Cooper
Index Update5 min read

The Cooper Index, Edition 3: Four Direct Rankings Across 80 Software Categories

Edition 3 records what ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity recommend across 80 business software categories, with distinct rankings for Best, Most affordable, Easiest to set up, and Rising.

Edition 3 at a Glance

The Cooper Index is a weekly, dated record of which business software products four leading AI assistants recommend. Edition 3 measures ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity across 80 software categories, asking four distinct questions in each one: Best, Most affordable, Easiest to set up, and Rising.

The Cooper Index, Edition 3 covers 2,658 products across 80 software categories and eight hubs. Its immutable archive contains 7,029 cited pages from 3,384 source domains—up 135 products, 192 pages, and 76 domains from Edition 2. Coverage describes the size of the measured corpus; it is not a product score.

The measurement window runs from July 20 through July 26, 2026, under scoring version aiq-v2. Each ranking is category-relative and stands on its own: Best captures broad recommendation strength, Most affordable focuses on price, Easiest to set up focuses on implementation, and Rising surfaces emerging products.

Four Questions, Not One Composite

Best leadership changed in 27 of 80 categories between Edition 2 and Edition 3. The other questions moved more often: 50 Most affordable leaders changed, 56 Easiest to set up leaders changed, and 37 Rising leaders changed. In 57 categories, all four questions have different leaders.

That separation adds information. A product can be the strongest Best answer without being the price leader, setup leader, or emerging-product leader. Each category report leads with a Best Top 3 and uses the surrounding analysis to show where the three other direct rankings agree or diverge.

The practical reading order starts with Best, then tests that result against the buyer’s more specific constraint. Most affordable asks about cost, Easiest to set up asks about implementation, and Rising asks about emerging options. None is a component of the Best result. Keeping those answers side by side makes the trade-off legible without pretending that one product must lead every question, and it lets each hub report preserve the full Best Top 3 analysis while adding a distinct interpretation of the other rankings.

Representative Best Movements

In Sales, Consensus moves from #4 to #1 in Demo Automation, at Best AIQ 100 and assistant positions of #1 on ChatGPT, #1 on Gemini, #1 on Claude, and #1 on Perplexity. Its Best evidence records 12 sources and 14 mentions.

In Marketing, HubSpot Marketing Hub moves from #6 to #1 in Marketing Automation, at Best AIQ 68 and assistant positions of #1 on ChatGPT and #2 on Gemini, plus no category rank from Claude and Perplexity. Its Best evidence records 3 sources and 3 mentions.

In Support, Zendesk AI enters the Edition 3 Best ranking at #1 after being absent from Edition 2 in Chatbots, at Best AIQ 60 and assistant positions of #1 on ChatGPT and #1 on Perplexity, plus no category rank from Gemini and Claude. Its Best evidence records 1 source and 1 mention.

In HR, Awardco moves from #3 to #1 in Employee Recognition, at Best AIQ 70 and assistant positions of #1 on ChatGPT, #3 on Gemini, #3 on Claude, and #3 on Perplexity. Its Best evidence records 7 sources and 8 mentions.

In Finance, SAP Ariba moves from #3 to #1 in Procurement, at Best AIQ 55 and assistant positions of #1 on ChatGPT, plus no category rank from Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity. Its Best evidence records 1 source and 1 mention.

In Productivity, Asana moves from #2 to #1 in Project Management, at Best AIQ 75 and assistant positions of #1 on ChatGPT, #2 on Gemini, #3 on Claude, and #2 on Perplexity. Its Best evidence records 13 sources and 14 mentions.

In IT & Security, CrowdStrike Falcon enters the Edition 3 Best ranking at #1 after being absent from Edition 2 in Endpoint Security (EDR), at Best AIQ 70 and assistant positions of #1 on ChatGPT and #1 on Claude, plus no category rank from Gemini and Perplexity. Its Best evidence records 5 sources and 5 mentions.

In Engineering, Render moves from #3 to #1 in Cloud Hosting (PaaS), at Best AIQ 68 and assistant positions of #1 on ChatGPT, #3 on Gemini, #6 on Claude, and #3 on Perplexity. Its Best evidence records 4 sources and 5 mentions.

Where the Assistants Agreed

Among the 80 Best leaders, 53 have a category rank from all four assistants, 18 from three, 4 from two, and 5 from one. 19 leaders rank #1 with every assistant. That is within-category convergence, not permission to compare raw AIQ across unrelated software markets.

Where the Direct Answers Split

Only 5 categories have two distinct leaders across the four questions, and 18 have three. The remaining 57 have four. This is why a single blended score would hide more than it clarifies: the four questions are frequently answering different buyer needs with different products.

An absent assistant position means only that the product has no category rank from that assistant in the stated scope. It does not mean rejection. Source and mention counts are evidence-footprint measures and are never presented as the cause of rank or movement.

Explore Edition 3

The immutable Edition 3 ranking archive preserves the exact measurement behind every report.

Cooper’s methodology explains how assistant ranks, AIQ, source counts, mentions, and missing positions are interpreted. Because every ranking is category-relative, scores should only be compared within the same category and ranking question.

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