Small business▲+3Since September 2026: 4% → 8%, +3 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
8%from 4% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 8 pointsRank 3 of 42, unchanged
3 categories · RankedTailscale
98Judge labels
9First choices
12Negative labels
14 / 14Models named it
3Categories
October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.8, every buyer segment counted.
Best standing
8% in ZTNA for small business buyers
Rank 7 of 66 in the mid-market standingaccepted challenger
0 of 14 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 24% of its 25 labels there were negative.
What the models named instead of Tailscale →By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.
Small business3 of 46
8%49 labels
accepted challenger
Mid-market7 of 66
2%25 labels
accepted challenger
Enterprise47 of 47
0%8 labels
under the label threshold
In ztna · 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 Tailscale 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zero trust network access | Network and edge | 2% | 7 of 66 | 24% | 25 | accepted challenger | ▲+2Since September 2026: 0% → 2%, +2 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
| Microsegmentation | Network and edge | 0% | 52 of 94 | 0% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by ColorTokens Xshield at 25% | |
| Network access control | Network and edge | 0% | 62 of 111 | 0% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by Portnox Cloud at 35% |
Movement
Since September 2026, Tailscale held within the floor in all three categories: no change cleared 11 points.
Best category · ZTNA · by segment
Mid-market▲+2Since September 2026: 0% → 2%, +2 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
2%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 9 pointsRank 8 → 7 of 64
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 16 → 44 of 44
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZTNA | 0% | 2% | ▲+2Since September 2026: 0% → 2%, +2 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 8 → 7 of 66 |
| Microsegmentation | 0% | 0% | newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now. | New this edition | Rank 52 of 94, unchanged |
| NAC | 0% | 0% | newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now. | New this edition | Rank 62 of 111, unchanged |
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 Tailscale 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 Tailscale 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 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Kimi K2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 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 labels1
Paraphrase19 labels3
Comparative25 labels2not counted in share
Budget-constrained22 labels2
Scale-constrained12 labels3
Negative11 labels1not counted in share
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative98 labels in all, every segment counted; 9 of the 12 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.
“Pure ZTNA (e.g., Twingate, Tailscale, Cloudflare Zero Trust): Great if you just want to kill the VPN and grant app-level access. Low overhead, easy to implement.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · ZTNA · scale prompt · first choice
“Tailscale: For rapid deployment and ease of use (avoid if you need strict compliance granularities)” Qwen 3.7 Flash · ZTNA · negative prompt · first choice
“Best for developer-friendly private networking: Tailscale, for engineering teams that need fast, lightweight secure remote access.” Muse Glimmer 30B · ZTNA · paraphrase prompt · alternative
“If you have a highly technical team, developers, or need a peer-to-peer mesh network ... Tailscale is the gold standard.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · ZTNA · budget 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.
“Good for developer-heavy environments, but operates more at network layer (Layer 4) than true application-layer zero trust” Kimi K2 · ZTNA · paraphrase prompt · soft negative
“may lack full enterprise ZTNA compliance (e.g., advanced posture or auditing) without self-hosting effort” Grok 4.20 · ZTNA · budget prompt · soft negative
“License concerns: 2024 BSL (Business Source License) switch raised community concerns” MiniMax M2.5 · ZTNA · negative prompt · soft negative
“but its free Personal plan is designated for non-commercial use” GPT-6 Luna · ZTNA · budget prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Tailscale, over the 98 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Tailscale was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Tailscale, over the 98 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Tailscale 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 Tailscale. 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 94 of the 98 answers that named Tailscale and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
petronellatech.com42
cyberpress.org40
cybersecuritynews.com38
startwithidentity.com34
zendikt.com31
portnox.com29
tailscale.comYour site28
comparitech.com26
twingate.com26
venn.com21
287 of the 315 domain citations in answers naming Tailscale came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
tailscale.com is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Tailscale takes 2% of first choices and Twingate takes 39%.ShowHide
Search and answers
tailscale.com is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Tailscale takes 2% of first choices and Twingate takes 39%.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimatesPosition for “ztna solution”
–
not in the top ten
Position for “ztna solutions”
–
not in the top ten
- Searches for its name, Google
- 165,000 a month (“tailscale”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 2,416 a month
- Organic visits to its site
- about 115,710 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 4,970 · 948 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 13,532
- Paid Google search
- 1 searches its ads show for, about 1 clicks and $0 a month (estimate)
In answers
This editionShare of first choices
2%
rank 7 of 66 in ZTNA
Segment leader
39%
Twingate
- First choices
- 9 across its categories
- Named in
- 98 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 94 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 tailscale.com
1,279
subdomains included
Content
495
counted in the table below
Documentation
664
Product · Integration
12 · 0
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blog | 408 | 6 | 2026-09-22 | ZTNA, PAM | |
| Case study | 39 | 0 | 2022-07-01 | ||
| Comparison | 27 | 0 | 2026-06-24 | ||
| Glossary or explainer | 8 | 2 | 2026-09-18 | PAM | |
| Webinar or virtual event | 4 | 0 | 2026-01-05 | ||
| Conference or event | 3 | 0 | 2025-12-08 | ||
| Report or ebook | 3 | 0 | 2026-01-05 | ||
| News or press | 2 | 0 | 2024-04-19 | ||
| Template or tool | 1 | 0 | 2026-01-05 |
Most recent
- 2026-09-22We're making Tailscale faster blog
- 2026-09-18What is Aperture? · Tailscale Docs glossary or explainer
- 2026-09-11Built in router nas vpns blog
- 2026-09-09Kubernetes operator 1102 blog
- 2026-08-31Tailcat: An open-source CLI for Tailscale’s WireGuard®, NAT traversal, and DERP blog
- 2026-08-31Easier building with tailscale blog
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page tailscale.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.
Follow Tailscale
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
Tailscale is its own company.ShowHide
The company
Tailscale is its own company.
ShowHideIn its own words
Stated by the vendor, not checked- Positioning
- The connectivity platform for devs, IT, and security teams. Zero Trust identity-based access that deploys in minutes and scales to every resource.
- For
- devs, IT, and security teams
- Price stated
- Pricing tailscale.com
- Starting price
- $0 tailscale.com/pricing
- Free plan or trial
- Start free tailscale.com
- Integrations claimed
- 100 tailscale.com
- Certifications
- SOC 2 Type II
- Hosting
- multiple regions
- Customers named
- InstacartCriblMercuryCorelightNotorious StudiosYugabyteCobalt SpeechBolt
What Tailscale's own pages state, read September 28, 2026: tailscale.com, tailscale.com/pricing, tailscale.com/security, tailscale.com/solutions/it, tailscale.com/customers. 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 Tailscale'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 Tailscale, 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 Tailscale by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Tailscale 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 Tailscale, 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.