AI share of voice · social media scheduling tool · September 2026

When a buyer asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for social media scheduling tool, who gets named?

We asked both assistants the twelve questions a buyer types when choosing a vendor — 24 live answers — and counted how often each vendor was named, and which websites the assistants read to decide. No vendor was involved. The numbers are below; the method is at the bottom.

24live answers (12 ChatGPT, 12 Perplexity)
20vendors named at least twice
75%of answers name Buffer, the category leader
10sites cited in a fifth or more of answers

Share of answers that name each vendor

Aliases, product names and old names are merged. Percentages are of all 24 answers. Vendors named only once are omitted.

The default answers

Buffer75%
Hootsuite75%
Later71%
Sprout Social54%
Planable50%

The middle pack

SocialBee42%
Agorapulse29%
Meta Business Suite29%
Zoho Social29%
Metricool25%
Sendible25%

Rarely named

CoSchedule21%
Canva17%
HubSpot17%
Publer17%
Vista Social17%
Loomly12%
SocialPilot12%
Pallyy8%
Social Champ8%

The two assistants do not agree

ChatGPT and Perplexity build their answers from different pages, so the same vendor can be a default on one and near-invisible on the other. The largest gaps:

VendorChatGPTPerplexity
Planable25%75%
Sprout Social75%33%
SocialBee25%58%
Meta Business Suite42%17%
Zoho Social17%42%
Loomly25%0%
Canva25%8%
HubSpot8%25%

What the assistants read to decide

Every answer came with source links. These are the domains cited most across all 24 answers. Presence on the top few (later.com, blog.hootsuite.com, buffer.com, blog.hubspot.com) determines the category far more than anything on a vendor's own site.

SourceAnswers citing itWhat it is
later.com17A vendor's own comparison content
blog.hootsuite.com16A vendor's own comparison content
buffer.com16A vendor's own comparison content
blog.hubspot.com12HubSpot's tool roundups
learn.g2.com8G2's editorial roundups
bloggingwizard.com8Independent tool-review blog
hootsuite.com7A vendor's own comparison content
lyfemarketing.com7Marketing agency's roundup
napoleoncat.com6A vendor's own comparison content
sproutsocial.com5A vendor's own comparison content
brandwatch.com4A vendor's own comparison content
efficient.app3Independent software-review site
The one thing worth noticing. The three leaders are also the three most-read sources: later.com was cited in 17 of 24 answers, buffer.com in 16 and Hootsuite's blog in 16. In this category the assistants mostly learn who is best from the leaders' own comparison posts. Below the top three the two assistants disagree sharply: Planable is named in 75% of Perplexity answers but 25% of ChatGPT answers, SocialBee 58% vs 25%, while Sprout Social runs the other way (ChatGPT 75%, Perplexity 33%).

Method

The twelve prompts: Best social media scheduling tool for startups · Compare the leading social media scheduling tool tools. · Recommend a social media scheduling tool for a team of 10. · What are the top social media scheduling tool options in 2026? · What is a good alternative to the most popular social media scheduling tool? · What is the best social media scheduling tool? · What is the most affordable social media scheduling tool? · What should I look for when choosing a social media scheduling tool? · What social media scheduling tool do professionals actually recommend? · Which social media scheduling tool has the best reviews? · Which social media scheduling tool should a small business use? · Who are the leading providers of social media scheduling tool?

Each prompt was sent live to ChatGPT and Perplexity (ChatGPT as gpt-5 with web search on; Perplexity as sonar) via the DataForSEO LLM Responses API on 23 September 2026 — 24 answers. Every answer was checked for each vendor name using case-insensitive matching with aliases and old names merged; vendors were drawn from the answers themselves, so a vendor that no answer named does not appear. Source links inside each answer were counted once per domain per answer (up to eight domains per answer, so citation counts are lower bounds). Answers were truncated at 4,000 characters before scoring. Assistants are non-deterministic: a single vendor's share can move several points between runs. Total cost of the data on this page: US$0.47.

We re-run categories monthly. If a vendor on this list wants the per-question breakdown for their brand — which questions they are named for, which they are not, and which sources carried the answers that omit them — it is free; write to audits@agentbuilt.dev.

Want this for your own category?

The free AI visibility audit runs the same twelve questions for any brand in any category and sends you the report. No card, no call. Other categories: appointment scheduling software, cold email software, lease accounting software, podcast hosting platform, rank tracking software.