Every category where a model named Nuclei 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
Dynamic application security testing	Developer platform	0%	18 of 58	22%	9	under 10 labels · led by OWASP ZAP at 29%
Vulnerability management platforms	Security operations	0%	23 of 77	0%	3	under 10 labels · led by Rapid7 InsightVM at 30%	=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
Attack surface management	Security operations	0%	31 of 100	0%	2	under 10 labels · led by Intruder at 49%	=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
API security platforms	Security operations	0%	50 of 93	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Aikido Security at 12%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Nuclei yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment and per category, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Nuclei across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.

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Model	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	1	0	0	1
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	2	0	0	2
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	1	1
Grok 4.20	1	1	0	2
Mistral Small	0	0	0	0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	0	0	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	1	0	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	0	0	1
Kimi K2	1	0	0	1
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	1	0	1
MiniMax M2.5	1	0	0	1
GPT-6 Luna	0	0	1	1
Muse Glimmer 30B	1	1	0	2

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

Direct0 labelsNone

Paraphrase1 labelNone

Comparative6 labels1not counted in share

Budget-constrained21 labelsNone

Scale-constrained1 labelNone

Negative7 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative36 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 1 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.

“Other free/open options often paired with ZAP for a budget stack are Nuclei, Dastardly, Wapiti and Nikto” Muse Glimmer 30B · DAST · budget prompt · alternative

“free scanners like OpenVAS and Nuclei are useful, but they won't run the remediation process for you” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Vuln management · budget prompt · alternative

“Free (OSS) | Fast CVE checks | Template-based; great for known issues across hosts.” Grok 4.20 · DAST · budget prompt · alternative

“Secondary Scanner: Install Nuclei to run rapid template-based checks” Qwen 3.7 Flash · DAST · 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.

“Nikto or Nuclei as your *only* DAST tool. ... not as substitutes for broad application crawling and authenticated testing.” GPT-6 Luna · DAST · negative prompt · soft negative

“highlighted for speed, but it is not the same as a full-featured DAST platform” Perplexity Sonar · DAST · budget prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

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

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ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

OWASP ZAP24 of 3616Not among the top eight

Burp Suite16 of 361Not among the top eight

Intruder13 of 364Not among the top eight

StackHawk12 of 362Not among the top eight

OpenVAS7 of 362Not among the top eight

ManageEngine Vulnerability Manager Plus6 of 362Not among the top eight

Invicti6 of 361Not among the top eight

Acunetix5 of 360Not among the top eight

Detectify5 of 360Not among the top eight

HCL AppScan5 of 360Not among the top eight

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 Nuclei. 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 35 of the 36 answers that named Nuclei and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

appsecsanta.com16

beaglesecurity.com15

aikido.dev13

safeguard.sh13

getastra.com12

checkmarx.com9

escape.tech9

itechguides.com9

stackhawk.com9

devtoollab.com8

113 of the 113 domain citations in answers naming Nuclei came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

aikido.dev/blog/top-dynamic-application-security-testing-dast-tools11

getastra.com/blog/dast/tools10

devtoollab.com/blog/best-dast-tools8

appsecsanta.com/dast-tools/free-dast-tools7

escape.tech/blog/dast-tools-buyers-guide7

stackhawk.com/blog/dynamic-application-security-testing-tools-comparison7

checkmarx.com/learn/dast/dast-tools-key-features-and-12-solutions-to-know-in-20266

getautonoma.com/blog/dast-tools6

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

nuclei.ai is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Nuclei takes 0% of first choices and OWASP ZAP takes 29%.

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In search

Google, US estimates

Position for “dast tool”

–

not in the top ten

Position for “dast tools”

–

not in the top ten

Searches for its name, Google: 201,000 a month (“nuclei”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 2,610 a month

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

rank 18 of 58 in DAST

Segment leader

29%

OWASP ZAP

First choices: 0 across its categories
Named in: 36 answers
Its own site cited: in 35 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.

Follow Nuclei

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.

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 Nuclei'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 Nuclei, 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 Nuclei by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Nuclei 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 Nuclei, 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.