Every category where a model named Envoy 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
Load balancers	Network and edge	0%	16 of 94	6%	18	accepted challenger
API gateways	Developer platform	0%	14 of 66	12%	8	under 10 labels · led by Kong Gateway at 53%	=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
API management	Developer platform	0%	36 of 61	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Kong Gateway at 37%	=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
LLM gateways and observability	Data platform	0%	43 of 69	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by LiteLLM at 31%	newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now.

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Envoy 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 Envoy 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	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	2	0	2
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	3	0	3
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	3	1	0	4
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.20	0	1	1	0	2
Mistral Small	0	0	1	0	1
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	4	2	0	6
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	0	1	0	2
Kimi K2	0	2	0	0	2
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	1	2	3
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0	0	0
GPT-6 Luna	0	1	0	0	1
Muse Glimmer 30B	0	1	1	0	2

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

Direct0 labelsNone

Paraphrase1 labelNone

Comparative11 labelsNone

Budget-constrained5 labelsNone

Scale-constrained9 labelsNone

Negative25 labels1not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative51 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.

“The Safest Middle Ground... Envoy Proxy (Service mesh standard, extremely fast).” Qwen 3.7 Flash · API gateways · negative prompt · first choice

“Consider using self-managed solutions (NGINX, HAProxy, Envoy) deployed identically across clouds” Muse Glimmer 30B · Load balancers · negative prompt · alternative

“look to modern, lightweight, event-driven engines like HAProxy, Nginx, Envoy, or Traefik” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Load balancers · negative prompt · alternative

“Go with Traefik or Envoy if you are heavily invested in microservices” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Load balancers · comparative 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.

“CVE-2024-45806: Involves manipulation of `x-envoy` headers in Envoy proxies, leading to potential privilege escalation.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · API gateways · negative prompt · soft negative

“Free, highly performant, but has a steeper learning curve.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Load balancers · budget prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Envoy, over the 51 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Envoy was named but was not.

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ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

NGINX38 of 516Not among the top eight

HAProxy33 of 517Not among the top eight

Amazon API Gateway18 of 512Not among the top eight

Kong Gateway18 of 512Not among the top eight

F5 BIG-IP17 of 510Not among the top eight

Traefik16 of 511Not among the top eight

Apigee15 of 511Not among the top eight

Citrix ADC14 of 510Not among the top eight

Cloudflare Load Balancing12 of 510Not among the top eight

AWS Elastic Load Balancing11 of 514Not 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 Envoy. 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 39 of the 51 answers that named Envoy and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

loadbalancer.org17

g2.com14

devopsschool.com13

guideflow.com13

learn.microsoft.com13

docs.aws.amazon.com11

aws.amazon.com10

linkedin.com10

solo.io10

xurrent.com9

No domain is on file for Envoy, so its own site is not marked.

Pages cited

loadbalancer.org/blog/whats-the-best-cloud-load-balancer12

devopsschool.com/blog/top-10-load-balancers-features-pros-cons-comparison9

guideflow.com/blog/load-balancer-software9

xurrent.com/blog/top-load-balancers9

learn.g2.com/best-load-balancing-software8

loadbalancer.org/blog/which-load-balancer-compare-f5-citrix-a10-radware-nginx-haproxy-avin8

pickmysoft.com/blog/best-load-balancing-software7

contabo.com/blog/best-open-source-load-balancers5

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

Where Envoy stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.

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In search

Google, US estimates

Searches for its name, Google: 60,500 a month (“envoy”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 7,381 a month
Its own site: No site of its own on file, so no site figures

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

rank 16 of 94 in load balancers

Segment leader

29%

HAProxy

First choices: 0 across its categories
Named in: 51 answers
Its own site cited: No site on file to match

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.

Names read as Envoy

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Envoy; a claim can dispute any of them.

Envoy Proxy 3Envoy (and Envoy Gateway) 1Envoy/Contour 1

Follow Envoy

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.

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 Envoy'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 Envoy, 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 Envoy by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Envoy 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 Envoy, 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.