IT AI Index

Index › Vendors › Stoplight · September 2026 Edition

1 category · Named, not ranked

Stoplight

17Judge labels

1First choices

1Negative labels

9 of 12Models named it

1Category

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.2, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

7 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Stoplight was named 7 times in API management, where Kong Gateway led with 37%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business12 of 47

under the label threshold

Mid-market10 of 55

under the label threshold

Enterprise24 of 44

under the label threshold

In api management · 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 Stoplight 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
API management	Developer platform	2%	10 of 55	14%	7	under 10 labels · led by Kong Gateway at 37%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Stoplight 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 Stoplight 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	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	0	0	0
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	0	1	1
Mistral Small	1	0	0	0	1
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	1	0	0	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	1	0	0	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	1	0	1
Kimi K2	0	1	0	0	1
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0	0	0
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

Direct2 labelsNone

Paraphrase6 labels1

Comparative3 labelsNone

Budget-constrained1 labelNone

Scale-constrained3 labelsNone

Negative2 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative17 labels in all, every segment counted; 1 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.

“SwaggerHub and Stoplight are the top recommendations” Mistral Small · API management · paraphrase prompt · first choice

“Stoplight — best for a design-first workflow (visual editing, mocking)” DeepSeek V4 Flash · API management · paraphrase prompt · alternative

“### For Design-First Teams: Stoplight (acquired by SmartBear)” Kimi K2 · API management · paraphrase prompt · alternative

“Other options to consider are Stoplight, SwaggerHub, and Redocly” Llama 4 Maverick · API management · paraphrase 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.

“Free for design/testing, but lighter on full management.” Grok 4.1 Fast · API management · budget prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Stoplight, over the 17 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Stoplight was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Kong Gateway15 of 173Not in the top three

Postman11 of 175Not in the top three

Amazon API Gateway10 of 170Not in the top three

Zuplo9 of 173Not in the top three

Tyk9 of 171Not in the top three

Apigee7 of 171Not in the top three

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform7 of 170Not in the top three

SwaggerHub6 of 171Not in the top three

Azure API Management6 of 170Not in the top three

ReadMe5 of 170Not 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 Stoplight. 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 14 of the 17 answers that named Stoplight and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

digitalapi.ai10

zuplo.com10

g2.com8

integrate.io8

moesif.com8

b2bsaastools.com5

checkthat.ai5

reddit.com5

swagger.io5

thectoclub.com5

Sixty-nine of the sixty-nine domain citations in answers naming Stoplight came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

integrate.io/blog/api-management-tools8

moesif.com/blog/technical/api-development/Top-API-Managers7

digitalapi.ai/blogs/best-api-lifecycle-management-tools6

g2.com/categories/api-management/small-business6

b2bsaastools.com/blog/best-b2b-saas-developer-portal-tools5

digitalapi.ai/blogs/best-api-developer-portals5

swagger.io/blog/best-api-lifecycle-management-platforms5

thectoclub.com/tools/best-api-management-tools5

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Stoplight

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

Postman/Stoplight 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 Stoplight'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 Stoplight, 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 stoplight.io 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.