 28 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 1,854
- 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 editionShare of first choices
0%
rank 9 of 59 in iac
Segment leader
57%
Terraform
- First choices
- 0 across its categories
- Named in
- 57 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 48 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 crossplane.io
277
subdomains included
Content
114
counted in the table below
Documentation
44
Product · Integration
0 · 0
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blog | 89 | 0 | 2026-06-23 | Object storage | |
| Report or ebook | 19 | undated | |||
| Comparison | 3 | undated | |||
| Glossary or explainer | 3 | undated |
Most recent
- 2026-06-23Building modelplane blog
- 2026-06-05V2 upgrade check blog
- 2026-03-19Function kro yaml cel blog
- 2026-03-18Meet crossplane in amsterdam for kubecon eu 2026 blog
- 2026-03-17Crossplane v2 2 more capable more reliable more observable blog
- 2026-02-25Crossplane ai the case for api first infrastructure blog
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page crossplane.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. Read September 29, 2026.
Follow Crossplane
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
Crossplane is its own company.ShowHide
The company
Crossplane is its own company.
ShowHideIn its own words
Stated by the vendor, not checked- Positioning
- The Cloud-Native Framework for Platform Engineering
- For
- Platform engineering
- Not stated on the pages read
- Price, starting price, free plan or trial, integrations, certifications, hosting, customers
What Crossplane's own pages state, read September 28, 2026: crossplane.io. 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 Crossplane'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 Crossplane, 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 Crossplane by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Crossplane 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 Crossplane, 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.