IT AI Index

Index › Vendors › ESET · September 2026 Edition

1 category · Named, not ranked

ESET

21Judge labels

0First choices

2Negative labels

9 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

9 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. ESET was named 9 times in Endpoint protection, where Microsoft Defender for Cloud led with 22%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business20 of 89

under the label threshold

Mid-market22 of 99

under the label threshold

Enterprise60 of 82

under the label threshold

In endpoint protection · 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 ESET 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
Endpoint protection	IT operations and endpoint	0%	22 of 99	11%	9	under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Defender for Cloud at 22%

Movement

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

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

Direct1 labelNone

Paraphrase1 labelNone

Comparative5 labelsNone

Budget-constrained7 labelsNone

Scale-constrained1 labelNone

Negative6 labels1not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative21 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.

“consider Microsoft Defender, Bitdefender, or ESET which generally have better reputations in both security and privacy” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Endpoint protection · negative prompt · alternative

“Other affordable and credible options include Bitdefender and ESET” Mistral Small · Endpoint protection · budget prompt · alternative

“Other cost-effective options include Bitdefender and ESET” Llama 4 Maverick · Endpoint protection · budget prompt · alternative

“ESET (Budget-Friendly Option)” MiniMax M2.5 · Endpoint protection · 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.

“High protection (98-99%) but high operational costs/TCO ($2.9k/5yrs in EPR); lower MITRE (55-74%)” Grok 4.1 Fast · Endpoint protection · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as ESET, over the 21 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and ESET was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Bitdefender13 of 213Not in the top three

Microsoft Defender for Cloud9 of 216Not in the top three

CrowdStrike Falcon8 of 213Not in the top three

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint7 of 212Not in the top three

Sophos6 of 210Not in the top three

SentinelOne5 of 211Not in the top three

Trellix5 of 210Not in the top three

Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR4 of 210Not in the top three

Sophos Intercept X4 of 210Not in the top three

Trend Micro4 of 210Not 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 ESET. 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 21 of the 21 answers that named ESET and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

gbhackers.com16

huntress.com12

reddit.com9

gartner.com7

cnicsolutions.com6

cyberpress.org5

cyberwise.almontsf.com5

deel.com5

solutionsinsider.com5

valydex.com5

Seventy-five of the seventy-five domain citations in answers naming ESET came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

gbhackers.com/best-business-antivirus-compared16

huntress.com/internal-it-cybersecurity-guide/best-endpoint-protection-for-small-businesses11

gbhackers.com/best-edr-solutions-compared7

cyberpress.org/business-antivirus-by-business-size5

cyberwise.almontsf.com/best-endpoint-protection-small-business5

deel.com/blog/best-endpoint-protection-for-business5

gartner.com/reviews/market/endpoint-protection-platforms5

cnicsolutions.com/cybersecurity-threat-protection/detection-response/best-endpoint-protect4

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 ESET'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 ESET, 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 eset.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.