1 category · RankedLet's Encrypt
Standing by category
| Category | Function | Share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Quadrant | Since September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Certificate lifecycle management | Identity and access | 6% | 7 of 104 | 43% | 7 | under 10 labels · led by Sectigo Certificate Manager at 27% |
Movement
By model
How each model treated Let's Encrypt across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.ShowHide
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Grok 4.1 Fast | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Kimi K2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
By framing
What the models said for it
Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.
“Start with Let's Encrypt for basic public SSL needs, or AWS Certificate Manager if you're AWS-native.” Kimi K2 · Certificate management · budget prompt · first choice
“Kubernetes workloads or public-facing TLS: Start with cert-manager + Let's Encrypt. Both are free” GPT-6 Luna · Certificate management · budget prompt · first choice
“Spend zero dollars on Certbot/Let's Encrypt first.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Certificate management · budget 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.
“Self-managed solutions - Let's Encrypt + scripts - becomes unmanageable at scale” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Certificate management · paraphrase prompt · hard negative
“Free certificates, but requires a dedicated DevOps engineer to write and maintain the automation scripts. High operational risk.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Certificate management · paraphrase prompt · soft negative
“Not necessarily "avoid," but be aware of significant limitations: No technical support” Kimi K2 · Certificate management · negative prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Let's Encrypt, over the 19 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Let's Encrypt was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
What carried it into the answer
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 18 of the 19 answers that named Let's Encrypt and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
Seventy of the seventy domain citations in answers naming Let's Encrypt came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
letsencrypt.org is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Let's Encrypt takes 6% of first choices and Sectigo Certificate Manager takes 27%.ShowHide
Search and answers
In search
Google, US estimates- Searches for its name, Google
- 8,100 a month (“let's encrypt”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 719 a month
- Organic visits to its site
- about 135,310 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 7,841 · 867 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 48,528
- Paid Google search
- No ads found in the estimate; that does not mean it runs none
In answers
This edition- First choices
- 9 across its categories
- Named in
- 19 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 18 of the answers that named it
Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read October 5, 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
ShowHide| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-11 to 2026-10 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glossary or explainer | 209 | 0 | 2019-08-31 | ||
| Comparison | 36 | 0 | 2026-04-15 | ||
| Report or ebook | 13 | 0 | 2019-03-07 | ||
| Conference or event | 3 | 0 | 2018-08-29 | ||
| Webinar or virtual event | 2 | 0 | 2026-07-02 | ||
| Template or tool | 1 | 0 | 2018-03-25 |
Most recent
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page letsencrypt.org 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 October 5, 2026.
Names read as Let's Encrypt
Follow Let's Encrypt
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
Let's Encrypt is its own company.ShowHide
The company
In its own words
Stated by the vendor, not checked- Positioning
- a free, automated, and open Certificate Authority
- For
- websites
- Price stated
- free letsencrypt.org
- Free plan or trial
- free TLS certificates letsencrypt.org
- Not stated on the pages read
- Starting price, integrations, certifications, hosting, customers
What Let's Encrypt's own pages state, read October 5, 2026: letsencrypt.org. A claimed page can correct any of them.
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 Let's Encrypt'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 Let's Encrypt, 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 Let's Encrypt by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Let's Encrypt 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 Let's Encrypt, 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.