Overview Leaderboard Methodology
Industry Report

Next-Generation Firewalls

Advanced firewall platforms that combine traditional stateful inspection with integrated intrusion prevention, application awareness, and user-identity controls for modern threat prevention.

Brands tracked: 31
Brands analyzed: 31
Last updated: 2026-04-22
Model: OpenAI GPT-5
Prompts: 251
Total responses: 1,260
Top Brand Overall?
Palo Alto Networks
100/100

Highest overall AI Visibility Score in this industry.

LBA Leader?
Palo Alto Networks
100

Highest score on the LBA metric in this industry.

Authority Leader?
Palo Alto Networks
100

Highest score on the Authority metric in this industry.

TOM Leader?
Palo Alto Networks
100

Highest score on the TOM metric in this industry.

Palo Alto Networks is the default answer in AI responses for Next-Generation Firewalls

Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet together dominate AI responses for Next-Generation Firewalls. Both brands consistently surface unprompted, with the model treating them as the default answers for most category queries. Brands outside the top two face a structural disadvantage: users are usually given these two before the model even considers alternatives.

Brand Leaderboard All 31 Next-Generation Firewalls brands ranked

Ranked by overall AI Visibility Score (smoothed geometric mean of LBA, Authority, and TOM with an LBA-based floor on Authority and TOM, see methodology). Click any brand for the full report.

# Brand LBA Authority TOM Overall
1
Palo Alto Networks
paloaltonetworks.com
 100
100
100
100
2
Fortinet
fortinet.com
 87
98
98
94
3
Cisco
cisco.com
 80
52
86
71
4
Check Point
checkpoint.com
 80
50
78
68
5
Sophos
sophos.com
 84
40
81
65
6
SonicWall
sonicwall.com
 74
7
25
26
7
Juniper Networks
juniper.net
 74
7
12
21
8
OPNsense
opnsense.org
 79
8
8
19
9
Zscaler
zscaler.com
 80
8
8
19
10
Barracuda
barracuda.com
 70
7
7
17
11
Firewalla
firewalla.com
 70
7
7
17
12
Netgate
netgate.com
 71
7
7
17
13
Huawei
huawei.com
 63
6
6
16
14
Untangle
untangle.com
 65
6
6
16
15
AhnLab
ahnlab.com
 61
6
6
15
16
Forcepoint
forcepoint.com
 62
6
6
15
17
Hillstone Networks
hillstonenet.com
 60
6
6
15
18
Kerio
kerio.com
 54
5
5
14
19
Sangfor
sangfor.com
 58
6
6
14
20
Versa Networks
versa-networks.com
 57
6
6
14
21
WatchGuard AuthPoint
watchguard.com
 54
5
5
14
22
Zyxel
zyxel.com
 51
5
5
13
23
Clavister
clavister.com
 46
5
5
12
24
Stormshield
stormshield.com
 49
5
5
12
25
V
Venustech
venustech.com.cn
 48
5
5
12
26
H3C
h3c.com
 43
4
4
11
27
Seqrite
seqrite.com
 42
4
4
11
28
Endian
endian.com
 37
4
4
10
29
Ruijie Networks
ruijienetworks.com
 39
4
4
10
30
T
TOPSEC
topsec.com.cn
 39
4
4
10
31
GajShield
gajshield.com
 10
1
1
3

How is this calculated? Methodology

Every brand in this leaderboard is scored against the same set of 251 shared Next-Generation Firewalls prompts. The same prompts, same model, same iterations. So differences in scores reflect actual differences in AI visibility, not differences in measurement.

Overall AI Visibility Score
Smoothed geometric mean of LBA, Authority and TOM. Authority and TOM are floored at LBA × 0.1 before the geometric mean (the same floor used in the per-metric cards above, so brand cards and the composite tell the same story). Formula: composite = ((LBA + 5)(Authority + 5)(TOM + 5))^(1/3) - 5. The floor keeps brands the model clearly recognises but doesn't yet recommend from collapsing to zero, while a single genuinely weak metric still pulls the composite down. Full methodology.
Shared industry prompts
For Authority and TOM, all brands in the industry are scored against the same 251 category prompts (e.g. "best SEO tools for agencies"). This makes brand-to-brand comparisons valid - everyone faces identical inputs. LBA prompts are per-brand because they ask brand-specific questions.
Latent Brand Association (LBA)
5 brand probes + 1 control prompt, each run 5 times in recall mode (no web search). LBA = quality × meta × stability × share × recognition × 100. Read the full LBA methodology →
LLM Authority
50 organic category prompts (discovery, comparison, problem and transactional intents), each run once in recall mode and once in retrieval mode. Score = frequency × log-decayed prominence × intent weight, then 50/50 averaged across the two modes. Read the full Authority methodology →
Top of Mind (TOM)
15 high-volume discovery prompts (sourced from Keywords Everywhere search-volume data), each run 5 times in pure recall mode (no web). Score = frequency × (0.5 + 0.5 × log-prominence), volume-weighted. Read the full TOM methodology →