Here is a summary of the results we found. We also mention the top cited sources of content.
My first impressions of the data:
Reddit is still the top cited source for this category (CRMs) followed by Youtube which is surprising since there's been alot of press about how reddit won't be cited in ChatGPT as much anymore. Though the share of reddit citations is less than I expected based on other tests we've done in other categories.
Vendor sites being direct citations is interesting and worth noting. Strong topical authority is a big drivers especially if you publish listicles and informative content in your niche.
Let me know what other categories you would like to see. I was thinking maybe HR software and I definitely will do Marketing Agencies to see who's being cited/mentioned the most there. Additionally, if you think that we can improve these metrics to make the results more clear please let me know and we can incorporate that feedback in our next pass.
Thank you.
Summary
HubSpot was named in 65.4% of answers across 40 fixed prompts run against 6 AI answer engines in August 2026, leading the CRM software category by 11.1 percentage points over the second-place brand. The measurement included 39 brands tracked across 233 scored answers, with every brand evaluated against identical prompts. AI engines cited third-party websites for 77.1% of the 1,666 total sources referenced, with reddit.com and youtube.com appearing most frequently. Google Gemini named the category leader on 27.3% of prompts compared to an average of 77.5% across the other five engines.
- —HubSpot appeared in 65.4% of answers, Zoho CRM in 54.2%, and Pipedrive in 52.9% across 40 identical prompts.
- —Zoho CRM was mentioned in 54.2% of answers but cited from its own domain in only 7.6% of cases.
- —Third-party websites accounted for 77.1% of the 1,666 total citations, while vendors' own domains accounted for 22.9%.
- —Microsoft Dynamics 365 was named in 22.2% of answers but never cited from its own domain across all 233 answers.
Methodology:
Results:
Top 10 rankings in AI Search for CRM Companies
Full list here: https://www.rankmonster.ai/leaderboards/top-50-ranked-crm-companies-in-ai-answers
How we pulled Cited Sources:
The domains these engines pulled from when answering. 1,666 citations across 526 distinct domains, 77% of them to third-party sites rather than to a vendor's own domain — that share is roughly how much of this category's visibility is decided off-site.
Top Cited Sources:
top cited sources for CRM tool queries
Prompts
No prompt names a brand. A prompt that names one hands it a guaranteed mention — in our per-brand audit data, prompts naming a brand return a 97.5% mention rate against 8.6% for prompts that don't.
About this data
Everything here is derived from publicly available output. We sent 40 prompts to 6 publicly accessible AI answer engines and recorded which brands each engine named and which sources it cited. No private, proprietary or customer data is involved, and no brand paid for or influenced its position.
Every answer behind these numbers is retained, so any figure on this page can be traced back to the specific prompt, engine and response that produced it.
If your company appears here and you believe the result is wrong, get in touch — we are happy to re-run the analysis for your brand and share what we find. If you would prefer not to be listed, we can remove your company name from this leaderboard in most cases. Either way, email [support@rankmonster.ai](mailto:support@rankmonster.ai?subject=CRM%20Software%20leaderboard%20%E2%80%94%20August%202026).
Source: r/GenEngineOptimization · by /u/Forward_Safe_552