3 categories · RankedBackstage
Backstage is an open-source foundation for building a custom internal developer portal · backstage.io ↗
Strongest at enterprise. Ranked 2 of 52 for small business buyers.
The standing depends on who is buying. Every model is asked the same questions for each company size.
Port is first at 69%.
Port is first at 57%. 0 of 14 models made it the first choice when asked directly.
Port is first at 44%.
Why models recommend it
“The Best Overall Choice (Zero Monetary Cost): Backstage ... the de facto industry standard for open-source developer portals”Qwen 3.7 Flash · Budget-constrained question · first choice
“Many teams start with Backstage for its flexibility but later discover they need more managed solutions”MiniMax M2.5 · Comparative question · first choice
“the best choice is usually open-source Backstage — if you can afford some engineering time”GPT-5.4 mini · Budget-constrained question · first choice
“The "original gangster" of developer portals... holds roughly 90% market share by adoption.”DeepSeek V4 Flash · Comparative question · first choice
What gives them pause
“it is arguably the biggest trap for companies without a dedicated "Platform Team" of at least 3–5 senior engineers”Qwen 3.7 Flash · Negative question · warning
“Avoid Backstage unless you have a dedicated platform engineering team and >1,000 developers”DeepSeek V4 Flash · Budget-constrained question · warning
“Avoid Self-Hosting Backstage unless you have 2+ dedicated platform engineers”Gemini 3.5 Flash · Direct question · warning
“Avoid or be cautious about Backstage if you expect a turnkey solution”Mistral Small · Negative question · warning
Also on the shortlist
The products named in the same answers as Backstage, over the 218 answers that named it, and how often each was the first choice instead.
| Product | Named together | Picked instead | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 190 | 95 | Compare → | |
| 128 | 5 | Compare → | |
| 110 | 4 | Compare → | |
| 88 | 8 | Compare → | |
| 86 | 10 | Compare → | |
| 64 | 2 | View → | |
| 40 | 3 | View → | |
| 33 | 4 | View → | |
| 12 | 2 | View → | |
| 12 | 1 | View → |
What the models named instead of Backstage →
A side-by-side page exists where both products are among a category's top eight.
At a glance
Stated on Backstage's own site, not checked by Gane.
- For
- your product teams
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 197 of the 218 answers that named Backstage and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
515 of the 616 domain citations in answers naming Backstage came from a third party's page. Fifty were to the publisher's own pages (the Gane Index), which the models cite like any other source; they are not counted as a third party.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Warning | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 5 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 4 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| Grok 4.20 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 6 |
| Mistral Small | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 6 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 1 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 6 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| Kimi K2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 6 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 6 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 1 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 6 |
What it publishes
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blog | 63 | 0 | 2026-04-20 | ||
| Glossary or explainer | 5 | 0 | 2020-03-01 |
Most recent
- 2026-04-20Backstagecon kubecon 26 amsterdam blog
- 2026-02-25Get a jump on contribfest blog
- 2025-12-30Backstage wrapped 2025 blog
- 2025-11-25Backstagecon kubecon 25 atlanta blog
- 2025-10-15Backstage contribfest kubecon guide blog
- 2025-08-08Migrating legacy services to a modern developer portal blog
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page backstage.io 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. Read September 29, 2026.