# Compensation benchmarking data: what AI models recommend, September 2026

Gane Index, September 2026 Edition. Asked as "salary benchmarking data provider" and as "compensation survey data", six framings each, to twelve models with search on, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. Page: https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/rewards/compensation-benchmarking-data/2026-09

This is the permanent record of the September 2026 Edition, published September 17, 2026 and superseded since. The current standing: https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/rewards/compensation-benchmarking-data/index.md

**Standing:** Payscale leads with 24% of first choices; verdict contested. 50 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| Rank | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | [Payscale](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/payscale/index.md) | 24% | 21% | 28 |
| 2 | [Pave](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/pave/index.md) | 20% | 0% | 25 |
| 3 | [Comprehensive.io](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/comprehensive-io/index.md) | 12% | 0% | 13 |
| 5 | [Mercer Total Remuneration Survey](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/mercer-total-remuneration-survey/index.md) | 6% | 43% | 28 |
| 7 | [Radford](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/radford/index.md) | 4% | 37% | 27 |
| 9 | [Salary.com CompAnalyst](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/salary-com-companalyst/index.md) | 2% | 5% | 20 |
| 19 | [Ravio](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/ravio/index.md) | 0% | 0% | 22 |
| 28 | [WTW](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/wtw/index.md) | 0% | 30% | 10 |

Rank is by share of first choices among all 134 products named; products with the same share are tied, and the order among them carries no meaning. The table lists those with at least 10 labels.

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: Payscale; alternatives Lattice, SalaryCube, beqom
- GPT-5.4 mini: Payscale; alternatives Radford, Salary.com CompAnalyst
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: Pave; alternatives Carta Total Compensation, Figures, Payscale, Radford
- Perplexity Sonar: Payscale; alternatives Ravio, SalaryCube
- Grok 4.20: Payscale; alternatives Pave, Salary.com CompAnalyst
- Mistral Small: SalaryCube; alternatives Pave, Payfactors, Salary.com CompAnalyst
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: Payscale; alternatives ERI, Pave, Ravio, Salary.com CompAnalyst
- Llama 4 Maverick: Payscale
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Payscale; alternatives Pave, Payfactors, Salary.com CompAnalyst, SalaryCube
- Kimi K2: Payscale, SalaryCube; alternatives Mercer Total Remuneration Survey, Radford, Salary.com CompAnalyst
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: Pave; alternatives Aon Radford, CaptivateIQ, Ficstar, Mercer Total Remuneration Survey
- MiniMax M2.5: Payscale; alternatives Comprehensive.io

## Sources the answers cite

62 of 72 answers came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- ravio.com: 41 answers, 103 citations
- comprehensive.io: 34 answers, 40 citations
- worldmetrics.org: 21 answers, 52 citations
- salarycube.com: 20 answers, 33 citations
- hrtechsaas.com: 17 answers, 18 citations
- captivateiq.com: 15 answers, 15 citations
- ficstar.com: 15 answers, 15 citations
- zipdo.co: 14 answers, 19 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://comprehensive.io/content/best-compensation-benchmarking-data-sources (33 answers)
- https://ravio.com/blog/compensation-benchmarking-companies (30 answers)
- https://ravio.com/blog/the-best-tools-for-salary-benchmarking (18 answers)
- https://hrtechsaas.com/blog/best-compensation-benchmarking-tools (17 answers)
- https://captivateiq.com/blog/compensation-benchmarking-software (15 answers)
- https://ficstar.com/best-compensation-benchmarking-data-providers-2026 (15 answers)
- https://ravio.com/blog/salary-survey-providers (11 answers)
- https://worldmetrics.org/service/it-benchmarking (11 answers)
- https://g2.com/discussions/what-salary-benchmarking-solutions-work-well-for-mid-market-teams-that-need-solid-comp-data-without-paying-for-a-radford-or-mercer-report-every-year (10 answers)
- https://pin.com/blog/salary-benchmarking-tools (10 answers)

## Warned against

- Mercer Total Remuneration Survey: 12 of 28 labels negative. "Avoid over-investing in Mercer/WTW unless you have global complexity" (Kimi K2, paraphrase prompt)
- Radford: 10 of 27 labels negative. "What to Avoid on a Limited Budget ... enterprise-grade pricing with far more data than most small/mid-market companies need" (Kimi K2, budget prompt)
- Glassdoor: 6 of 8 labels negative. "Use these for market signals only. Do not use them for making concrete compensation decisions" (Qwen 3.7 Flash, scale prompt)
- UserBenchmark: 4 of 4 labels negative. "UserBenchmark - Has received numerous complaints about: Severe bias toward certain hardware manufacturers" (MiniMax M2.5, negative prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/methodology
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as Gane Index, September 2026 Edition, www.gane.ai/index/hr.