Every category where a model named NGINX 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
API gateways	Developer platform	0%	13 of 51	27%	15	criticized challenger
DDoS protection	Network and edge	0%	34 of 51	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Cloudflare at 93%
Web application firewalls	Network and edge	0%	69 of 87	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Cloudflare at 55%

Movement

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

Direct3 labelsNone

Paraphrase3 labelsNone

Comparative14 labelsNone

Budget-constrained7 labelsNone

Scale-constrained4 labelsNone

Negative15 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative46 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.

“Limited API-specific features - More of a reverse proxy than full API management” Kimi K2 · API gateways · comparative prompt · alternative

“Highest raw performance / low latency at scale? \u2192 NGINX or Kong” DeepSeek V4 Flash · API gateways · comparative prompt · alternative

“Starting out, <10 services, low traffic | NGINX (simplest, no cost)” GLM 4.7 FlashX · API gateways · budget prompt · alternative

“Lightweight Option ... Best for: Simple use cases” Kimi K2 · API gateways · 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.

“Using raw NGINX or HAProxy *strictly* as an API Gateway is risky.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · API gateways · negative prompt · hard negative

“While not a full-featured API gateway, it can serve basic gateway functions” Claude Haiku 4.5 · API gateways · budget prompt · soft negative

“can become less budget-friendly once you need enterprise features” GPT-5.4 mini · API gateways · budget prompt · soft negative

“Limitations: Less native API management than dedicated gateways” MiniMax M2.5 · API gateways · comparative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as NGINX, over the 46 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and NGINX was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Kong Gateway44 of 4617Not in the top three

Amazon API Gateway41 of 465Not in the top three

Apigee32 of 464Not in the top three

Tyk32 of 462Not in the top three

Azure API Management28 of 460Not in the top three

Traefik22 of 460Not in the top three

Zuplo17 of 468Not in the top three

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform16 of 461Not in the top three

Apache APISIX12 of 464Not in the top three

Gravitee8 of 460Not 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 NGINX. 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 32 of the 46 answers that named NGINX and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

geekflare.com22

zuplo.com21

toolradar.com20

api7.ai19

dupple.com15

reddit.com14

knoxcall.com9

dev.to8

medium.com8

tecmint.com8

144 of the 144 domain citations in answers naming NGINX came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

geekflare.com/guides/best-api-gateways22

toolradar.com/guides/best-api-gateways20

dupple.com/learn/best-api-gateways15

api7.ai/top-11-api-gateways-platforms-compared14

knoxcall.com/blog/article/best-api-gateways-small-teams-20269

zuplo.com/learning-center/best-api-gateways-20269

reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/1s36hm2/best_api_management_tools_for_smaller_companies8

tecmint.com/open-source-api-gateways-and-management-tools8

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as NGINX

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

NGINX / NGINX Plus 3Nginx 3

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 NGINX'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 NGINX, 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 nginx.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.