Background screening · RankedSterling
Sterling is a background screening product for businesses, offered as Sterling Background Check Solutions, which is now part of First Advantage · sterlingcheck.com ↗
Strongest at enterprise. Ranked 71 of 75 for small business buyers.
The standing depends on who is buying. Every model is asked the same questions for each company size.
GoodHire is first at 42%.
Checkr is first at 53%. 0 of 14 models made it the first choice when asked directly.
Checkr is first at 46%.
Why models recommend it
“For large enterprises with complex, regulated programs → Sterling, First Advantage, or HireRight.”GLM 4.7 FlashX · Comparative question · alternative
“For global enterprises: Sterling or HireRight offer unmatched international coverage”MiniMax M2.5 · Comparative question · alternative
“Choose Sterling for regulated industries or more complex criminal-screening needs.”Perplexity Sonar · Comparative question · alternative
“consider alternative providers such as Checkr, Sterling, and HireRight”Llama 4 Maverick · Negative question · alternative
What gives them pause
“Common complaints: Extremely slow turnaround times, frequent delays, and missed start dates; poor communication and slow support”GLM 4.7 FlashX · Negative question · warning
“Sterling Infosystems, Inc. FCRA Class Action... charging Sterling Infosystems with sloppy background reports”Muse Glimmer 30B · Negative question · warning
“Repeated complaints about weeks-long delays, sending incorrect background checks to employers”DeepSeek V4 Flash · Negative question · warning
“Sterling is another large competitor that receives harsh criticism”Qwen 3.7 Flash · Negative question · warning
Also on the shortlist
The products named in the same answers as Sterling, over the 89 answers that named it, and how often each was the first choice instead.
| Product | Named together | Picked instead | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 83 | 40 | View → | |
| 74 | 1 | View → | |
| 59 | 6 | View → | |
| 45 | 9 | View → | |
| 37 | 3 | View → | |
| 34 | 1 | View → | |
| 18 | 0 | View → | |
| 17 | 0 | View → | |
| 15 | 0 | View → | |
| 12 | 1 | View → |
What the models named instead of Sterling →
A side-by-side page exists where both products are among a category's top eight.
At a glance
Stated on Sterling's own site, not checked by Gane.
- For
- a business
How this is measured
Fourteen AI models from 12 labs are asked the same buying questions six ways, for three company sizes. Standings refresh every edition.
Gane sells AI visibility software. No company can pay to change a result.
Read the method →Sources returned with these answers
Fourteen of the fourteen models returned a source list in this edition: five return the pages they cited and nine the search results they consulted. These counts come from 81 of the 89 answers that named Sterling and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
209 of the 209 domain citations in answers naming Sterling came from a third party's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Warning | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 4 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Kimi K2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
What it publishes
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blog | 490 | 0 | 2024-12-01 | Background screening, Contingent workforce man | |
| News or press | 184 | undated | Background screening | ||
| Case study | 24 | 0 | 2013-11-01 | ||
| Webinar or virtual event | 16 | 0 | 2024-05-01 | ||
| Podcast or video | 13 | undated | Background screening | ||
| Conference or event | 11 | 0 | 2024-10-01 | ||
| Comparison | 5 | 0 | 2023-08-01 | ||
| Template or tool | 5 | 0 | 2022-05-01 | Background screening | |
| Report or ebook | 2 | undated | |||
| Glossary or explainer | 2 | 0 | 2021-01-01 |
Most recent
- 2024-12-01Paving the way to hiring efficiencies the need to effectively manage your non regulated employees blog
- 2024-11-01Holiday hiring surge best practices for fast effective background checks in retail blog
- 2024-11-01Paving the way to hiring efficiencies assess driver risk with ongoing monitoring blog
- 2024-10-01Top takeaways from the 2024 hr tech conference 2 conference or event
- 2024-10-01Will your drivers dui show up on an employment background check blog
- 2024-10-01Pittsburgh limits employment drug testing for individuals with medical marijuana cards blog
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page sterlingcheck.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.