AI Visibility Leaderboard: Which Brands Dominate AI Recommendations in 2026?
The definitive public leaderboard ranking brands by AI visibility score across ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. See which brands dominate AI search recommendations — and where yours ranks.
AI Visibility Leaderboard — Who Does AI Actually Recommend?
When someone asks ChatGPT for "the best CRM," AI doesn't consult Google's search results. It draws on its own training data, content authority signals, and structured information to decide which brands make the cut — and which stay invisible.
This leaderboard tracks exactly that. We scan brands across ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini using real buyer-intent prompts, then score them on how often they're mentioned, how strongly they're recommended, and how consistently they appear across all three engines.
Last updated: March 2026 | Next update: April 2026
Overall Top 10: AI Visibility Rankings
| Rank | Brand | Industry | Visibility Score | Mention Rate | Best Engine | Worst Engine | |------|-------|----------|:----------------:|:------------:|:-----------:|:------------:| | 1 | Shopify | E-commerce | 96/100 | 100% | ChatGPT | Gemini | | 2 | HubSpot | CRM & Marketing | 94/100 | 100% | Gemini | Claude | | 3 | Stripe | Payments | 92/100 | 97% | Claude | Gemini | | 4 | Klaviyo | Email Marketing | 89/100 | 93% | Claude | ChatGPT | | 5 | Calendly | Scheduling | 86/100 | 90% | Claude | Gemini | | 6 | Canva | Design | 83/100 | 87% | ChatGPT | Claude | | 7 | Zapier | Automation | 79/100 | 83% | ChatGPT | Gemini | | 8 | Ahrefs | SEO Tools | 74/100 | 77% | Gemini | ChatGPT | | 9 | Notion | Productivity | 56/100 | 47% | ChatGPT | Gemini | | 10 | Linear | Project Management | 41/100 | 20% | — | — |
How to read this table: Visibility Score (0–100) combines mention rate, recommendation strength, sentiment, and cross-engine consistency. A higher score means AI is more likely to recommend you when a buyer asks for a product in your category.
Rankings by Industry
SaaS & Software Tools
The SaaS category shows the widest variance between dominant players and challengers. Established category leaders with strong content ecosystems score 2–3x higher than fast-growing competitors with equal or better products.
| Rank | Brand | Score | Mention Rate | Best Engine | Worst Engine | |------|-------|:-----:|:------------:|:-----------:|:------------:| | 1 | HubSpot | 94/100 | 100% | Gemini | Claude | | 2 | Calendly | 86/100 | 90% | Claude | Gemini | | 3 | Zapier | 79/100 | 83% | ChatGPT | Gemini | | 4 | Notion | 56/100 | 47% | ChatGPT | Gemini | | 5 | Linear | 41/100 | 20% | — | — |
Key insight: HubSpot's freemium narrative is its AI moat. Every engine mentions the free tier unprompted. Meanwhile, Notion's "everything tool" positioning dilutes its score — AI prefers to recommend specialists for specific use cases.
The Linear paradox: Linear scores just 41/100 despite being widely loved by developers. When AI does mention it, the sentiment is glowing and it ranks #1. The problem isn't perception — it's discoverability. Linear's content footprint is too small for AI to surface it consistently.
E-commerce Platforms
E-commerce has the highest concentration of AI visibility at the top. Shopify doesn't just lead — it dominates every engine in every prompt category.
| Rank | Brand | Score | Mention Rate | Best Engine | Worst Engine | |------|-------|:-----:|:------------:|:-----------:|:------------:| | 1 | Shopify | 96/100 | 100% | ChatGPT | Gemini | | 2 | WooCommerce | 78/100 | 80% | Gemini | Claude | | 3 | BigCommerce | 72/100 | 73% | ChatGPT | Claude | | 4 | Squarespace | 64/100 | 60% | Gemini | Claude | | 5 | Wix eCommerce | 52/100 | 43% | Gemini | ChatGPT |
Key insight: Shopify holds the #1 position across all three engines for every e-commerce prompt tested. Its combination of category authority, structured content, and massive third-party review coverage creates a flywheel that's nearly impossible to overtake. WooCommerce benefits from WordPress's content gravity — Gemini particularly favors it, likely due to its deep web presence.
FinTech & Payments
FinTech produces the most surprising results. Legacy scale doesn't translate to AI visibility — neobanks and developer-first platforms outperform institutions with 100x their customer base.
| Rank | Brand | Score | Mention Rate | Best Engine | Worst Engine | |------|-------|:-----:|:------------:|:-----------:|:------------:| | 1 | Stripe | 92/100 | 97% | Claude | Gemini | | 2 | Plaid | 81/100 | 83% | Claude | ChatGPT | | 3 | Chime | 76/100 | 77% | ChatGPT | Claude | | 4 | Wise | 71/100 | 70% | Gemini | ChatGPT | | 5 | Ramp | 68/100 | 63% | ChatGPT | Gemini |
Key insight: Stripe scores 92/100 — nearly on par with Shopify and HubSpot — thanks to its developer documentation and structured API content. AI engines love well-organized technical content. Meanwhile, neobanks like Chime and Ramp outperform legacy banks in AI recommendations because their content is cleaner and more structured than traditional financial institutions' corporate websites.
Research from the Fintech AI Visibility Benchmark Report 2026 confirms this pattern: neobanks consistently outrank Chase and Bank of America in AI recommendations across all four major platforms.
Marketing Tools
Marketing is the most competitive AI visibility category. Every player invests heavily in content marketing, which makes the ranking a true test of content authority.
| Rank | Brand | Score | Mention Rate | Best Engine | Worst Engine | |------|-------|:-----:|:------------:|:-----------:|:------------:| | 1 | HubSpot | 94/100 | 100% | Gemini | Claude | | 2 | Klaviyo | 89/100 | 93% | Claude | ChatGPT | | 3 | Mailchimp | 82/100 | 87% | ChatGPT | Claude | | 4 | Semrush | 77/100 | 77% | Gemini | ChatGPT | | 5 | Ahrefs | 74/100 | 77% | Gemini | ChatGPT |
Key insight: HubSpot appears in both SaaS and Marketing categories because AI sees it as a cross-category leader — which is itself a powerful signal. Klaviyo's strong showing (89/100) reflects its tight e-commerce positioning. When users ask about "email marketing for Shopify stores," Klaviyo appears in 93% of responses. Sharp category focus wins.
What Separates the Top from the Bottom
After scanning dozens of brands, three patterns predict AI visibility with remarkable consistency.
1. Content authority beats brand size
Similarweb's 2026 GenAI Brand Visibility Index confirms it across six industry sectors: content authority outperforms brand scale in AI visibility. NerdWallet outranks Chase. Travelmath outranks Expedia. WhoWhatWear outranks Vogue.
The same pattern shows up in our data. Linear has a cult following of developers but scores 41/100. Notion is a $10B+ company and scores 56/100. Meanwhile, Calendly — a single-feature product — scores 86/100 because it owns its category with crystal-clear positioning.
AI doesn't care how big you are. It cares how clearly you communicate what you do.
2. Engine variance is the hidden risk
Every brand in our leaderboard performs differently across engines. Calendly scores 80/100 on Claude but just 48/100 on Gemini. This isn't random — each engine weights different content signals.
- ChatGPT favors broadly discussed brands with strong consumer presence
- Claude rewards structured, analytical content with clear differentiation
- Gemini pulls from Google's search infrastructure, favoring brands with strong web presence and recent content
Optimizing for one engine and ignoring the others leaves gaps competitors can exploit. Thirty-five percent of US consumers now use AI tools for product discovery — and they're not all using the same one.
3. The "invisible challenger" problem is real
Linear's score tells the whole story: 20% mention rate, 5% share of voice, but #1 ranking and positive sentiment every time it appears. The product is loved. AI just doesn't know about it.
This is the AEO gap — the distance between product quality and AI discoverability. It affects hundreds of fast-growing brands that built great products but never built the content footprint AI needs to find them.
Methodology
Our leaderboard scores are computed from real-time AI queries across three major answer engines.
Scan parameters:
- Engines tested: ChatGPT (GPT-4o), Claude (3.5 Sonnet), Gemini (1.5 Pro)
- Prompts per brand: 25 buyer-intent queries per engine (75 total)
- Prompt types: "Best X for Y," "Compare X vs Y," "Recommend a tool for Z," category explorations
- Scoring dimensions:
- Mention Rate — How often the brand appears in AI responses (0–100%)
- Recommendation Score — How strongly the brand is recommended when mentioned (0–100)
- Sentiment — Positive, neutral, or negative tone of AI commentary
- Position — Average ranking within multi-brand recommendations
- Cross-engine consistency — Variance across ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini
Visibility Score formula: The composite score (0–100) weights mention rate (40%), recommendation strength (30%), cross-engine consistency (20%), and sentiment (10%). A brand scoring 90+ is considered "AI dominant" in its category. Below 50, the brand has a significant AI visibility gap.
Update cadence: Rankings are refreshed monthly. AI models update their training data periodically, and market positioning shifts — monthly updates capture these movements.
Limitations: Scores reflect AI behavior at the time of scanning. AI engines are non-deterministic — the same prompt can produce slightly different results on different runs. We mitigate this by averaging across multiple prompt variations and running scans in batches. Our current dataset covers SaaS, e-commerce, fintech, and marketing tools, with additional industries being added each month.
Your Brand Not Listed?
This leaderboard currently tracks the most-searched brands across four industries. We're expanding monthly.
If you want to see where your brand ranks — or how you compare to the brands above — run a free scan. It takes 2 minutes, requires no signup, and gives you your Visibility Score, Mention Rate, and engine-by-engine breakdown.
Scan your brand free → runaeo.com
The Embeddable Badge
Brands on our leaderboard can display their ranking with an embeddable badge:
"Ranked #3 on the AI Visibility Leaderboard" Powered by AEO Scanner — runaeo.com
Badges link back to this page, giving your team a credibility signal and giving us a backlink. Everybody wins. Contact us to get your badge code.
How This Leaderboard Differs from Others
Several organizations now publish AI visibility rankings — including Similarweb's GenAI Brand Visibility Index, Semrush's AI Visibility Index, and Profound's Index. Each takes a different approach:
| Leaderboard | Methodology | Coverage | Access | |-------------|-------------|----------|--------| | AEO Scanner (this page) | Active scanning — real prompts sent to 3 engines | SaaS, e-commerce, fintech, marketing | Free, public | | Similarweb | Passive panel data — tracks what brands users encounter in AI | Finance, travel, electronics, beauty, fashion, news | Gated report | | Semrush | Share of Voice tracking across AI platforms | Broad industry coverage | Enterprise dashboard | | Profound | 400M+ real user conversation analysis | 12 industries, ChatGPT primary | Freemium |
Our approach is complementary: we run active scans with buyer-intent prompts, which tells you not just whether AI mentions your brand, but how strongly it recommends you when a customer is ready to buy.
What's Next
This leaderboard updates monthly. Here's what's coming:
- April 2026: Adding Perplexity and Google AI Overviews as tracked engines
- May 2026: Expanding to 10 industries (adding Healthcare, Education, Real Estate, Travel, Hospitality, Consumer Electronics)
- Q3 2026: Historical trend tracking — see how your score moves month over month
- Q4 2026: API access for brands that want to embed live scores on their own sites
Want to be notified when rankings update? Subscribe to AEO Weekly → runaeo.com
The AI Visibility Leaderboard is a free, public resource maintained by AEO Scanner. Our mission is to make AI search visibility transparent and measurable for every brand. Scan data is collected independently — no brand pays for placement or ranking.
Keep Reading
- What is AEO? Answer Engine Optimization Explained — Understand the framework behind these rankings.
- How to Improve Your AI Visibility Score — 7 strategies to move up the leaderboard.
- The Best AEO Tools for 2026 — Tools to track your own brand's score over time.
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