Every category where a model named Sophos 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
Extended detection and response	Security operations	2%	11 of 61	29%	7	under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Defender XDR at 63%
Next-generation firewalls	Network and edge	0%	19 of 100	10%	10	accepted challenger
Endpoint protection	IT operations and endpoint	0%	26 of 99	25%	8	under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Defender for Cloud at 22%
Data loss prevention	Security operations	0%	77 of 84	100%	1	under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Purview DLP at 39%
SD-WAN	Network and edge	0%	22 of 53	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Fortinet Secure SD-WAN at 41%

Movement

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

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

Direct9 labels1

Paraphrase3 labelsNone

Comparative14 labelsNone

Budget-constrained4 labelsNone

Scale-constrained13 labels1

Negative24 labels1not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative67 labels in all, every segment counted; 2 of the 3 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.

“Sophos is widely considered the "sweet spot" for mid-market companies” Qwen 3.7 Flash · XDR · direct prompt · first choice

“Best For: Mid-market organizations or enterprises without a 24/7 internal security team that require a managed, hybrid-open XDR platform.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · XDR · comparative prompt · alternative

“Organizations wanting maximum simplicity or already using Sophos endpoints ... Very easy to manage.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Firewalls · scale prompt · alternative

“Sophos (for those prioritizing centralized management and synchronized endpoint security)” Mistral Small · 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.

“"DO NOT touch Sophos," "steaming pile of shit"” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Endpoint protection · negative prompt · hard negative

“such as some mentions of Carbon Black and Sophos on Reddit; these are useful signals but not authoritative enough to treat as a verdict” Perplexity Sonar · Endpoint protection · negative prompt · soft negative

“Older Sophos XG firewalls are notorious among sysadmins for frustratingly slow boot-up times, confusing menu layouts” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Firewalls · negative prompt · soft negative

“Some XDR platforms (such as CrowdStrike and Sophos) are cloud-only, which can be a limitation” Mistral Small · XDR · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Sophos, over the 67 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Sophos was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Fortinet24 of 675Not in the top three

Palo Alto Networks23 of 678Not in the top three

Check Point19 of 671Not in the top three

CrowdStrike Falcon14 of 674Not in the top three

SentinelOne14 of 672Not in the top three

Cisco14 of 670Not in the top three

Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR13 of 674Not in the top three

Bitdefender13 of 672Not in the top three

SentinelOne Singularity13 of 671Not in the top three

Microsoft Defender XDR11 of 675Not 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. 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 52 of the 67 answers that named Sophos and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

gbhackers.com23

cyberpress.org19

gartner.com19

cybersecuritynews.com16

paloaltonetworks.com15

decryptiondigest.com13

reddit.com12

sophos.comYour site12

g2.com10

expertinsights.com9

136 of the 148 domain citations in answers naming Sophos came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

gbhackers.com/best-xdr-platforms-compared10

gbhackers.com/best-business-antivirus-compared9

gartner.com/reviews/market/endpoint-protection-platforms8

cyberpress.org/business-antivirus-by-business-size7

cyberpress.org/xdr-platforms-by-business-size7

cybersecuritynews.com/best-xdr-platforms7

venn.com/learn/endpoint-security/endpoint-security-solutions7

decryptiondigest.com/blog/best-xdr-platforms-20266

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Sophos

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

Sophos (XGS Series) 2Sophos (Sophos Fusion & Secureworks Taegis) 1Sophos (XG Firewall) 1Sophos (XGS) 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'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, 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.