Every category where a model named Sophos Firewall 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
Next-generation firewalls	Network and edge	2%	7 of 100	0%	13	accepted challenger

Movement

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

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

Direct9 labels3

Paraphrase7 labels1

Comparative10 labels4not counted in share

Budget-constrained4 labels2

Scale-constrained1 labelNone

Negative1 labelNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative32 labels in all, every segment counted; 6 of the 10 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 physical appliance (like Fortinet FortiGate or Sophos) at your edge” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Firewalls · paraphrase prompt · first choice

“Other options include Palo Alto Networks PA-Series and Sophos Firewall, which are also suitable for mid-market organizations.” Llama 4 Maverick · Firewalls · direct prompt · alternative

“Budget-conscious with AV focus | Easy XGS series, strong ransomware protection. | Mid-tier performance.” Grok 4.1 Fast · Firewalls · direct prompt · alternative

“The Best for Lean IT Teams: Sophos Firewall (XGS Series) ... choose Sophos” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Firewalls · direct 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.

No model argued against it.

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Sophos Firewall, over the 32 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Sophos Firewall was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Fortinet FortiGate27 of 3213Not in the top three

WatchGuard Firebox16 of 323Not in the top three

Cisco Secure Firewall12 of 320Not in the top three

Palo Alto Networks6 of 323Not in the top three

SonicWall TZ Series5 of 321Not in the top three

Palo Alto Networks PA-Series4 of 321Not in the top three

Check Point Quantum4 of 320Not in the top three

SonicWall4 of 320Not in the top three

Check Point3 of 320Not in the top three

Palo Alto Networks NGFW2 of 322Not 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 Sophos Firewall. 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 30 of the 32 answers that named Sophos Firewall and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

cybersecuritynews.com21

cyberpress.org20

comparitech.com18

enterprisenetworkingplanet.com12

esecurityplanet.com10

firewalls.com10

tech-insider.org10

fortinet.com9

techtarget.com9

blog.invgate.com8

127 of the 127 domain citations in answers naming Sophos Firewall came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

cybersecuritynews.com/best-next-generation-firewall21

cyberpress.org/best-next-generation-firewall-ngfw-solutions-for-every-business-size19

comparitech.com/net-admin/next-gen-firewalls14

enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/guides/best-firewalls-for-small-medium-business12

esecurityplanet.com/products/top-ngfw10

tech-insider.org/cisco-secure-firewall-vs-sophos-vs-watchguard-20269

blog.invgate.com/best-firewall-for-small-business8

mspcompared.com/best/firewall7

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Sophos Firewall

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

Sophos Firewall (XGS Series) 2Sophos Firewall (XGS) 2Sophos Firewall (XGS Series & Sophos Virtual) 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 Sophos Firewall'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 Sophos Firewall, 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 sophos.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.