AI Visibility Report: AI Coding Tools
30 brands · 10 AI models · 100 prompts · 1,000 responses · May 2026
Talk to engineers shipping code in 2026 and the bleeding edge is clear. Cursor is the IDE most of them have switched to. Claude Code is the agent they reach for when the work is non-trivial. Codex is the OpenAI-side answer to the same demand. None of this is contested in conversations, in developer surveys, or in usage data from the tools themselves.
The AI visibility picture of this same category looks nothing like that. We asked 10 AI search engines 100 questions about AI coding tools. They returned 4,209 brand mentions across 30 products. GitHub Copilot leads. Cursor is closing the gap. Tabnine, a tool whose practical relevance peaked years ago, sits comfortably at #4 propped up by training-data echo from a thousand 'best of 2022' comparison articles. Claude Code (released Feb 2025) and Codex (released April 2025) are nearly invisible to half the AI surfaces your buyers consult.
Three structural findings underneath that surface. Model providers are not aggressively self-promoting (ChatGPT mentions Claude Code more often than Claude itself does). A single small vendor — Augment Code — has captured the citation game so thoroughly that augmentcode.com is the #1 cited domain on four out of five AI search engines we studied. And Grok mentions Cursor 81 times and Codex zero times — a corporate feud showing up in product recommendations.
“Engineers shipping code in 2026 reach for Cursor, Claude Code, and Codex. AI search recommends Tabnine. Two different markets, one buyer pool.”
Who AI recommends in ai coding tools
Ranked by weighted visibility score across all 10 AI models. Top 15 of 30 brands shown.
GitHub Copilot
Cursor
Claude Code
Tabnine
Windsurf
Amazon Q Developer
Sourcegraph CodyCodex
Replit
Augment Code
Aider
Continue
Qodo
JetBrains AI Assistant
Bolt.new15 more brands in the full report, including per-model breakdowns.
Model-by-model analysis
How ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, and 5 more each see the coding-assistant market. Grok mentions Cursor 81 times and Codex zero. The corporate feuds are now product feuds.
Head-to-head matchups
Cursor vs Copilot. Claude Code vs Codex. Tabnine vs every modern tool. Who wins when AI has to pick one?
Visibility landscape map
Every brand plotted on visibility vs recommendation strength. Champions, cult favorites, also-rans, and ghosts.
Citation source analysis
augmentcode.com is cited 328 times across Claude, Perplexity, Google AIO, and Google AI Mode — more than Wikipedia, more than any media outlet. Why a tier-2 vendor owns the canonical content.
The 2023-leaderboard problem
Why training-only models (Gemini, DeepSeek, Mistral, Qwen) still recommend Tabnine and barely know Claude Code exists.
The playbook
Concrete recommendations for improving your AI visibility based on what the data shows actually works in this category.
- 01The Thesis
- 02What We Measured
- 03How We Measure AI Visibility
- 04AI Visibility Rankings
- 05What the Models Reveal About Themselves
- 06Where the Models Disagree
- 07Three Asymmetries Worth Acting On
- 08Head-to-Head: Who Wins When AI Decides
- 09The Visibility Landscape, Mapped
- 10The Sources AI Trusts
- 11What Kind of Content AI Actually Cites
- 12Do Models Push Their Parent's Product?
- 13How Different Model Categories See the Market
- 14Where Models Disagree Most
- 15The Playbook
- 16Methodology
Get the full report
All 30 brand rankings. Model-by-model breakdowns. Citation analysis. Head-to-head matchups. The actionable playbook.
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