Every category where a model named Vultr Kubernetes Engine 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
Managed Kubernetes platforms	Cloud and infrastructure	0%	11 of 48	9%	11	accepted challenger

Movement

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

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

Direct3 labelsNone

Paraphrase2 labelsNone

Comparative1 labelNone

Budget-constrained15 labelsNone

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative8 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative29 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.

“Best for IaC‑focused teams: Vultr VKE – free control plane, strong Terraform support” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Managed Kubernetes · budget prompt · alternative

“Best price-to-performance ratio ... More resources per dollar than competitors” Kimi K2 · Managed Kubernetes · budget prompt · alternative

“best if you want a budget-friendly option with broad datacenter coverage” Perplexity Sonar · Managed Kubernetes · budget prompt · alternative

“Other options to consider are Scaleway Kapsule, Hetzner, Linode, and Vultr” Llama 4 Maverick · Managed Kubernetes · 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.

“Feature gaps: Limited managed service integrations compared to hyperscalers” Kimi K2 · Managed Kubernetes · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Vultr Kubernetes Engine, over the 29 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Vultr Kubernetes Engine was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

DigitalOcean Kubernetes27 of 2917Not in the top three

Google Kubernetes Engine23 of 296Not in the top three

Amazon EKS22 of 294Not in the top three

Linode Kubernetes Engine22 of 293Not in the top three

Azure Kubernetes Service21 of 294Not in the top three

Civo16 of 298Not in the top three

Red Hat OpenShift9 of 292Not in the top three

Scaleway Kapsule9 of 290Not in the top three

Rancher7 of 290Not in the top three

Hetzner6 of 290Not 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 Vultr Kubernetes Engine. 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 26 of the 29 answers that named Vultr Kubernetes Engine and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

medium.com24

spot.rackspace.com19

blog.railway.com18

digitalocean.com16

dev.to14

reddit.com11

cloudpricecheck.com8

northflank.com8

lucaberton.com7

portainer.io7

132 of the 132 domain citations in answers naming Vultr Kubernetes Engine came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

spot.rackspace.com/blog/kubernetes-managed-services19

blog.railway.com/p/best-managed-kubernetes-hosting-202618

medium.com/@emilmatyjaszewski/top-4-cheapest-managed-kubernetes-providers-in-2024-fa27769017

medium.com/@BuildShift/15-managed-kubernetes-platforms-ranked-for-developers-2025-9c82acad14

dev.to/dev_tips/comparing-the-top-10-managed-kubernetes-providers-2025-edition-12h813

medium.com/@devlinktips/15-managed-kubernetes-platforms-ranked-for-developers-2025-9c82aca11

medium.com/@elliotgraebert/comparing-the-top-eight-managed-kubernetes-providers-2ae396623911

digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes10

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Vultr Kubernetes Engine

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

Vultr 6Vultr VKE 2Vultr Kubernetes (VKE) 1Vultr Kubernetes Engine (VKE) 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 Vultr Kubernetes Engine'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 Vultr Kubernetes Engine, 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 vultr.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.