ChatGPT and Gemini Recommend Different #1 Software in One of Every Three Categories, New Study Finds

The AI Software Index 2026, released today by AI visibility tool GetIntel, analyzed 9,978 usable AI answers across 126 software categories and 1,825 brands. It also found that G2, Capterra and TrustRadius together account for just 5% of all citations.

BENGALURU, India, Aug. 12, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GetIntel, an AI visibility tool that measures whether AI assistants recommend a brand, today released The AI Software Index 2026, a study of what ChatGPT and Gemini actually tell buyers who ask them for software.

The Index found that the two assistants name a different #1 product in one out of every three software categories measured. Which AI a buyer happens to open changes which company gets recommended.

GetIntel ran roughly 80 buyer-phrased questions in each of 126 software categories, split across the two assistants — questions such as "What's the best CRM for a small business?" and "I'm a freelancer and need invoicing software." They were put to the live ChatGPT and Gemini consumer apps rather than developer APIs, on the reasoning that buyers see the interface, not the API. The study analyzed 9,978 usable answers, 5,023 from ChatGPT and 4,955 from Gemini, and recorded which of 1,825 brands were named, which one was recommended first, and which websites each assistant cited as sources.

"Every one of these 126 categories already has an answer," said Tarang Agarwal, founder of GetIntel. "AI is recommending someone right now. In a third of them, it is recommending a different company depending on which assistant the buyer happened to open. Most of the brands in this data have never checked whether they are the name that gets said out loud."

WHAT THE INDEX FOUND

• ChatGPT and Gemini name a different #1 product in one out of every three categories.
• When ChatGPT recommends a product, it cites that product's own website 53% of the time. Gemini does so only 13% of the time, relying on third-party pages instead.
• G2, Capterra and TrustRadius together receive only 5% of all citations.
• Gemini's most-cited "independent" sources are blog posts written by other software companies, often about categories those companies have nothing to do with.
• Buyer identity changes the recommendation. In some categories, a brand moves from winning 34% of answers to 90% depending on whether the buyer says "I'm a freelancer" or "we're an enterprise."
• The #1 recommendation flips between US- and UK-phrased versions of the same question in about half of the categories the study could measure.
• Rephrasing changes the answer. In some categories one brand wins every time; in others, asking the same question in different words returns a different "best" tool almost every time.

THE SOURCES AI TRUSTS

The most-cited source across the study was TechRadar, with 1,114 citations, followed by Reddit with 807 and Zapier with 418. G2's content subdomain, learn.g2.com, drew 342 citations and Gartner drew 238. Taken together, the three major software review sites — G2, Capterra and TrustRadius — accounted for 5% of all citations recorded.

SHOWING UP AND WINNING ARE DIFFERENT THINGS

HubSpot appeared on more category leaderboards than any other brand, 19, and won three of them. Salesforce appeared on 13 and won none. QuickBooks appeared on seven and won five.

In other categories the answer is effectively locked. GitHub was the first recommendation in 91% of CI/CD software answers and 72% of code review answers, Shopify in 84% of e-commerce platform answers, Miro in 83% of whiteboard software answers, Square in 78% of point-of-sale answers, and Loom in 76% of screen recording answers.

"The uncomfortable part is not that brands are losing inside AI answers," said Agarwal. "It is that almost nobody knows their own number. A company can tell you its Google ranking to the decimal and have no idea whether ChatGPT has ever named it. Closing that gap is the entire reason an AI visibility tool exists."

AVAILABILITY

The full AI Software Index 2026, including a page for each of the 126 categories measured, is available at https://getintel.ai/ai-software-index/. GetIntel will refresh the Index quarterly.

METHODOLOGY

The AI Software Index 2026 is based on 9,978 usable answers — 5,023 from ChatGPT and 4,955 from Gemini — collected on August 6, 2026 from the live ChatGPT and Gemini web applications rather than developer APIs. Approximately 80 structured prompt variants, spanning generic, audience-framed and US/UK-localized phrasings, were run in each of 126 software categories covering 1,825 brands, split across the two assistants. "Top pick" is defined as the first brand recommended in an answer. The Index is original research published by GetIntel, which sells AI visibility software, and will be refreshed quarterly.

Tarang Agarwal
Founder, GetIntel
tarang@getintel.ai
https://getintel.ai