Every category where a model named Fortinet 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
Next-generation firewalls	Network and edge	9%	2 of 100	26%	19	criticized challenger
Zero trust network access	Network and edge	0%	68 of 71	43%	7	under 10 labels · led by Cloudflare One at 35%
Extended detection and response	Security operations	0%	49 of 61	33%	6	under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Defender XDR at 63%
Endpoint protection	IT operations and endpoint	0%	42 of 99	0%	2	under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Defender for Cloud at 22%
Managed detection and response	Security operations	0%	36 of 45	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response at 39%

Movement

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

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0	1	1
GPT-5.4 mini	0	2	2	0	4
Gemini 3.5 Flash	2	1	0	2	5
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	1	0	3	1	5
Mistral Small	1	0	2	0	3
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0	3	1	4
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	1	0	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	2	3	1	7
Kimi K2	0	0	0	3	3
GLM 4.7 FlashX	1	0	0	0	1
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0	1	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

Direct14 labels2

Paraphrase8 labels4

Comparative20 labels3not counted in share

Budget-constrained5 labels2

Scale-constrained26 labels3

Negative25 labels2not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative98 labels in all, every segment counted; 11 of the 16 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 is currently the most deployed NGFW globally, holding a significant market share (~50%). It is widely recognized for its price-performance ratio.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Firewalls · comparative prompt · first choice

“Fortinet is widely considered the best choice for mid-sized businesses that want high performance and robust security without paying premium-tier pricing.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Firewalls · paraphrase prompt · first choice

“Fortinet FortiGate (appliance or virtual) is the best all-around choice due to its balance of performance, features, and cost.” Mistral Small · Firewalls · paraphrase prompt · first choice

“Best overall value, high-performance, distributed offices | Industry-leading price-to-performance.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Firewalls · scale prompt · first choice

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.

“20+ CVEs on CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog — among the highest for any firewall vendor ... Fortinet and SonicWall currently require the most aggressive hardening” Kimi K2 · Firewalls · negative prompt · hard negative

“CVE-2026-84393 - Certificate validation flaw in Agentless ZTNA | MITM attacks possible” Kimi K2 · ZTNA · negative prompt · hard negative

“Be cautious with Palo Alto and Fortinet; they are top-tier platforms, but you must be prepared to patch them constantly” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Firewalls · negative prompt · soft negative

“describe moving from traditional VPNs to Fortinet’s ZTNA implementation as an "administrative nightmare,"” Qwen 3.7 Flash · ZTNA · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Fortinet, over the 98 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Fortinet was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Palo Alto Networks57 of 9818Compare →

Check Point44 of 981Not in the top three

Cisco37 of 980Not in the top three

Sophos24 of 981Not in the top three

Zscaler16 of 983Not in the top three

SonicWall13 of 980Not in the top three

Netskope12 of 981Not in the top three

Check Point Harmony SASE12 of 980Not in the top three

Cloudflare One11 of 981Not in the top three

Zscaler Private Access10 of 984Not 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 Fortinet. 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 67 of the 98 answers that named Fortinet and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

decryptiondigest.com28

gartner.com27

fortinet.comYour site25

cybersecuritynews.com21

paloaltonetworks.com21

checkpoint.com17

expertinsights.com16

aimultiple.com14

sdxcentral.com14

comparitech.com13

171 of the 196 domain citations in answers naming Fortinet came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

decryptiondigest.com/blog/enterprise-ngfw-comparison-202613

comparitech.com/net-admin/next-gen-firewalls11

esecurityplanet.com/products/top-ngfw10

aimultiple.com/ztna-solutions9

akamai.com/site/en/documents/analyst-report/2024/kuppingercole-ztna-analyst-report.pdf9

expertinsights.com/network-security/the-top-zero-trust-network-access-solutions9

checkpoint.com/comparison/top-4-ngfw-compared8

wifihotshots.com/manufacturer-comparisons/enterprise-ngfw-platforms8

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Fortinet

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

Fortinet (FortiGate) 5Fortinet (FortiGate & FortiGate-VM) 1Fortinet (FortiGate+FortiClient) 1Fortinet (FortiOS) 1Fortinet (FortiXDR) 1

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 Fortinet'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 Fortinet, 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 fortinet.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.