Small business▼−4Since September 2026: 27% → 23%, −4 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
23%from 27% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 7 pointsRank 2 of 68, unchanged
1 category · RankedGoogle Kubernetes Engine
216Judge labels
58First choices
46Negative 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
43% in Managed Kubernetes for mid-market buyers
Rank 1 of 52 in the mid-market standingendorsed leader
11 of 14 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 15% of its 75 labels there were negative.
What the models named instead of Google Kubernetes Engine →By buyer segmentStrongest at mid-market.
Small business2 of 76
25%71 labels
criticized challenger
Mid-market1 of 52
43%75 labels
endorsed leader
Enterprise1 of 52
31%70 labels
endorsed leader
In managed kubernetes · 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 Google Kubernetes Engine 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managed Kubernetes platforms | Cloud and infrastructure | 43% | 1 of 52 | 15% | 75 | endorsed leader | ▲+3Since September 2026: 39% → 42%, +3 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
Movement
Since September 2026, Google Kubernetes Engine held within the floor in its one category: no change cleared 11 points.
Best category · Managed Kubernetes · by segment
Mid-market▲+3Since September 2026: 39% → 42%, +3 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
42%from 39% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 8 pointsRank 1 of 46, unchanged
Enterprise▼−3Since September 2026: 33% → 30%, −3 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
30%from 33% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 8 pointsRank 1 of 47, unchanged
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managed Kubernetes | 39% | 42% | ▲+3Since September 2026: 39% → 42%, +3 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 1 of 52, 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 Google Kubernetes Engine 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 Google Kubernetes Engine 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 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 5 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 3 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 6 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| Grok 4.20 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| Mistral Small | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| Kimi K2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 6 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
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
Direct34 labels21
Paraphrase37 labels23
Comparative37 labels22not counted in share
Budget-constrained31 labels3
Scale-constrained34 labels11
Negative43 labels10not counted in share
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative216 labels in all, every segment counted; 58 of the 90 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.
“choose GKE Autopilot if you are building greenfield or starting fresh—its operational simplicity is like having an extra full-time DevOps engineer” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Managed Kubernetes · direct prompt · first choice
“Offers the most polished managed Kubernetes experience from any hyperscaler, with Autopilot mode that removes node management entirely” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Managed Kubernetes · comparative prompt · first choice
“most organizations are best served by GKE (Google) or AKS (Azure) \u2014 generally considered the most mature managed offerings” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Managed Kubernetes · negative prompt · first choice
“It is widely considered the most stable and reliable option among the "Big Three," with high availability built-in from day one.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Managed Kubernetes · comparative 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.
“Avoid EKS / AKS / GKE if you need low operational overhead on a tight budget or want maximum portability.” Muse Glimmer 30B · Managed Kubernetes · negative prompt · hard negative
“Avoid for tight budgets: Big 3 (GKE/AKS/EKS) due to control plane fees” Grok 4.20 · Managed Kubernetes · budget prompt · hard negative
“Avoid the big three (AWS EKS, GCP GKE Standard, Azure AKS standard)” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Managed Kubernetes · budget prompt · hard negative
“Managed services like GKE Autopilot and EKS Fargate come with tradeoffs: less control over node configuration, higher per-pod costs, and vendor lock-in.” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Managed Kubernetes · negative prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Google Kubernetes Engine, over the 208 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Google Kubernetes Engine was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Google Kubernetes Engine, over the 208 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Google Kubernetes Engine 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 Google Kubernetes Engine. 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 194 of the 208 answers that named Google Kubernetes Engine and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
spot.rackspace.com79
it-ai-index.com72
digitalocean.com71
northflank.com69
medium.com65
linkedin.com63
blog.railway.com61
dev.to61
portainer.io61
mirantis.com51
653 of the 653 domain citations in answers naming Google Kubernetes Engine came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
Where Google Kubernetes Engine stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.ShowHide
Search and answers
Where Google Kubernetes Engine stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimatesPosition for “managed kubernetes platform”
4
Position for “managed kubernetes platforms”
–
not in the top ten
- Searches for its name, Google
- 2,400 a month (“google kubernetes engine”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 15 a month
- Organic visits to its site
- about 7,405,347 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 70,320 · 16,032 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 201,334
- 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
43%
rank 1 of 52 in managed kubernetes
First choices
58
across its categories
- Named in
- 208 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 194 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 cloud.google.com
79
subdomains included
Content
67
counted in the table below
Documentation
6
Product · Integration
0 · 0
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blog | 37 | 14 | 2026-09-28 | API management | |
| Case study | 19 | undated | |||
| Conference or event | 4 | undated | |||
| Report or ebook | 2 | undated | |||
| Glossary or explainer | 2 | undated | |||
| Webinar or virtual event | 1 | undated | |||
| Template or tool | 1 | undated | |||
| News or press | 1 | undated |
Most recent
- 2026-09-28Storage optimized z4d vm and bare metal instances blog
- 2026-09-28Accelerate geospatial coding with ai in google earth engine blog
- 2026-09-25Storage intelligence advisor and batch operations updates blog
- 2026-09-25Memorystore for valkey 9 1 3x qps caching blog
- 2026-09-252026 gartner magic quadrant for container management blog
- 2026-09-24Gemini 3 8 live with live avatar is now generally available blog
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page cloud.google.com 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. An event counts as online when its address or title says so (webinar, on demand, virtual or online summit); a conference, summit, trade show, expo or roadshow that does not say so is counted as a conference or event, which on a vendor's site is mostly in person. Read September 29, 2026.
Names read as Google Kubernetes Engine
What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Google Kubernetes Engine; a claim can dispute any of them.
Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) 23Google GKE 18GKE 11GKE Autopilot 4Google GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine) 4Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Autopilot 4GKE (Google) 2AWS EKS / AKS / GKE 1GCP GKE 1GCP GKE Standard 1GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine) 1GKE Standard 1Google Cloud GKE 1Google GKE Autopilot 1
Follow Google Kubernetes Engine
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
Google Kubernetes Engine is its own company.ShowHide
The company
Google Kubernetes Engine is its own company.
ShowHideIn its own words
Stated by the vendor, not checked- Positioning
- Managed environment for running containerized apps.
- Not stated on the pages read
- Who it is for, price, starting price, free plan or trial, integrations, certifications, hosting, customers
What Google Kubernetes Engine's own pages state, read October 5, 2026: cloud.google.com. 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 Google Kubernetes Engine'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 Google Kubernetes Engine, 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 Google Kubernetes Engine by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Google Kubernetes Engine 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 Google Kubernetes Engine, 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.
Badges
Wins only: a badge exists where Google Kubernetes Engine is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.ShowHide
Badges
Wins only: a badge exists where Google Kubernetes Engine is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.
ShowHideAI models recommend Google Kubernetes Engine first in Managed Kubernetes platforms this edition. Each badge says so in the buyer's words, names the edition, and links to the standing. The next edition issues a new badge; this one stays true as a record of October 2026.
Wide · 320 × 104 Website, beside other badges
Square · 240 × 240 LinkedIn, slides
Compact · 200 × 56 Email signature, footer
Badges read on light and dark pages. Alt text carries the claim, the category, the edition and the index, so it stays a citation where the image does not load.