Every category where a model named FortiGate VM 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
Next-generation firewalls	Network and edge	2%	5 of 83	0%	2	under 10 labels · led by Fortinet FortiGate at 73%	newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now.

Movement

Since September 2026, FortiGate VM held within the floor in its one category: no change cleared 11 points.

Best category · Firewalls · by segment

Small business=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 17 → 20 of 87

Mid-marketnewNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now.

0%from 0% in September 2026

Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 33 of 73, unchanged

EnterprisenewNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now.

0%from 0% in September 2026

Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 19 of 70, unchanged

All categories · Mid-market

Category	September 2026	Now	Change	Reading	Rank
Firewalls	0%	0%	newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now.	New this edition	Rank 5 of 83, 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 FortiGate VM 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	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	0
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0
Grok 4.20	0	0	0
Mistral Small	0	0	0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	1	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	0
Kimi K2	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0
GPT-6 Luna	0	0	0
Muse Glimmer 30B	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

Direct0 labelsNone

Paraphrase7 labels1

Comparative0 labelsNone

Budget-constrained0 labelsNone

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative0 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative7 labels in all, every segment counted; 1 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.

“Fortinet FortiGate appliance for HQ / data center and FortiGate-VM for cloud / remote sites is the practical default” Muse Glimmer 30B · Firewalls · paraphrase prompt · first choice

“Best Virtual Firewall for Mid-Sized B2B” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Firewalls · 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.

No model argued against it.

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as FortiGate VM, over the 7 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and FortiGate VM was named but was not.

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ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Sophos Firewall4 of 72Not among the top eight

Fortinet FortiGate4 of 71Not among the top eight

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series3 of 70Not among the top eight

WatchGuard Firebox2 of 71Not among the top eight

FortiGate 90G1 of 71Not among the top eight

Fortinet FortiGate 80F1 of 71Not among the top eight

Palo Alto Networks NGFW1 of 71Not among the top eight

70G1 of 70Not among the top eight

Check Point CloudGuard1 of 70Not among the top eight

Check Point Quantum1 of 70Not 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 FortiGate VM. 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 7 of the 7 answers that named FortiGate VM and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

cyberpress.org5

fortinet.com5

learn.g2.com5

atera.com4

comparitech.com4

d.meter.com4

accio.com3

cybersecuritynews.com3

expertinsights.com3

firewalls.com3

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

Pages cited

cyberpress.org/best-next-generation-firewall-ngfw-solutions-for-every-business-size5

learn.g2.com/best-firewall-software5

atera.com/blog/best-firewall-appliances4

comparitech.com/net-admin/next-gen-firewalls4

d.meter.com/resources/enterprise-firewalls4

cybersecuritynews.com/best-next-generation-firewall3

expertinsights.com/network-security/the-top-network-firewalls3

thetoolstrunk.com/best-enterprise-firewall3

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as FortiGate VM

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

FortiGate-VM 2

Follow FortiGate VM

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

FortiGate is the company behind FortiGate VM.

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On record

Company records

Also from FortiGate: FortiGate 50G, FortiGate SD-WAN, FortiGate-VM NGFW

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

where FortiGate VM 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 FortiGate VM, 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.