Subcategory · AI Citation Index
Cloud Platforms
Azure leads shortlists at 61%, but Kubernetes scores higher in evaluations (55 vs 49). Category sentiment dropped 52 points in three months.
167 discovery queries · 197 head-to-heads · refreshed Jul 30, 2026
Discovery stage
The shortlist
Across 167 buyer-style "Cloud Platforms" queries
Azure Cloud Services appears in 61% of shortlists across 167 prompts, outpacing Kubernetes (57%) and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute (37%). Amazon Web Services trails at 34% despite brand recognition. Lambda Labs and Elastic each clear 20% shortlist rates without unCited scores, suggesting emerging AI-context relevance.
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Signal by intent
By topic
Top 5 most-cited brands per intent cluster. Brands with zero citations in a topic are not shown.
Amazon Web ServicesAmazon Web ServicesAmazon Web ServicesAmazon Web ServicesEvaluation stage
Head-to-head
How often AI cites each brand across uniform category evaluation prompts · median 3/100
Kubernetes wins head-to-head evaluations with a 55 average across 38 comparisons, beating Microsoft (49) and Oracle (38). Amazon Web Services, Snowflake, Lambda, and Elastic all tie at 19, each appearing in only 13 comparison queries. The category median sits at 3, indicating shallow evaluation depth outside the top three.
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Each brand's score is the share of category evaluation prompts where AI cited them across all four engines — the same prompt pool for every brand. Brands above the median citation rate have stronger presence in evaluation-stage queries.
Brands to know
In this category
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute
Scores 66—highest in the category—and holds 37% shortlist presence. Oracle's evaluation average of 38 across 26 queries shows consistent mid-tier performance in direct comparisons.
Read brand profile →Azure Cloud Services
Dominates shortlists at 61% but scores 58, trailing Oracle. The 16-point monthly decline signals weakening AI recommendations despite Microsoft's 49 evaluation average across 34 queries.
Read brand profile →Kubernetes
Tops evaluations at 55 across 38 comparisons yet scores only 10 in unCited rankings. The gap suggests strong technical credibility but weak brand-level positioning in prompts.
Read brand profile →Amazon Web Services
34% shortlist rate and a 51 score place AWS fourth, underperforming Oracle and Azure. Evaluation average of 19 across 13 queries indicates inconsistent recommendation strength.
Read brand profile →Linode (Akamai Cloud)
Scores 58—tied with Azure and Alibaba—but absent from top-10 shortlists. The disconnect suggests strong product reviews but low organic prompt visibility.
Read brand profile →Citation sources
Where AI pulls citations from
668 citations captured across Cloud Platforms prompt runs.
Vendor pages
159Product, help, and marketing pages from tracked vendors
Independent sources
136Reviews, encyclopedias, forums, press — not vendor-owned
Buyer questions
What AI cites for top Cloud Platforms questions
Most-cited prompts across the buyer journey. Click any prompt to see the actual URLs AI engines link to.
Discovery
Buyers exploring the categoryEvaluation
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