Nearly half the category is invisible
44% of surveyed B2B SaaS companies scored below 50 out of 100 on AI presence. Not ranked low — absent from the answers where buyers construct their shortlist. The average across all companies studied was 56.9.
AI visibility benchmarks
What the published 2026 evidence shows about which brands answer engines name — and, just as usefully, what it does not show.
Last updated · Third-party data, attributed
Direct answer
How visible are B2B SaaS brands in AI answers? A published 2026 benchmark study found that 44% of B2B SaaS companies are effectively invisible to AI-assisted buyers, scoring below 50 on a 0–100 AI presence index, with a category average of 56.9. Gaps between direct competitors are large: 63 versus 40 in workflow automation, 68 versus 41 in field service software, and 83 versus 68 in SEO analytics.
The headline numbers
Four findings worth acting on
Quality does not predict visibility
In each head-to-head below, both products are credible and well funded. The spread is driven by citability — how much trusted third-party content discusses the brand — not by which product is better.
Most answers are not pure retrieval
Roughly 60% of ChatGPT responses draw on training recall rather than live lookup, with about 40% involving real-time retrieval. That means both long-run reputation and current publishing matter, and neither alone is sufficient.
Freshness is unusually cheap leverage
Content updated within the previous 30 days has been reported to attract roughly 3.2× the citations of older material. Very few organisations have a deliberate refresh cadence, which makes this one of the least contested levers available.
Head to head
Published within-category gaps
Switch between categories. Both brands in each pair are strong products; the gap is visibility, not merit.
Prompt class: "best workflow automation tool for a small ops team"
Visibility gap in this category: 23 points
AI presence score, 0–100. Source: published 2026 third-party benchmark study of AI presence in B2B SaaS. Reproduced with attribution; Shortlisted did not produce these figures and has no relationship with any brand named.
| Category | Higher-scoring brand | Score | Lower-scoring brand | Score | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEO analytics | Ahrefs | 83 | Semrush | 68 | 15 |
| Workflow automation | Zapier | 63 | Make | 40 | 23 |
| Field service software | ServiceTitan | 68 | Jobber | 41 | 27 |
| All categories | Average AI presence score across the study | 56.9 | |||
How to read this data honestly
We publish these numbers because they are the best public evidence available, and we would rather argue from real data than from assertion. But a benchmark is a measurement, and measurements have properties worth stating.
- This is one study, not a consensus. A single research programme with a single methodology. Treat the direction as reliable and the precise decimals as indicative.
- The prompt set behind these scores is not fully public. Which is exactly the hidden denominator problem our own methodology exists to solve. We are applying our own critique to data we are citing, and it applies.
- Scores are a snapshot. Model updates move them. A score measured before a major provider release is not comparable to one measured after it without version stamping.
- A composite 0–100 index is too coarse to manage against. It is useful for cross-category comparison and useless as an operating metric, which is why we report three separate figures instead of one.
What we publish ourselves
The Shortlist Index is our own category benchmark programme, run with a fully disclosed prompt panel, five runs per engine and variance bands on every figure. Each edition ranks the visible players in one category and publishes the method alongside the result.
The first editions are in production and are not published yet. We would rather have no data on this page than data we cannot stand behind. When an edition ships, it appears here with its full panel attached — and if you would like the category you compete in prioritised, tell us which one.
Sources
- DerivateX, The State of AI Visibility in B2B SaaS: 2026 Benchmark Report — 44% invisibility figure, 56.9 average presence score, and the head-to-head scores reproduced above. Reported by Demand Gen Report and National Law Review.
- Contently and LLM Pulse, 2026 — ChatGPT citation mechanics, the approximate parametric-versus-retrieval split, and the freshness effect on citation rates.
- Search Engine Land, 2026 — The problem with AI share of voice and 3 metrics that matter more, on the hidden-denominator critique and the September 2025 model-update effect.
All figures are reproduced with attribution for commentary and analysis. Shortlisted claims no ownership of third-party research and has no commercial relationship with any brand or research provider named on this page.
Your number
None of this tells you where you sit
A free finding does: one real buyer prompt for your category, the verbatim answer, and who got named instead of you.