Small business=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 45 → 21 of 68
1 category · RankedRancher
65Judge labels
0First choices
16Negative labels
13 / 14Models named it
1Category
October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.8, every buyer segment counted.
Best standing
0% in Managed Kubernetes for mid-market buyers
Rank 10 of 52 in the mid-market standingaccepted challenger
0 of 14 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 14% of its 21 labels there were negative.
What the models named instead of Rancher →By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.
Small business18 of 76
0%13 labels
criticized challenger
Mid-market10 of 52
0%21 labels
accepted challenger
Enterprise12 of 52
0%29 labels
criticized challenger
In managed kubernetes · 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 Rancher 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managed Kubernetes platforms | Cloud and infrastructure | 0% | 10 of 52 | 14% | 21 | accepted challenger | ▼−2Since September 2026: 2% → 0%, −2 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
Movement
Since September 2026, Rancher held within the floor in its one category: no change cleared 11 points.
Best category · Managed Kubernetes · by segment
Mid-market▼−2Since September 2026: 2% → 0%, −2 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 2% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 9 pointsRank 7 → 10 of 46
Enterprise=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 13 → 10 of 47
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managed Kubernetes | 2% | 0% | ▼−2Since September 2026: 2% → 0%, −2 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 7 → 10 of 52 |
Shares here are read over the models both editions asked, so they can differ by a point or two from the standing above, which counts every model in this edition.
The floor is 11 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. Movement is read over the twelve models both editions asked; GPT-6 Luna, Muse Glimmer 30B joined this edition and are in the standing but not yet in the comparison. How the floor is measured · The editions
By model
How each model treated Rancher across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.ShowHide
By model
How each model treated Rancher across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.
ShowHide| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Kimi K2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
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
Direct13 labelsNone
Paraphrase1 labelNone
Comparative8 labelsNone
Budget-constrained2 labelsNone
Scale-constrained21 labelsNone
Negative20 labelsNone
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative65 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.
“If you need more control or have multi-cloud requirements, Rancher or Platform9 would be stronger choices.” MiniMax M2.5 · Managed Kubernetes · direct prompt · alternative
“best suited for platform engineering teams that want centralized cluster lifecycle management across clouds” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Managed Kubernetes · comparative prompt · alternative
“Best for: IT-centric mid-market companies with complex hybrid infrastructure requirements.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Managed Kubernetes · direct prompt · alternative
“Multi-cloud required | OpenShift or Rancher — portable, consistent experience” Kimi K2 · Managed Kubernetes · scale 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.
“These are not fully managed services; they require your team to handle significant operational overhead.” Mistral Small · Managed Kubernetes · negative prompt · soft negative
“Rancher has complex setup requiring solid Kubernetes knowledge upfront, is not beginner-friendly” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Managed Kubernetes · negative prompt · soft negative
“Rising costs... Support quality: User reports of subpar customer service” Kimi K2 · Managed Kubernetes · negative prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Rancher, over the 63 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Rancher was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Rancher, over the 63 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Rancher was named but was not.
ShowHideProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
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 Rancher. 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 57 of the 63 answers that named Rancher and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
spot.rackspace.com28
portainer.io27
northflank.com26
mirantis.com21
it-ai-index.com20
medium.com19
digitalocean.com18
blog.railway.com17
qovery.com16
dev.to15
207 of the 207 domain citations in answers naming Rancher came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
rancher.com is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Rancher takes 0% of first choices and Google Kubernetes Engine takes 43%.ShowHide
Search and answers
rancher.com is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Rancher takes 0% of first choices and Google Kubernetes Engine takes 43%.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimatesPosition for “managed kubernetes platform”
–
not in the top ten
Position for “managed kubernetes platforms”
–
not in the top ten
- Searches for its name, Google
- 12,100 a month (“rancher”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 30,642 a month
- Organic visits to its site
- about 11,297 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 1,417 · 163 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 6,148
- 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 editionShare of first choices
0%
rank 10 of 52 in managed kubernetes
Segment leader
43%
Google Kubernetes Engine
- First choices
- 0 across its categories
- Named in
- 63 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 57 of the answers that named it
Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read September 28, 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
ShowHide
What it publishes
ShowHideAddresses on rancher.com
1,417
subdomains included
Content
56
counted in the table below
Documentation
1,259
Product · Integration
6 · 0
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Template or tool | 34 | undated | |||
| Report or ebook | 19 | undated | |||
| Conference or event | 3 | undated |
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page rancher.com 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 September 29, 2026.
Names read as Rancher
What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Rancher; a claim can dispute any of them.
Rancher (by SUSE) 2Rancher (SUSE) 1Rancher (VMware Broadcom) 1Rancher/RKE2 1Rancher/RKE2 (via SUSE Rancher Prime) 1Rancher/SUSE 1SUSE Rancher 1
Follow Rancher
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
Rancher is its own company.ShowHide
The company
Rancher is its own company.
ShowHideIn its own words
Stated by the vendor, not checked- Positioning
- the open-source multi-cluster orchestration platform
- For
- operations teams
- Price stated
- Request pricing Fill out the form below to get detailed pricing from your regional sales team. rancher.com/pricing
- Free plan or trial
- Free trial on AWS rancher.com
- Certifications
- CMMC L2FIPS 140-2DISA STIGCIS benchmarksIron Bank standardCNCF-certified
- Not stated on the pages read
- Starting price, integrations, hosting, customers
What Rancher's own pages state, read September 28, 2026: rancher.com, rancher.com/pricing, rancher.com/government/security, rancher.com/products/rke, rancher.com/government/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 Rancher'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 Rancher, 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 Rancher by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Rancher 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 Rancher, 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.