Three products tied at the top of this measurement: QuickBooks Online, Sage, and Tipalti were each named in 4 of the 6 answers we got when we put six buyer questions about accounts payable software to ChatGPT and Gemini. No single tool ran the table, and the three leaders split the field evenly, so a buyer asking either assistant this week would likely hear all three names. But the shortlist is not stable: ask for the 'best free' tool and then the 'most affordable' tool and you get two answers that shared zero products in common, so the exact words your buyer types decide whether you show up at all.
One rung down, NetSuite and Sage Intacct each appeared in 3 of the 6 answers. Below them the list flattens fast: eight separate products were named in exactly 2 of the 6 answers (BILL, Concur, Medius, MELIO, Semine, Xero, Yooz, and Zoho Books), and thirteen more surfaced only once. Across the six questions the two assistants named 26 distinct products in total, so being mentioned at all is common in this category and being named repeatedly is rare.
Two of those names are the same company wearing two labels. BILL appears as 'BILL' in 2 answers and again as 'Bill.com' in 1, and we kept them as separate rows rather than merging them into a 3 the measurement never recorded. Sage does the same near the top of the ranking, showing up both as the bare brand 'Sage' in 4 answers and as its specific product 'Sage Intacct' in 3. We report what the assistants actually said, label by label.
The shortlist changes completely when the question changes
There is no single shortlist. The 'best free accounts payable software' answer and the 'most affordable accounts payable software' answer shared zero products in common, even though those two phrasings sound like neighbors. To these assistants, free and cheap are different markets with different names.
The free question is where the roster breaks entirely from the pack. 'Best free accounts payable software' named MELIO, Mercury, Odoo, Fidesic, Zoho Books, Pipefy, Qonto, and Moss, and 6 of those 8 (Mercury, Odoo, Fidesic, Pipefy, Qonto, and Moss) appear in no other question at all. Ask for free and you get six names the other five questions never mention.
'Most affordable' behaves the opposite way and returns the mainstream. That answer named QuickBooks Online, Sage, Sage Intacct, Xero, Tipalti, and NetSuite, six tools that also show up across the other mainstream questions, plus two that were unique to it: Bill.com and Wise. So 'affordable' reads like the general best-of list with a discount framing, while 'free' reads like a separate catalog.
The bare 'best accounts payable software' query leaned specialist. It named Sage, Tipalti, BILL, Sage Intacct, and Yooz alongside three products that appeared in this one question and nowhere else: Zone & Co, Ramp Bill Pay, and Quadient. Notably, QuickBooks Online, one of the three overall co-leaders at 4 of 6, is absent from the literal 'best' answer and only shows up once a buyer adds 'affordable,' 'for small teams,' or 'recommendations.'
'For small teams' added its own two exclusives, SAP and FreshBooks, named there and in no other answer. The two broad phrasings, 'what should I use' and 'recommendations,' returned nearly the same list: both named NetSuite, Sage, Medius, QuickBooks Online, Tipalti, Concur, and Semine, with 'recommendations' adding only BILL. Counting across all six questions, 13 of the 26 products appeared in exactly one question, so half the field is a phrasing artifact rather than a durable recommendation.
Where the answers came from
The answers did not come from a neutral index. sage.com was the most-used source at 5 of the 6 answers, ahead of every directory and community site, and Sage was named in 4 of 6: a vendor that turned its own website into the model's primary source and got recommended off the back of it.
Community threads carried real weight. Reddit fed 4 of the 6 answers and Quora fed 1, so member discussion sat behind more than half the responses. Independent roundups did the rest of the heavy lifting: rydoo.com fed 4 answers and avidxchange.com fed 3, with makershub.com behind them at 2.
Review directories did appear here, which is not a given in this series: g2.com fed 4 of the 6 answers, capterra.com fed 1, and Gartner fed 3. So a G2 presence is clearly worth holding in accounts payable, though it sat level with Reddit at 4 and behind Sage's own site at 5.
The same pattern repeats down the list. tipalti.com fed 2 answers and Tipalti was named in 4; getyooz.com fed 2 and Yooz was named in 2; zoneandco.com fed 2 and Zone & Co in 1; medius.com fed 1 and Medius in 2; wise.com and ramp.com each fed 1 and Wise and Ramp Bill Pay were each named once. Owning a page that ranks for your category, and getting cited on it, tracks closely with getting named.
What this means if you sell AP software
If you want to be named, the source list decides it, not your market share. Every one of the 26 named products was pulled from a page the assistant read that same minute: sage.com, rydoo.com, g2.com, reddit.com, gartner.com, and a long tail of vendor blogs. A great product with no presence on those exact pages does not get named, because the model can only recommend what its live search returns.
Concretely, four kinds of page decided this measurement: a strong owned page that ranks for your category (sage.com fed 5 of 6), Reddit threads (4 of 6), independent roundups such as rydoo.com and avidxchange.com (4 and 3), and G2 (4 of 6). Miss all four and you are down to a single stray mention, which is exactly where 13 of the 26 products in this measurement sit.
Because the shortlist splits by phrasing, presence has to be specific. Ranking for 'best accounts payable software' put Zone & Co and Quadient in front of buyers, but did nothing for the 'best free' answer, which drew from a separate set of pages (Capterra, Akaunting, Quora) and named a separate set of tools. You have to show up in the sources behind the exact question your buyers ask.
The full list, counted
| Product | Named in | Share |
|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Online | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| Sage | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| Tipalti | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| NetSuite | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Sage Intacct | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| BILL | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Concur | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Medius | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| MELIO | 2 of 6 | 33% |
Four more products also reached 2 of 6 but sit just outside this table: Semine, Xero, Yooz, and Zoho Books. Everything below them was named in exactly 1 of the 6 answers.
Why Glotier is not on this list
Glotier does not sell accounts payable software, so we are correctly absent from all 6 answers. We did not name ourselves and would not: this is not our category. But this page is exactly what we build for a customer in their own category. We put six real buyer questions to ChatGPT and Gemini, recorded all 26 products and 23 source domains they cited, and turned it into a map of who gets named and which pages decide it.
If you sell accounts payable software, the split that matters is three versus thirteen: three products got named in 4 of 6 answers, and thirteen were mentioned once and never again. When a finance team asks ChatGPT or Gemini for the best AP tool this week, which side of that line you land on is set by whether sage.com, rydoo.com, g2.com, and the Reddit threads name you, not by how good your software is. You can run this exact check on your own category with us: it is free, there is no account, and it takes about a minute.