85% of first choices, clear leader.
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 can't be told apart from repeat variation, and both are shown. Each index measures its own floor from its own repeat, over its own categories, so the floor differs from one index to the next. Both editions asked the same fourteen models. How the floor is measured
“Do not install this unless you are prepared to spend weeks maintaining the OWASP Core Rule Set (CRS). An unpatched open-source WAF is often less secure” Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt
“Imperva SecureSphere due to the documented critical bypass CVEs.” DeepSeek V4 Flash, negative prompt
“Out-of-the-box cloud WAF rules (e.g., basic default AWS WAF or Azure WAF rules) without fine-tuning either block legitimate traffic or miss application-specific flaws.” Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative prompt
“Avoid enterprise solutions (Imperva, Akamai, F5)” DeepSeek V4 Flash, budget prompt
70 of 84 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 14 of 14 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 762 links across 201 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page. 38 of the 252 answers across every segment cited this index's own page for the category; the method page measures whether that reading tilts an answer.
The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.
| Company and products | Share | Own site cited | Name searches, Google | AI search demand, est. | Organic visits | Paid search a month, est. | Google ads, last 30 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare parent site Cloudflare WAF 85%, Cloudflare Business Plan 2% | 87% | 185 | 550,000 | 10,897 | |||
| Sucuri WAF sucuri.net | 4% | 67 | 70 | 1 | 87,613 | 15 | |
| AWS parent site AWS WAF 2%, AWS Bot Control 0%, AWS WAF + Bot Control 0% | 2% | 154 | 368,000 | 114,001 | |||
| Imperva Cloud WAF imperva.com | 2% | 124 | 90 | 2 | 417,309 | ||
| Barracuda parent site Barracuda WAF 2%, Barracuda Web Application Firewall 0% | 2% | 18 | 201,000 | 10,561 | |||
| ModSecurity modsecurity.org | 2% | 38 | 590 | 55 | 1,098 | ||
| Fastly Next-Gen WAF fastly.com | 0% | 61 | 70 | 0 | 107,961 | $2,460 | 120 |
| Akamai parent site Akamai App & API Protector 0% | 0% | 96 | 27,100 | 1,614 | |||
| Fortinet parent site Fortinet FortiWeb 0% | 0% | 41 | 49,500 | 2,339 | |||
| Azure parent site Azure WAF 0%, Azure Web Application Firewall 0% | 0% | 49 | 301,000 | 47,904 |
Google's top ten for the three searches hold 24 sites; 3 of them are among the sites the models cited here (checkpoint.com, cloudflare.com, openappsec.io). The first result for “best web application firewall” is gartner.com.
| Prompt | Model | Version string | Time (UTC) | Searched | Sources | Latency |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Direct recommendation | Claude Haiku 4.5 | claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 | 2026-11-01 15:16 | yes | 10 | 7 s |
| Direct recommendation | GPT-5.4 mini | gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17 | 2026-11-01 14:29 | yes | 3 | 6 s |
| Direct recommendation | Gemini 3.5 Flash | gemini-3.6-flash (asked for gemini-3.5-flash; the API answered as this version) | 2026-11-01 15:09 | no | 0 | 16 s |
| Direct recommendation | Perplexity Sonar | sonar | 2026-11-01 14:23 | yes | 10 | 4 s |
| Direct recommendation | Grok 4.20 | spacexai/grok-4.20-non-reasoning via xai | 2026-11-01 18:23 | yes | 15 | 12 s |
| Direct recommendation | Mistral Small | mistral/mistral-small via mistral | 2026-11-01 19:16 | yes | 5 | 3 s |
| Direct recommendation | DeepSeek V4 Flash | deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra | 2026-11-01 14:59 | yes | 21 | 22 s |
| Direct recommendation | Llama 4 Maverick | meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock | 2026-11-01 18:26 | yes | 5 | 2 s |
| Direct recommendation | Qwen 3.7 Flash | alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba | 2026-11-01 14:18 | yes | 5 | 26 s |
| Direct recommendation | Kimi K2 | moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita | 2026-11-01 15:39 | yes | 18 | 29 s |
| Direct recommendation | GLM 4.7 FlashX | zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai | 2026-11-01 17:14 | yes | 17 | 170 s |
| Direct recommendation | MiniMax M2.5 | minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax | 2026-11-01 13:45 | yes | 5 | 84 s |
| Direct recommendation | GPT-6 Luna | gpt-6-luna | 2026-11-01 08:59 | yes | 3 | 15 s |
| Direct recommendation | Muse Glimmer 30B | meta/muse-glimmer-30b via togetherai | 2026-11-01 09:42 | yes | 14 | 18 s |
| Paraphrase | Claude Haiku 4.5 | claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 | 2026-11-01 11:22 | no | 0 | 5 s |
| Paraphrase | GPT-5.4 mini | gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17 | 2026-11-01 16:03 | yes | 3 | 6 s |
| Paraphrase | Gemini 3.5 Flash | gemini-3.6-flash (asked for gemini-3.5-flash; the API answered as this version) | 2026-11-01 08:50 | no | 0 | 18 s |
| Paraphrase | Perplexity Sonar | sonar | 2026-11-01 11:14 | yes | 10 | 5 s |
| Paraphrase | Grok 4.20 | spacexai/grok-4.20-non-reasoning via xai | 2026-11-01 15:17 | yes | 5 | 10 s |
| Paraphrase | Mistral Small | mistral/mistral-small via mistral | 2026-11-01 18:21 | yes | 10 | 9 s |
| Paraphrase | DeepSeek V4 Flash | deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra | 2026-11-01 15:01 | yes | 20 | 41 s |
| Paraphrase | Llama 4 Maverick | meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock | 2026-11-01 08:56 | yes | 5 | 3 s |
| Paraphrase | Qwen 3.7 Flash | alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba | 2026-11-01 17:05 | no | 0 | 32 s |
| Paraphrase | Kimi K2 | moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita | 2026-11-01 18:09 | yes | 25 | 29 s |
| Paraphrase | GLM 4.7 FlashX | zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai | 2026-11-01 16:54 | yes | 25 | 189 s |
| Paraphrase | MiniMax M2.5 | minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax | 2026-11-01 12:58 | no | 0 | 9 s |
| Paraphrase | GPT-6 Luna | gpt-6-luna | 2026-11-01 17:18 | yes | 3 | 12 s |
| Paraphrase | Muse Glimmer 30B | meta/muse-glimmer-30b via togetherai | 2026-11-01 11:57 | yes | 15 | 18 s |
| Comparative | Claude Haiku 4.5 | claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 | 2026-11-01 09:43 | yes | 10 | 8 s |
| Comparative | GPT-5.4 mini | gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17 | 2026-11-01 16:57 | yes | 6 | 8 s |
| Comparative | Gemini 3.5 Flash | gemini-3.6-flash (asked for gemini-3.5-flash; the API answered as this version) | 2026-11-01 10:15 | no | 0 | 14 s |
| Comparative | Perplexity Sonar | sonar | 2026-11-01 16:16 | yes | 10 | 7 s |
| Comparative | Grok 4.20 | spacexai/grok-4.20-non-reasoning via xai | 2026-11-01 15:45 | yes | 5 | 18 s |
| Comparative | Mistral Small | mistral/mistral-small via mistral | 2026-11-01 15:28 | yes | 5 | 6 s |
| Comparative | DeepSeek V4 Flash | deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra | 2026-11-01 15:50 | yes | 20 | 49 s |
| Comparative | Llama 4 Maverick | meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock | 2026-11-01 16:29 | yes | 5 | 3 s |
| Comparative | Qwen 3.7 Flash | alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba | 2026-11-01 11:08 | no | 0 | 28 s |
| Comparative | Kimi K2 | moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita | 2026-11-01 19:31 | yes | 10 | 26 s |
| Comparative | GLM 4.7 FlashX | zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai | 2026-11-01 16:07 | yes | 25 | 108 s |
| Comparative | MiniMax M2.5 | minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax | 2026-11-01 17:37 | yes | 15 | 27 s |
| Comparative | GPT-6 Luna | gpt-6-luna | 2026-11-01 17:15 | yes | 9 | 26 s |
| Comparative | Muse Glimmer 30B | meta/muse-glimmer-30b via togetherai | 2026-11-01 14:42 | yes | 15 | 29 s |
| Budget constrained | Claude Haiku 4.5 | claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 | 2026-11-01 15:29 | yes | 10 | 8 s |
| Budget constrained | GPT-5.4 mini | gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17 | 2026-11-01 14:45 | yes | 3 | 4 s |
| Budget constrained | Gemini 3.5 Flash | gemini-3.6-flash (asked for gemini-3.5-flash; the API answered as this version) | 2026-11-01 13:58 | yes | 8 | 22 s |
| Budget constrained | Perplexity Sonar | sonar | 2026-11-01 09:44 | yes | 10 | 3 s |
| Budget constrained | Grok 4.20 | spacexai/grok-4.20-non-reasoning via xai | 2026-11-01 16:35 | yes | 5 | 11 s |
| Budget constrained | Mistral Small | mistral/mistral-small via mistral | 2026-11-01 19:32 | yes | 5 | 4 s |
| Budget constrained | DeepSeek V4 Flash | deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra | 2026-11-01 10:51 | yes | 19 | 18 s |
| Budget constrained | Llama 4 Maverick | meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock | 2026-11-01 16:09 | yes | 5 | 3 s |
| Budget constrained | Qwen 3.7 Flash | alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba | 2026-11-01 10:47 | yes | 5 | 17 s |
| Budget constrained | Kimi K2 | moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita | 2026-11-01 09:44 | yes | 10 | 33 s |
| Budget constrained | GLM 4.7 FlashX | zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai | 2026-11-01 18:32 | yes | 10 | 140 s |
| Budget constrained | MiniMax M2.5 | minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax | 2026-11-01 10:50 | yes | 5 | 57 s |
| Budget constrained | GPT-6 Luna | gpt-6-luna | 2026-11-01 09:38 | yes | 3 | 11 s |
| Budget constrained | Muse Glimmer 30B | meta/muse-glimmer-30b via togetherai | 2026-11-01 13:38 | yes | 14 | 17 s |
| Scale constrained | Claude Haiku 4.5 | claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 | 2026-11-01 18:52 | no | 0 | 6 s |
| Scale constrained | GPT-5.4 mini | gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17 | 2026-11-01 13:42 | no | 0 | 6 s |
| Scale constrained | Gemini 3.5 Flash | gemini-3.6-flash (asked for gemini-3.5-flash; the API answered as this version) | 2026-11-01 11:17 | no | 0 | 19 s |
| Scale constrained | Perplexity Sonar | sonar | 2026-11-01 15:00 | yes | 10 | 8 s |
| Scale constrained | Grok 4.20 | spacexai/grok-4.20-non-reasoning via xai | 2026-11-01 14:19 | yes | 10 | 14 s |
| Scale constrained | Mistral Small | mistral/mistral-small via mistral | 2026-11-01 11:00 | no | 0 | 6 s |
| Scale constrained | DeepSeek V4 Flash | deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra | 2026-11-01 18:24 | yes | 20 | 63 s |
| Scale constrained | Llama 4 Maverick | meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock | 2026-11-01 12:33 | yes | 5 | 3 s |
| Scale constrained | Qwen 3.7 Flash | alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba | 2026-11-01 15:14 | no | 0 | 21 s |
| Scale constrained | Kimi K2 | moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita | 2026-11-01 14:30 | yes | 14 | 23 s |
| Scale constrained | GLM 4.7 FlashX | zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai | 2026-11-01 17:54 | yes | 10 | 17 s |
| Scale constrained | MiniMax M2.5 | minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax | 2026-11-01 18:02 | no | 0 | 23 s |
| Scale constrained | GPT-6 Luna | gpt-6-luna | 2026-11-01 09:39 | yes | 4 | 18 s |
| Scale constrained | Muse Glimmer 30B | meta/muse-glimmer-30b via togetherai | 2026-11-01 14:18 | yes | 14 | 20 s |
| Negative framing | Claude Haiku 4.5 | claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 | 2026-11-01 08:37 | yes | 18 | 9 s |
| Negative framing | GPT-5.4 mini | gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17 | 2026-11-01 18:26 | yes | 6 | 8 s |
| Negative framing | Gemini 3.5 Flash | gemini-3.6-flash (asked for gemini-3.5-flash; the API answered as this version) | 2026-11-01 09:02 | yes | 8 | 19 s |
| Negative framing | Perplexity Sonar | sonar | 2026-11-01 10:00 | yes | 10 | 5 s |
| Negative framing | Grok 4.20 | spacexai/grok-4.20-non-reasoning via xai | 2026-11-01 19:20 | yes | 14 | 15 s |
| Negative framing | Mistral Small | mistral/mistral-small via mistral | 2026-11-01 17:55 | yes | 5 | 5 s |
| Negative framing | DeepSeek V4 Flash | deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra | 2026-11-01 17:41 | yes | 23 | 30 s |
| Negative framing | Llama 4 Maverick | meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock | 2026-11-01 12:57 | yes | 5 | 3 s |
| Negative framing | Qwen 3.7 Flash | alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba | 2026-11-01 13:29 | no | 0 | 33 s |
| Negative framing | Kimi K2 | moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita | 2026-11-01 19:14 | yes | 10 | 15 s |
| Negative framing | GLM 4.7 FlashX | zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai | 2026-11-01 11:18 | yes | 25 | 56 s |
| Negative framing | MiniMax M2.5 | minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax | 2026-11-01 12:54 | yes | 25 | 67 s |
| Negative framing | GPT-6 Luna | gpt-6-luna | 2026-11-01 09:43 | yes | 3 | 14 s |
| Negative framing | Muse Glimmer 30B | meta/muse-glimmer-30b via togetherai | 2026-11-01 12:17 | yes | 24 | 37 s |
Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.
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