LoyaltyLion was the one name ChatGPT and Gemini kept returning: it appeared in 5 of the 6 buyer answers we measured for loyalty program software on 2026-08-06, more than any other product. Nothing else came close.
Three products tied for a distant second at 3 of 6 answers each: Friendbuy, Square Loyalty and Yotpo. Below them the field flattens fast, with nine products named in exactly 2 of 6 answers and ten more named just once.
We put six real buyer questions to two assistants, ChatGPT and Gemini, and gave each one live web search per question. Across all six, 23 different products were named at least once, so these assistants are not reading from a short, settled shortlist. LoyaltyLion at 5 of 6 is the closest thing this category has to a default answer, and even it missed one question.
How the shortlist changed from question to question
The most useful thing in this data is how far the shortlist moved when we only changed the wording. The plain "best loyalty program software" returned 7 products, Yotpo, Friendbuy, LoyaltyLion, Marsello, Smile, Stamped and Loyalty Cloud, a set that leaned toward ecommerce retention apps.
"Best free loyalty program software" rewrote the roster almost entirely. It named 8 products, and 4 of them appeared on this question and nowhere else in the six: FaveCard, Okendo, Joy Loyalty and Open Loyalty. Smile.io and Loopy Loyalty led the free set. A vendor with a free plan that is missing from this one answer is invisible on the exact question free-tier buyers ask.
"Most affordable loyalty program software" was the shortest answer of the six, just 5 products. Four of them, Smile.io, Square Loyalty, Friendbuy and Loopy Loyalty, also appeared on other questions, and only one product was unique to affordability: 99minds, named once, here and nowhere else.
The enterprise names clustered on the open-ended questions. "What loyalty program software should I use" and "loyalty program software recommendations" are where Talon.One, Eagle Eye, Annex Cloud, Antavo and Capillary showed up. "For small teams" was the only question that surfaced TRIFFT Loyalty and Kangaroo Rewards, each named once.
LoyaltyLion is the tell in this section too. It was named in 5 of 6 answers, and the single question it missed was "most affordable." The category's most-named product simply did not come up when the assistants were asked specifically about price.
The same brand even changed spelling with the question. It was written as "Smile" on the "best" and "small teams" questions (2 of 6) and as "Smile.io" on the "free" and "affordable" questions (2 of 6). Our counter treats those as two entries because the assistants typed two different names, the same thing that happened to Antavo, written plainly on one question and as "Antavo AI Loyalty Cloud" on another (1 of 6 each).
Where the answers came from
Two research directories fed the most answers: g2.com sat behind 5 of 6 answers and gartner.com behind 5 of 6 as well, with G2 appearing again as learn.g2.com in 1 answer. So the review-directory world is very present here, with one exception worth naming: Capterra did not appear in any of the 6 answers.
Reddit was the community voice, cited in 4 of 6 answers, and a YouTube page fed 1. There were no Quora threads in any answer. For a category this commercial, one open forum carrying 4 of 6 is doing a lot of the "what do real people actually use" work.
Here is the insight a vendor should take from the source map. Several companies' own websites were cited as sources, and those same companies were named as products. Yotpo's own domain fed 3 answers and Yotpo was named in 3. Square's squareup.com fed 3 and Square Loyalty was named in 3. Smile.io fed 2 and Smile.io was named in 2. Loopy Loyalty's domain fed 2 and Loopy Loyalty was named in 2. Talon.One's domain fed 3 and Talon.One was named in 2. When your own page is in the assistant's reading list, your product tends to be in its answer.
The other side of that rule is just as clear. LoyaltyLion was named the most, 5 of 6, yet its own domain never appeared as a source. It got there entirely through other people's pages: the directories, Reddit, and third-party roundups on domains like klaviyo.com (behind 3 of 6) and brierley.com (behind 3 of 6). You do not have to be your own source, but you do have to be somewhere in the sources.
What a loyalty vendor would do to get named
If you run marketing for a loyalty product, this measurement is a to-do list, not a scoreboard. The assistants named whoever was in the pages they read for each question. G2 and Gartner were behind 5 of 6 answers each, so a current, complete profile on both is table stakes. Reddit was behind 4 of 6, so real threads discussing your product matter more than any ad you can buy.
Notice what did not decide the outcome: market share. This is 6 answers from 2 assistants on a single day, and the ranking tracks source presence, not company size. 99minds is not a giant, yet it earned its 1 of 6 by being on the affordability page the assistant happened to read. Being in the exact source for the exact question is the whole game.
The fan-out gives that a sharp edge. Buyers who ask for "free" get a different answer than buyers who ask for "best," because those questions pull different pages. If you sell a free plan, the pages that rank for free loyalty software are where you have to be, or you will keep missing the 8-product free answer the way 4 free-only names (FaveCard, Okendo, Joy Loyalty, Open Loyalty) filled seats the big brands left open.
The full list, counted
Here is every product named in more than one of the 6 answers. Two rows are the same brand under two spellings the assistants used, "Smile" and "Smile.io," which we kept as separate rows rather than adding them into a combined number the data never showed.
| Product | Named in | Share |
|---|---|---|
| LoyaltyLion | 5 of 6 | 83% |
| Friendbuy | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Square Loyalty | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Yotpo | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Annex Cloud | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Eagle Eye | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Loopy Loyalty | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Loyalty Cloud | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Marsello | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Smile | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Smile.io | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Stamped | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Talon.One | 2 of 6 | 33% |
Ten further products were named once each: 99minds, Antavo, Antavo AI Loyalty Cloud, Capillary Technologies' Loyalty Program Software, FaveCard, Joy Loyalty, Kangaroo Rewards, Okendo, Open Loyalty and TRIFFT Loyalty.
One honest note to end on. Glotier does not sell loyalty program software, so we are correctly absent from all 6 of these answers and we will not pretend otherwise. We ran the measurement because it is exactly what we do for a customer's own category: put the real buyer questions to the assistants, record every product named and every source behind the answer, and show you where you stand. To see your own category the way ChatGPT and Gemini answered ours, the check is free, takes about a minute, and needs no account.