Every category where a model named ModSecurity 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
Web application firewalls	Network and edge	0%	87 of 87	56%	18	criticized challenger

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for ModSecurity 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 ModSecurity 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	1	0	1	2
GPT-5.4 mini	1	0	0	1
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	1	1
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	1	0	1	2
Mistral Small	0	1	0	1
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	0	1	2
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	0	2	3
Kimi K2	1	0	2	3
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	1	1	2
MiniMax M2.5	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

Direct2 labelsNone

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative6 labelsNone

Budget-constrained11 labelsNone

Scale-constrained3 labelsNone

Negative14 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative36 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 0 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.

“For technical teams with some security expertise: ModSecurity ... gives you full control at zero software cost.” Kimi K2 · WAF · budget prompt · alternative

“the industry gold standard open-source option is ModSecurity with the OWASP Core Rule Set (CRS)” DeepSeek V4 Flash · WAF · budget prompt · alternative

“ModSecurity with OWASP Core Rule Set is the gold standard for free web application protection” Claude Haiku 4.5 · WAF · budget prompt · alternative

“Gold standard with OWASP CRS; requires technical setup/maintenance.” Grok 4.1 Fast · WAF · 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.

“Avoid: Unmanaged Open Source (ModSecurity/CoreRuleSet) ... Do not install this unless you have a dedicated security engineer” Qwen 3.7 Flash · WAF · negative prompt · hard negative

“Avoid running self-hosted, unmaintained ModSecurity engines on production servers.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · WAF · negative prompt · hard negative

“Completely free and self-hosted, but requires significant technical expertise to configure and maintain.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · WAF · comparative prompt · soft negative

“Excessive false positives (esp. SQLi/XSS rules); requires heavy tuning; crashes/bugs in older versions.” Grok 4.1 Fast · WAF · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as ModSecurity, over the 36 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and ModSecurity was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

AWS WAF26 of 363Not in the top three

Cloudflare22 of 3614Not in the top three

Imperva15 of 360Not in the top three

Sucuri14 of 361Not in the top three

Akamai14 of 360Not in the top three

Cloudflare WAF13 of 3610Not in the top three

Azure WAF8 of 360Not in the top three

Coraza8 of 360Not in the top three

Barracuda6 of 360Not in the top three

Fastly6 of 360Not 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 ModSecurity. 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 24 of the 36 answers that named ModSecurity and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

wafplanet.com17

openappsec.io16

cyberpress.org15

comparitech.com11

geekflare.com11

dev.to8

expertinsights.com8

reddit.com8

cybersecuritynews.com7

indusface.com6

107 of the 107 domain citations in answers naming ModSecurity came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

cyberpress.org/waf-solutions-by-business-size14

comparitech.com/net-admin/best-web-application-firewall11

geekflare.com/cybersecurity/best-web-application-firewall10

openappsec.io/post/best-waf-solutions-in-2024-2025-real-world-comparison10

openappsec.io/post/best-waf-solutions-in-2026-real-world-comparison10

wafplanet.com/best-waf-for/small-business9

expertinsights.com/network-security/the-top-web-application-firewalls8

wafplanet.com/6

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as ModSecurity

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

ModSecurity (open-source) 1ModSecurity (open-source, often with OWASP CRS) 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 ModSecurity'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 ModSecurity, 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 modsecurity.org 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.