Kong and MuleSoft Anypoint Platform tied at the top of the API management category: each was named in 4 of the 6 buyer questions we put to ChatGPT and Gemini, more than any other product. We asked the two assistants the same six questions a buyer would actually type, gave each one live web search, and recorded every product named and every source domain behind the answer. Nothing else reached 4 of 6.
Six products tied for third, each named in 3 of the 6 answers, a 50% hit rate: Amazon API Gateway, Apigee, Microsoft Azure API Management, Postman, Tyk, and WSO2 API Platform. The tail is long: the two assistants named 23 distinct product labels across the six questions, and 9 of those were mentioned exactly once, a single appearance out of six.
The shortlist changed with the wording
The names moved depending on how the question was phrased. The bare query, "best api management platforms," returned 8 names and leaned enterprise: MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, Apigee API Management, Amazon API Gateway, Microsoft Azure API Management, WSO2 API Platform, Postman, and the two integration tools Celigo and Workato. Celigo showed up in this one question only, 1 of 6, and nowhere else.
"Best free api management platforms" produced a different 8: Postman, MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, Workato, Gravitee, Tyk, Kong, Fusio, and Hoppscotch. Two of those, Fusio and Hoppscotch, appeared in the free question only, 1 of 6 each. Ask for free and the open-source names surface that the enterprise "best" answer never mentions.
"Most affordable api management platforms" returned yet another 8: AWS API Gateway, Azure API Management, Apigee, Kong, Tyk, WSO2 API Manager, IBM API Connect, and Gravitee. AWS API Gateway and WSO2 API Manager each appeared in this affordable question only, 1 of 6. The free set and the affordable set overlapped on just three names, Kong, Tyk, and Gravitee, so "free" and "cheap" are clearly not the same question to these assistants.
The sharpest fan-out signal is the leader itself. Kong, tied for first overall at 4 of 6, was never named in the plain "best api management platforms" answer; it earned all 4 of its appearances from the small-teams, free, affordable, and recommendations wordings. MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, the co-leader at 4 of 6, was the mirror image: present in the bare "best" answer but absent from both the small-teams and the affordable ones. Whether a buyer types "best" or "cheapest" changes who they are shown.
Two more wordings surfaced names that appeared nowhere else. "Best api management platforms for small teams" was the only place Integrate.io and Swagger came up, 1 of 6 each. "What api management platforms should I use" was the only place Amplify Platform and Kong API Management came up, 1 of 6 each. Nine of the 23 labels hung on a single question like that, which means a third of the tools an assistant will name depend entirely on how the buyer phrases it.
Where the answers came from
Two domains fed every single answer. Reddit and G2 each appeared as a source in all 6 of the 6 questions, 100%. Behind them sat Gartner at 5 of 6 and Integrate.io's own site at 5 of 6, then Zuplo's site at 3 of 6. Community discussion and one review directory, not vendor advertising, stood behind every answer in this category.
Review directories showed up, but selectively. G2 was in all 6 answers and GetApp appeared in 1 of 6, yet Capterra never appeared once, 0 of 6. A vendor resting its AI visibility on a polished Capterra page in this category is betting on a source the two assistants did not read.
Community threads carried real weight. Reddit was a source in all 6 answers, and Quora and Facebook each fed 1 of 6. Roundup and blog posts made up most of the rest: Integrate.io's blog at 5 of 6, TheCTOClub and DreamFactory's blog at 2 of 6 each, and DevOpsSchool and Moesif at 1 of 6.
Here is the insight worth the whole page. When a vendor's own domain made the source list, that vendor's product tended to get named. Zuplo's site fed 3 of 6 answers and Zuplo the product was named in 2 of 6. Gravitee's site fed 2 of 6 and Gravitee was named in 2 of 6. Swagger's site fed 1 of 6 and Swagger was named in 1 of 6. Their own published pages are doing the citing that lands them on the list.
What we would do if we sold an API gateway
We would stop thinking about market share and start working the source list. Being named in this category traced back to just 14 domains, and only 5 of them, G2, Reddit, Gartner, Integrate.io, and Zuplo, fed 3 or more of the 6 answers. That is a short, concrete to-do list, not a branding exercise.
The work is to be present and well-regarded on those exact pages: a current, credible G2 listing, since G2 sourced all 6 answers; a real, non-spammy presence in the Reddit threads that also fed all 6; and genuine comparison content on your own domain, the move that already put Zuplo in 2 of 6 and Gravitee in 2 of 6. Integrate.io shows the ceiling and the catch at once, its blog fed 5 of 6 answers while its product was named in only 1 of 6, so content that cites the field is not the same as content that sells you.
None of this rewards size for its own sake. Kong and MuleSoft topped out at 4 of 6 because they recur across G2, Gartner, Reddit, and the roundups the assistants pulled, not because of any revenue figure. The source list, not the market, picked the shortlist. Change what those 14 domains say about you and you change the answer.
The full list, counted
| Product | Named in | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Kong | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| MuleSoft Anypoint Platform | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| Amazon API Gateway | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Apigee | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Microsoft Azure API Management | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Postman | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Tyk | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| WSO2 API Platform | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Apigee API Management | 2 of 6 | 33% |
A note on the table. Several brands were named under two labels, and we kept them as separate rows instead of adding them up, because a merged total is a number the measurement never produced. The pairs: Kong (4 of 6) and Kong API Management (1 of 6); Apigee (3 of 6) and Apigee API Management (2 of 6); Microsoft Azure API Management (3 of 6) and Azure API Management (2 of 6); Amazon API Gateway (3 of 6) and AWS API Gateway (1 of 6); and WSO2 API Platform (3 of 6) and WSO2 API Manager (1 of 6). Four more products landed at 2 of 6 outside the table: Gravitee, IBM API Connect, Workato, and Zuplo.
Glotier does not sell an API management platform, so we are correctly absent from all 6 of these answers, and honestly we would be worried to see our own name here. What you just read, though, is exactly what Glotier runs for the category you do sell in: it puts the six questions your buyers ask to ChatGPT and Gemini, records who gets named and which sources decided it, and hands you the source list to go work on. The check is free, needs no account, and takes about a minute.