CiteLadder asked Claude Sonnet 5.5 20 buyer questions about cloud hosting, three times each, in three conditions: from memory, with web search available, and told to search first. AWS was the brand Claude named first most often in every condition. The same five providers made up the top five from memory and after searching. This page reports what Claude said through the Anthropic API. It is not a ranking of which provider is best, and the Claude apps can answer differently.
What we asked Claude
The 20 prompts cover five kinds of buyer questions: best overall, a specific buyer or use case, budget or free, feature-led, and comparison shortlists. Each prompt ran three times in each condition, giving 60 answers per condition.
Examples:
- "Which cloud hosting provider is the most reliable overall right now?"
- "Best cloud hosting for a small SaaS startup with two developers?"
- "Affordable cloud hosting with predictable billing and no surprise egress fees?"
Other prompts asked about GPUs for machine learning, HIPAA compliant hosting, WordPress agencies, game servers and managed Kubernetes. The requests gave no current date. A second model listed the brands in each answer, and code did the counting.
The brands Claude named from memory
With no tools, Claude named 111 distinct brands across 60 answers, about 9 per answer. The top three brands took 16.3% of all mentions, so the list was spread wide.
- AWS appeared in 50% of answers. It was named first 22 times, with an average position of 1.9.
- DigitalOcean also appeared in 50% of answers, but at an average position of 5.3. It was named in every run for 9 prompts, more than any other brand.
- Cloudflare appeared in 46.7%, Hetzner in 45% and Google Cloud in 43.3%.
- Vultr, Azure, Vercel, Netlify and Linode filled the rest of the top ten.
Run agreement was 56.9%. Asking the same question again often produced a somewhat different list. Hetzner was named first 6 times, second only to AWS on that measure.
How often Claude searched when it could
When web search was available but not required, Claude searched in 3 of 60 answers, with 7 searches in total. For this category, most answers in that condition still came from what the model already knew.
The results looked close to the memory run. AWS appeared in 55% of answers, DigitalOcean in 53.3% and Google Cloud in 50%. The brand extraction listed "Microsoft Azure" and "Microsoft" as separate entries in this condition, so Microsoft's presence is split across names.
What changed when Claude was told to search
When the system prompt told Claude to search before answering, it searched in all 60 answers and ran 258 searches. The answers got shorter lists. Claude named 72 distinct brands, about 5.7 per answer, and the top three took 25% of mentions.
The top five did not change. AWS, DigitalOcean, Cloudflare, Hetzner and Google Cloud stayed in the top five, and no brand left or entered it. AWS led in both conditions. It appeared in 51.7% of answers and was named first 21 times.
The shares moved within that group. Google Cloud appeared in 50% of answers. DigitalOcean fell to 40%, and Hetzner and Cloudflare each fell to 31.7%. Further down, Render and Railway each reached 16.7% of answers and entered the top ten.
What Claude searched for
61.5% of Claude's queries contained a year. 160 queries used 2025 and 4 used 2026, even though no date was given. 25.7% of queries contained the word "best".
Sample queries:
- "best cloud platform for solo developer side projects 2025"
- "Vercel vs Railway vs Render vs Fly.io pricing side projects 2025"
- "managed Kubernetes pricing control plane fee EKS AKS GKE DigitalOcean"
Many queries put brand names side by side. Claude often searched for a comparison of providers it already had in mind, such as "AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud pricing comparison 2025".
The sites Claude's searches returned
The sites that came back most often were mostly independent publishers and developer communities:
- tech-insider.org appeared in the results of 56.7% of searched answers.
- shattered.io appeared in 43.3%.
- dev.to appeared in 38.3% and medium.com in 33.3%.
- northflank.com appeared in 31.7%.
digitalocean.com was the one provider site in the top six, at 30%. cloudwards.net, en.wikipedia.org, github.com and cloudzero.com followed. None of the 60 answers carried inline citations, so these are the pages Claude's searches returned, not links shown to the reader.
What a cloud hosting brand can take from this
- Memory carries most answers. When search was optional, Claude searched in only 3 of 60 answers. What the model already knows about your brand shapes most responses.
- Searching narrowed the lists. Answers named fewer brands when Claude was told to search, and the top five took more of the space. Brands below the top five had fewer places to appear.
- Comparison pages matter. Many queries were "vs" queries that put several providers together. Being covered in comparisons on sites like dev.to, medium.com or tech-insider.org puts a brand in front of those searches.
- Use-case content helps. Prompts about solo developers, WordPress agencies or Kubernetes led to specific queries, and smaller brands such as Render and Railway appeared in searched answers.
- Dated content gets matched. Most dated queries used 2025, so pages with a current year in the title line up with how Claude searched.
CiteLadder tracks these patterns over time for your own category and prompts.
Brand shares in each condition
Share of the 60 answers (20 prompts, three runs) that named each brand. "Prompts named in every run" counts the prompts where the brand appeared in all three runs from memory.
| Brand | From memory | Prompts named in every run | Told to search |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS | 50% | 8 | 51.7% |
| DigitalOcean | 50% | 9 | 40% |
| Cloudflare | 46.7% | 8 | 31.7% |
| Hetzner | 45% | 8 | 31.7% |
| Google Cloud | 43.3% | 6 | 50% |
| Vultr | 33.3% | 4 | 23.3% |
| Azure | 28.3% | 3 | 25% |
| Vercel | 28.3% | 5 | not in top 15 |
| Netlify | 23.3% | 3 | not in top 15 |
| Linode | 21.7% | 2 | not in top 15 |
| Microsoft | not in top 15 | 18.3% | |
| Render | not in top 15 | 16.7% | |
| Railway | not in top 15 | 16.7% |
Sites Claude's searches returned
When told to search. Share of answers whose searches returned at least one page from the site.
| Site | Answers | Share of searched answers |
|---|---|---|
| tech-insider.org | 34 | 56.7% |
| shattered.io | 26 | 43.3% |
| dev.to | 23 | 38.3% |
| medium.com | 20 | 33.3% |
| northflank.com | 19 | 31.7% |
| digitalocean.com | 18 | 30% |
| cloudwards.net | 17 | 28.3% |
| en.wikipedia.org | 13 | 21.7% |
| github.com | 12 | 20% |
| cloudzero.com | 12 | 20% |
The 20 prompts
- Which cloud hosting provider is the most reliable overall right now? (best overall)
- What are the top cloud platforms companies actually trust for production workloads? (best overall)
- Best cloud hosting provider for performance and uptime? (best overall)
- Who are the leading cloud providers and which one is best? (best overall)
- Best cloud hosting for a small SaaS startup with two developers? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Which cloud provider works best for hosting a WordPress agency's client sites? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Best cloud platform for training and serving machine learning models with GPUs? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- What cloud provider should a healthcare company use for HIPAA compliant hosting? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Best cloud hosting for a high-traffic ecommerce store during holiday spikes? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Which cloud provider is easiest for a solo developer deploying side projects? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Best cloud option for an enterprise already heavily using Microsoft tools? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- What cloud host do game studios use for multiplayer game servers? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Cheapest reliable cloud VPS for hosting a few small web apps? (budget or free)
- Which cloud providers have the most generous free tier? (budget or free)
- Affordable cloud hosting with predictable billing and no surprise egress fees? (budget or free)
- Which cloud providers offer the best managed Kubernetes service? (feature-led)
- Cloud host with the most data center regions for global low latency? (feature-led)
- Which cloud platforms have the best serverless functions and edge computing? (feature-led)
- Compare the big three cloud providers on pricing, features and support. (comparison shortlist)
- Shortlist of developer-friendly alternatives to the major hyperscale cloud providers? (comparison shortlist)
Frequently asked questions
Which cloud hosting provider did Claude name most often?
AWS. From memory it appeared in 50% of answers and was named first 22 times. When told to search, it appeared in 51.7% of answers and was named first 21 times. DigitalOcean matched AWS at 50% from memory. This reflects what Claude said, not which provider is best.
Did searching change which brands Claude named?
The top five stayed the same: AWS, DigitalOcean, Cloudflare, Hetzner and Google Cloud. The lists got shorter, about 5.7 brands per answer compared with about 9 from memory. Render and Railway each reached 16.7% of answers when Claude was told to search.
Does Claude search on its own for cloud hosting questions?
Rarely in this study. With search available but not required, Claude searched in 3 of 60 answers, running 7 searches in total.
Are these results the same as in the Claude app?
Not necessarily. The study used Claude Sonnet 5.5 through the Anthropic API at low effort, with no current date in the request. The Claude apps can use different settings and may answer differently.
Track how often Claude names you
CiteLadder tracks your brand's mentions, position and competitors across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews for the buyer questions you choose. Every result is tied to its recorded answer, so you can see when a hosting shortlist includes or skips you.
Visibility over time
| Series | 8 Sep | 15 Sep | 22 Sep | 29 Sep | 6 Oct | 13 Oct | 20 Oct | 27 Oct |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acme Analytics | 27.9% | 29.6% | 30.2% | 31.8% | 32.5% | 33.1% | 34.2% | 38.4% |
| Northwind | 46.0% | 45.2% | 45.8% | 44.6% | 44.1% | 43.5% | 42.9% | 41.7% |
| Lumen | 30.4% | 31.0% | 29.8% | 30.6% | 29.9% | 29.2% | 28.8% | 27.5% |
412 answers to 120 prompts across 4 engines, week of 27 Oct – 2 Nov 2026
Brands
| Brand | Visibility | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Northwind | 41.7% | down 1.2 pts |
| Acme Analytics | 38.4% | up 4.2 pts |
| Lumen | 27.5% | down 1.3 pts |
| Fathom Labs | 16.9% | down 0.2 pts |
Acme Analytics by engine