Buffer was named in 6 of 6 answers when we asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity to recommend social media scheduling tools. Hootsuite, Later and Sprout Social each landed in 5 of 6. The counts fall off fast after that: Agorapulse, Metricool, Sendible and Sintra AI each appeared in 3 of 6, Planable and Statusbrew in 2 of 6, and ten more tools were named exactly once. The number that actually explains the board, though, is on the source side. Three domains fed all six answers, and one of them is a vendor's own website.
The shortlist changed most when price entered the question
The "affordable" and "free" prompts reshuffled the board. For "most affordable social media scheduling tools," the list was Buffer, Metricool, Publer, Post Planner, Loomly, Adobe Express and Socialbu. Hootsuite, Later and Sprout Social, each named in 5 of 6 answers overall, all vanished from that one query, the single question each of them missed. For "best free social media scheduling tools," the answer ran to eight products and pulled in Adobe Express Content Scheduler and Meta Business Suite, neither of which appeared in any other answer. That free question's sources were reddit.com, sintra.ai and technologyadvice.com, plus buffer.com, adobe.com and planable.io.
The tools named once each rode one specific question. SocialPilot's only appearance in all six answers came in the "small teams" query, with sources including quora.com and buffer.com. Sintra AI's 3 of 6 came from "best," "small teams" and "best free," and it was missing from "what should I use," "most affordable" and "recommendations." Planable's 2 of 6 were "small teams" and "recommendations"; Statusbrew's 2 of 6 were "best" and "what should I use." Change one word in the prompt and a tool named once becomes a tool named never.
The tiers translate straight into fragility. A tool at 5 of 6 like Hootsuite is one price-focused prompt away from dropping out, because that is exactly what happened on the affordable question. A tool at 3 of 6 like Metricool or Sendible would lose half its visibility if a single one of those recurring domains stopped listing it. A tool named once is already at the floor.
A handful of domains, one of them a vendor's own, decided who got named
Three domains fed all six answers: reddit.com, technologyadvice.com and sintra.ai. zapier.com fed 5 of 6, missing only "most affordable," whose sources were reddit.com, technologyadvice.com, sintra.ai, buffer.com, postclaw.io, thecmo.com and socialbu.com. buffer.com, quora.com and statusbrew.com each fed 3 of 6. thecmo.com fed 2, and adobe.com, blaze.ai, planable.io, postclaw.io, socialbu.com and youtube.com each fed 1. That short, repeating list is the whole engine behind six prompts; the assistants did not survey the category. G2 and Capterra never appeared at all, while reddit.com fed every answer and quora.com fed 3, so community pages carried more weight here than the review directories.
The vendor-own-domain part is worth sitting with. sintra.ai is not a review site or a forum. It is the website for Sintra AI, a product named in only 3 of 6 answers, yet its domain was a source in all six, including the three answers where the tool itself was never recommended. The assistants treated one vendor's site as category infrastructure, the way they treated Reddit and TechnologyAdvice. buffer.com, by contrast, fed only 3 of 6 answers while Buffer was named in all six, so its perfect record came from Reddit, TechnologyAdvice and Zapier naming it, not from its own pages. You can read the single-source tools straight off the map: Socialbu was named only in "most affordable," the one answer socialbu.com fed, and Adobe Express was named only in "best free," where adobe.com was a source. When a tool appears only in the answer its own domain fed, the assistant is echoing the page put in front of it.
statusbrew.com fed 3 of 6, including the two answers where Statusbrew was named ("best" and "what should I use"), so even a direct domain presence did not guarantee a mention every time. quora.com fed 3 of 6, always paired with reddit.com, and youtube.com fed exactly 1, the "what should I use" answer.
Getting named is about the source list, not market share
Because each answer is a mirror of a few pages, the way onto it is to be on those pages. Buffer shows the shape: buffer.com fed only 3 of 6 answers, but Buffer was named in all six because it already held spots in the Reddit threads, the TechnologyAdvice roundups and the Zapier lists the assistants pulled. Reddit mentions come from real recommendation threads, not link drops. TechnologyAdvice is a comparison site where an editor picks the list. Zapier's blog, a source in 5 of 6 answers, tends to name tools that have a live Zapier integration, which is a product decision.
What put no domain at all into this source set: schema markup on a pricing page, a "Best Social Media Scheduling Tools" post on your own domain, or a campaign asking ChatGPT about your product. The one self-hosted domain that fed answers belonged to Sintra AI, whose product was named in 3 of 6, and it ran alongside Reddit and TechnologyAdvice rather than on the strength of the product. For everyone else, the path ran through someone else's page.
The full list, counted
Every product ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity named across 6 answers, and how many of those answers named it. Share is out of the six answers we read, not out of the category.
| Product | Named in | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Buffer | 6 of 6 | 100% |
| Hootsuite | 5 of 6 | 83% |
| Later | 5 of 6 | 83% |
| Sprout Social | 5 of 6 | 83% |
| Agorapulse | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Metricool | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Sendible | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Sintra AI | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Planable | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Statusbrew | 2 of 6 | 33% |
Ten more tools were named once each: Adobe Express, Adobe Express Content Scheduler, Loomly, Meta Business Suite, Post Planner, Publer, Socialbu, SocialPilot, Vista Social and Zoho Social. We counted Adobe Express and Adobe Express Content Scheduler as two rows because the assistants named them separately, though they are likely one tool.
If you sell a scheduling tool and your name was not on this board, it is because you are not on those few pages, not because an assistant judged your product. Glotier does not sell social media scheduling software, so it is correctly absent from these answers, and we would not claim otherwise. This is the exact check Glotier runs for your own category: free, no account, about a minute.