Every category where a model named Quad9 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
DNS filtering	Network and edge	0%	10 of 94	11%	28	accepted challenger
Managed DNS	Network and edge	0%	54 of 78	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Cloudflare DNS at 84%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Quad9 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 Quad9 across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.

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Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	1	0	2	0	3
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	1	1	0	0	2
Perplexity Sonar	1	1	2	0	4
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	2	1	1	4
Mistral Small	0	0	2	0	2
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	2	0	0	3
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	1	0	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	2	0	0	2
Kimi K2	0	0	0	1	1
GLM 4.7 FlashX	1	1	0	1	3
MiniMax M2.5	1	0	1	0	2
GPT-6 Luna	1	0	0	0	1
Muse Glimmer 30B	0	0	1	0	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

Direct4 labelsNone

Paraphrase5 labels1

Comparative17 labels2not counted in share

Budget-constrained10 labels3

Scale-constrained3 labelsNone

Negative21 labels5not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative60 labels in all, every segment counted; 4 of the 11 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.

“A Swiss-based non-profit that offers robust, built-in threat/malware blocking. It keeps no personal logs and is highly secure.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · DNS filtering · negative prompt · first choice

“Services that meet these criteria include Quad9, CleanBrowsing, Control D, and Mullvad” GLM 4.7 FlashX · DNS filtering · negative prompt · first choice

“Quad9 (Switzerland) – No logs, malware blocking, independent and non-profit.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · DNS filtering · negative prompt · first choice

“Cloudflare and Quad9 are public DNS options committed to user privacy.” Claude Haiku 4.5 · DNS filtering · negative 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.

“Avoid free options like Quad9 for business use” Kimi K2 · DNS filtering · direct prompt · hard negative

“viable only if you have a very small team (≤ 10–15 users) and can accept limited analytics and no support” GLM 4.7 FlashX · DNS filtering · budget prompt · soft negative

“provide basic threat filtering but lack company-grade management, reporting, or custom policies” Grok 4.1 Fast · DNS filtering · budget prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Quad9, over the 60 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Quad9 was named but was not.

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ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

DNSFilter33 of 6014Not among the top eight

Cisco Umbrella33 of 605Not among the top eight

NextDNS31 of 605Not among the top eight

Cloudflare Gateway26 of 608Not among the top eight

Control D26 of 604Not among the top eight

CleanBrowsing19 of 601Not among the top eight

Cloudflare17 of 602Not among the top eight

OpenDNS17 of 600Not among the top eight

AdGuard DNS15 of 600Not among the top eight

WebTitan10 of 601Not 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 Quad9. 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 53 of the 60 answers that named Quad9 and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

controld.com37

cybersecuritynews.com27

sourceforge.net25

aimultiple.com24

dnsfilter.com22

cyberpress.org21

g2.com17

itechguides.com17

simplyit.biz17

geekflare.com15

222 of the 222 domain citations in answers naming Quad9 came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

aimultiple.com/dns-security24

simplyit.biz/resources/best-dns-filtering-small-business-202617

thectoclub.com/tools/best-dns-security-software15

bitlaunch.io/blog/the-best-dns-servers-for-privacy14

cybersecuritynews.com/best-dns-security-solutions14

geekflare.com/cybersecurity/best-dns-filtering-software14

devopsschool.com/blog/top-10-dns-filtering-platforms-features-pros-cons-comparison13

comparitech.com/net-admin/dns-filtering-tools12

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

quad9.net is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Quad9 takes 0% of first choices and DNSFilter takes 59%.

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In search

Google, US estimates

Position for “dns filtering service”

–

not in the top ten

Position for “dns filtering services”

–

not in the top ten

Searches for its name, Google: 5,400 a month (“quad9”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 235 a month
Organic visits to its site: about 5,594 a month
Searches its site ranks for: 266 · 80 in the top three
Sites linking to it: 5,157
Paid Google search: No ads found in the estimate; that does not mean it runs none

Ads on Google

None found in Google's ad transparency records for the US

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

rank 10 of 94 in DNS filtering

Segment leader

59%

DNSFilter

First choices: 4 across its categories
Named in: 60 answers
Its own site cited: in 53 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

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Addresses on quad9.net

481

subdomains included

Content

122

counted in the table below

Documentation

Product · Integration

0 · 0

Kind	Pages	Last 90 days
News or press	116	undated
Blog	2	undated
Webinar or virtual event	2	undated
Report or ebook	2	undated

How it is countedHide how it is counted

Every page quad9.net 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 Quad9

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Quad9; a claim can dispute any of them.

Quad9 (9.9.9.9) 3

Follow Quad9

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

Quad9 is its own company.

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In its own words

Stated by the vendor, not checked

Positioning: A public and free DNS service for a better security and privacy
quad9.net
For: Internet users
quad9.net
Price stated: free quad9.net
Free plan or trial: free quad9.net
Hosting: over 110 countries
Not stated on the pages read: Starting price, integrations, certifications, customers

What Quad9's own pages state, read October 5, 2026: quad9.net, quad9.net/es/index/security, quad9.net/about/partners. A claimed page can correct any of them.

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 Quad9'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 Quad9, 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 Quad9 by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Quad9 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 Quad9, 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.