4 categories · RankedNGINX
NGINX is software used as an API gateway and for API management, and it is also grouped with web application firewalls · nginx.org ↗
Strongest at mid-market. Ranked 8 of 113 for enterprise buyers.
The standing depends on who is buying. Every model is asked the same questions for each company size.
HAProxy is first at 19%.
HAProxy is first at 32%. 3 of 14 models made it the first choice when asked directly.
F5 BIG-IP is first at 23%.
Why models recommend it
“Consider NGINX Plus or HAProxy Enterprise if you have strong Linux/SysAdmin skills. They offer the best performance-to-cost ratio”Qwen 3.7 Flash · Scale-constrained question · first choice
“Prefer lighter options first: Envoy (especially in service mesh like Istio) or NGINX for most routing + basic policies.”Grok 4.20 · Negative question · first choice
“Kemp LoadMaster (mid-size friendly ADC) and NGINX Plus (if you have Linux/NGINX skills) are strong fits”DeepSeek V4 Flash · Scale-constrained question · first choice
“NGINX Plus often being the best fit for mid-market B2B companies seeking a reliable and scalable solution”Mistral Small · Direct question · first choice
What gives them pause
“Recent critical vulnerabilities (e.g., CVEs from 2024–2026 patches by F5) can lead to crashes, denial-of-service (DoS), or remote code execution.”Grok 4.20 · Negative question · warning
“Not dedicated "API management" platforms but often used as the high-performance edge layer. They require significant custom configuration”Qwen 3.7 Flash · Comparative question · warning
“Limited built-in API lifecycle, portal, monetization, and governance features compared with API-management suites”Perplexity Sonar · Comparative question · warning
“Running a single NGINX or HAProxy instance as your load balancer creates a single point of failure”Kimi K2 · Negative question · warning
Also on the shortlist
The products named in the same answers as NGINX, over the 213 answers that named it, and how often each was the first choice instead.
| Product | Named together | Picked instead | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 152 | 28 | Compare → | |
| 89 | 15 | Compare → | |
| 84 | 15 | View → | |
| 73 | 9 | Compare → | |
| 65 | 1 | View → | |
| 64 | 3 | View → | |
| 64 | 2 | View → | |
| 49 | 2 | View → | |
| 46 | 10 | View → | |
| 44 | 22 | View → |
What the models named instead of NGINX →
A side-by-side page exists where both products are among a category's top eight.
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 152 of the 213 answers that named NGINX and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
283 of the 324 domain citations in answers naming NGINX came from a third party's page. Forty-one 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 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 8 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| Grok 4.20 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 12 |
| Mistral Small | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 5 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 7 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 2 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 8 |
| Kimi K2 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 6 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 6 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 5 |
What it publishes
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blog | 200 | 9 | 2026-09-23 | APM, CDN | |
| News or press | 59 | undated | |||
| Conference or event | 12 | 1 | 2026-08-19 | ||
| Glossary or explainer | 9 | 5 | 2026-07-18 | ||
| Comparison | 8 | 1 | 2026-09-15 | ||
| Webinar or virtual event | 2 | 0 | 2026-04-09 | ||
| Report or ebook | 2 | undated | |||
| Podcast or video | 1 | 0 | 2025-05-14 |
Most recent
- 2026-09-23Stop writing authentication checks into every service combine them in your kubernetes gateway blog
- 2026-09-21Nginx control api view in memory configuration and reload via http requests blog
- 2026-09-15NGINX Routing on HTTP Request Body blog
- 2026-09-1510982 comparison
- 2026-09-10HTTP Strict Transport Security Policy in NGINX Ingress Controller blog
- 2026-09-08Predicate Routing for Native Handling of API Traffic blog
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page nginx.org 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.