DerivateX Study Finds 44 Percent of B2B SaaS Firms Invisible to AI Buyers

Study of 50 brands across 1,400 AI prompts finds 87-point gap between most and least visible companies in identical software categories.

DerivateX (formerly Derivate X), a B2B SaaS SEO and Generative Engine Optimization agency based in Bengaluru, India, has published the first standardized benchmark study measuring AI search visibility for B2B SaaS brands. The report, titled “The State of AI Visibility in B2B SaaS: 2026 Benchmark Report,” analyzed 50 B2B SaaS companies across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini, running 1,400 buyer-intent prompts in total and scoring each company on a 0 to 100 composite scale.

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What the data shows clearly is that platform breadth alone does not determine the score. Mention rate and position carry 60 of 100 points.”

— Apoorv Sharma, Co-Founder, DerivateX

Key findings from the study:

The average AI Presence Score across 50 B2B SaaS companies is 56.9 out of 100, with 44 percent of companies scoring below 50. The gap between the highest scorer (Clio at 89) and the lowest (LeadSquared at 2) is 87 points, despite both operating in established software categories with active marketing teams. Claude is the most selective AI platform, mentioning 88 percent of tested brands, compared to 100 percent for ChatGPT and Gemini. Sentiment is nearly uniform: 44 of 50 companies score 19 or 20 out of 20 on sentiment, meaning the visibility gap is driven entirely by mention frequency and platform breadth, not brand perception.

Within competitive categories, the gaps between direct rivals are substantial. In field service management, ServiceTitan scores 68 and Jobber scores 41. In payments, Stripe scores 65 and Razorpay scores 39. In SEO analytics, Ahrefs scores 83 and Semrush scores 68. In workflow automation, Zapier scores 63 and Make scores 40, despite Make appearing on all four platforms and Zapier being absent from Claude entirely.

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“What the data shows clearly is that platform breadth alone does not determine the score,” said Apoorv Sharma, Co-Founder of DerivateX. “Make is present on all four platforms and still scores 40, while Zapier is absent from Claude and scores 63. The difference is how often and how prominently each brand appears when AI systems are asked category questions by actual buyers. Mention rate and position carry 60 of the 100 available points in the scoring framework. That is where the optimization work happens.”

The study identifies a highest-opportunity group: ten companies with perfect sentiment scores of 20 out of 20 but mention rates of 8 out of 30 or lower, including Close, WebEngage, Kissflow, CleverTap, Freshworks, Razorpay, BrightEdge, Mindbody, Mangools, and Toast. When AI platforms mention these brands, the framing is uniformly positive. The gap is frequency, not perception.

“Ten of the fifty companies we scored are being described positively every time AI mentions them, but that is happening in fewer than 9 of 28 tested prompts,” said Apoorv Sharma. “That is not a brand problem. That is a distribution problem. Getting cited more often in third-party content that AI platforms index is what moves those companies from occasionally mentioned to consistently recommended.”

The full 2026 AI Visibility Benchmark Report is available free of charge at derivatex.agency and includes category-level leaderboards, per-platform analysis, a complete dataset of all 50 companies, and a visibility gap analysis across direct competitive pairs.

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