IT AI Index

Index › Vendors › NetSPI · September 2026 Edition

1 category · Ranked

NetSPI

63Judge labels

20First choices

3Negative labels

12 of 12Models named it

1Category

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.2, every buyer segment counted.

Best standing

40% in PTaaS for enterprise buyers

Rank 5 of 76 in the mid-market standingaccepted challenger

1 of 12 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 9% of its 22 labels there were negative.

By buyer segmentAn enterprise product: leader at enterprise, not named at small business.

Small business45 of 57

under the label threshold

In ptaas · 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 NetSPI 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
Penetration testing as a service	Security operations	2%	5 of 76	9%	22	accepted challenger

Movement

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

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

Direct16 labels8

Paraphrase15 labels9

Comparative20 labels7not counted in share

Budget-constrained7 labels3

Scale-constrained4 labelsNone

Negative1 label1not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative63 labels in all, every segment counted; 20 of the 28 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.

“NetSPI scores 4.9/5 ... Deep manual testing; platform for visibility/remediation; low false positives; G2 leader.” Grok 4.1 Fast · PTaaS · comparative prompt · first choice

“Use Coalfire for compliance needs or NetSPI for broad coverage across banking and government sectors.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · PTaaS · comparative prompt · first choice

“→ Cobalt or NetSPI (both offer PTaaS with strong compliance support and transparent pricing)” GLM 4.7 FlashX · PTaaS · direct prompt · first choice

“Top Service: NetSPI” GLM 4.7 FlashX · PTaaS · 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.

“Higher cost (often $20k‑$50k+ per engagement); less suited for continuous/subscription models” GLM 4.7 FlashX · PTaaS · paraphrase prompt · soft negative

“Good for growing B2B; pricier” Grok 4.1 Fast · PTaaS · direct prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as NetSPI, over the 63 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and NetSPI was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Synack50 of 633Not in the top three

Cobalt49 of 6310Not in the top three

Bishop Fox39 of 631Not in the top three

BreachLock29 of 633Not in the top three

HackerOne23 of 630Not in the top three

Astra Security18 of 634Not in the top three

NCC Group18 of 630Not in the top three

Mandiant16 of 630Not in the top three

Rapid715 of 631Not in the top three

Bugcrowd14 of 630Not 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 NetSPI. 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 57 of the 63 answers that named NetSPI and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

deepstrike.io44

synack.com44

stingrai.io31

underdefense.com31

techrepublic.com27

cybri.com24

softwaresecured.com24

brightdefense.com18

getastra.com18

redbotsecurity.com18

279 of the 279 domain citations in answers naming NetSPI came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

synack.com/blog/best-penetration-testing-companies37

underdefense.com/blog/penetration-testing-services29

techrepublic.com/article/best-penetration-testing-companies27

softwaresecured.com/post/top-10-penetration-testing-vendors20

redbotsecurity.com/penetration-testing-companies18

cybri.com/blog/best-penetration-testing-vendors17

deepstrike.io/blog/top-penetration-testing-as-a-service-ptaas17

deepstrike.io/blog/top-penetration-testing-companies17

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as NetSPI

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

NetSPI (Merged with Synack) 1Netspi 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 NetSPI'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 NetSPI, 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 netspi.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.