Checkr was the only product named in all six answers, 6 of 6, when we put six buyer questions about background check software to ChatGPT and Gemini on 3 August 2026. Each assistant ran a live web search before answering. No other product matched that. Checkr is the one name that came back no matter how the question was worded.
HireRight was the clear runner-up, named in 4 of 6 answers (67%). Below it, four products tied: BeenVerified, First Advantage, GoodHire and TruthFinder each landed in 3 of 6 answers (50%). So past the top two names, an AI shopper is on a coin flip. Half the answers include a given product and half do not, and which half you land in depends almost entirely on the words the buyer typed.
The tail is long and thin. Across the six answers we counted 21 distinct product labels, but 12 of them appeared exactly once. In this category, being named at all is very different from being named reliably.
The wording changed the shortlist more than anything else
This is the section every marketer in background checks should sit with. We asked six near-identical questions, and the list of names moved on almost every one. Only Checkr survived all six.
The bare question, "best background check software," returned eight names, and nearly all were employment-screening platforms: Checkr, Accurate Background, HireRight, First Advantage, GoodHire, VICTIG, Cisive and Zinc. Three of those, VICTIG, Cisive and Accurate Background, appeared in this question and nowhere else in the study.
Change one word to "best free background check software" and the category flips. That answer also returned eight names, but six of them were new: TruthFinder, BeenVerified, Spokeo, Checkr, BackgroundChecks.org, HiPeople, Zinc and Checkmate. Only two of those eight, Checkr and Zinc, also showed up in the bare "best" answer. The moment "free" enters the question, the assistants stop naming HR compliance platforms and start listing consumer people-search tools. BackgroundChecks.org, HiPeople and Checkmate each appear only in the free question.
"Most affordable background check software" sat between those two worlds, with seven names: Checkr, CROSStrax, GoodHire, TruthFinder, BeenVerified, Spokeo and HireRight. It blended the employment platforms (Checkr, GoodHire, HireRight, CROSStrax) with the consumer tools (TruthFinder, BeenVerified, Spokeo). Four of its seven names overlap with the "best free" list and three overlap with the bare "best" list, which is why "affordable" is the one phrasing where both kinds of product appear together.
The narrower questions each surfaced their own one-off names. "Best for small teams" returned only three names, Checkr, GoodHire and Mitratech, and Mitratech appeared there and nowhere else. "What should I use" was the only place Instant Checkmate and Veremark came up. "Recommendations" was the only place Certn and Mitratech AssureHire came up.
One honesty note on the counts. The raw data records "Accurate" and "Accurate Background" as two separate entries, and "Mitratech" and "Mitratech AssureHire" as two more, each counted once. We are keeping them separate rather than merging, because the measurement did. If we summed each pair into a single 2-of-6, we would be publishing a number the data never actually shows.
The headline from all of this: 21 labels appeared, and exactly one, Checkr, was in every answer. For a vendor, that means a flat "are we recommended by AI" question has no single answer. It depends on the question the buyer asks.
The source map: Reddit and Gartner over the review directories
Behind each answer is a set of web pages the assistant read before it wrote. Reddit fed all six answers, 6 of 6, the single most-used source in the study. Gartner was next at 5 of 6. A community forum and an analyst site, not a software review directory, are doing most of the work here.
Vendor-owned domains fed the answers too, and this is the insight worth the whole page. checkr.com was a source in 4 of 6 answers, and Checkr was named in all six. goodhire.com fed 4 answers, and GoodHire was named in 3. crosstrax.co fed 3 answers, and CROSStrax was named in 2. mitratech.com fed 3 answers, and Mitratech, across its two labels, was named twice. Several of these companies are being cited from their own website. The page you publish can be the page the model quotes when it decides to recommend you.
Roundup and editorial pages filled much of the rest: money.com appeared in 4 answers, with peoplemanagingpeople.com and rentwithclara.com in one each. Community Q&A came through quora.com in 2 answers, and youtube.com also fed 2.
Review directories did appear, but lower than their reputation would suggest. G2 was a source in 3 of 6 answers and Capterra in just 1 of 6. Both were outweighed by Reddit (6) and Gartner (5). If a vendor's entire plan to get recommended runs through its G2 and Capterra profiles, this data says that covers a minority of the sources actually being read.
What a vendor here would do to get named
The source list, not market share, decides whether an assistant names you. Across these six answers the assistants pulled from 18 domains, and a small group repeated: reddit.com (6), gartner.com (5), then checkr.com, goodhire.com and money.com (4 each). If your product is not discussed on those specific pages, you are not in the answer, no matter how strong the product is.
So the work is concrete. Show up in the Reddit threads the models actually read, since all six answers touched at least one. Earn a place in the Gartner and money.com roundups that fed 5 and 4 answers. Publish the comparison content on your own domain that Checkr and GoodHire are already being cited from. And pick the question you want to win, because "best" and "best free" reward two different sets of companies in this category.
The full list, counted
| Product | Named in | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Checkr | 6 of 6 | 100% |
| HireRight | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| BeenVerified | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| First Advantage | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| GoodHire | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| TruthFinder | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| CROSStrax | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Spokeo | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Zinc | 2 of 6 | 33% |
Below the top nine, twelve more labels were each named once, including the split pairs noted above: Accurate and Accurate Background, and Mitratech and Mitratech AssureHire.
Where Glotier fits
Glotier does not sell background check software, so we are correctly absent from all six of these answers, and we would not want to fake our way into them.
But this measurement is exactly what Glotier runs for the category you do sell. We ask the buyer questions, record every product named and every source page behind the answer, and show you which wordings put you on the list and which leave you off. The check is free, takes about a minute, and needs no account.