HR AI Index

Index › Vendors › Applaud · September 2026 Edition

1 category · Named, not ranked

Applaud

18Judge labels

0First choices

1Negative labels

9 of 12Models named it

1Category

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.1, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

7 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Applaud was named 7 times in HR help desk, where Zoho Desk led with 26%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business24 of 99

under the label threshold

Mid-market15 of 93

under the label threshold

Enterprise15 of 85

under the label threshold

In hr help desk · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading

Standing by category

Every category where a model named Applaud for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
HR help desk and case management	Onboarding and employee experience	0%	15 of 93	0%	7	under 10 labels · led by Zoho Desk at 26%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Applaud yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Applaud across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	Alternative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	1	1
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0
Perplexity Sonar	1	1
Grok 4.1 Fast	1	1
Mistral Small	1	1
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	1
Kimi K2	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	1	1
MiniMax M2.5	1	1

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct2 labelsNone

Paraphrase2 labelsNone

Comparative13 labelsNone

Budget-constrained0 labelsNone

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative1 labelNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative18 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 0 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“focuses on the employee-facing experience, especially portal design and self-service” Perplexity Sonar · HR help desk · comparative prompt · alternative

“Focus on employee‑facing knowledge and deflection, with AI‑curated content.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · HR help desk · comparative prompt · alternative

“may prefer ADP HR Assist, Applaud, or Freshservice” Mistral Small · HR help desk · comparative prompt · alternative

“Best for: Employee experience and portal design” MiniMax M2.5 · HR help desk · comparative prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

No model argued against it.

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Applaud, over the 18 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Applaud was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

ServiceNow HR Service Delivery16 of 1813Not in the top three

SAP SuccessFactors9 of 180Not in the top three

Leena AI8 of 180Not in the top three

Zendesk7 of 181Not in the top three

ADP HR Assist6 of 180Not in the top three

Freshservice5 of 181Not in the top three

BambooHR5 of 180Not in the top three

Rippling5 of 180Not in the top three

Workday Human Capital Management5 of 180Not in the top three

Dovetail Software4 of 180Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Applaud. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 18 of the 18 answers that named Applaud and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

gitnux.org16

guideflow.com16

g2.com14

peoplemanagingpeople.com14

moveworks.com11

salesforce.com11

wifitalents.com10

trustradius.com8

worldmetrics.org8

gartner.com7

115 of the 115 domain citations in answers naming Applaud came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

guideflow.com/blog/hr-service-delivery-software16

gitnux.org/best/hr-service-delivery-software13

peoplemanagingpeople.com/tools/hr-service-delivery-software11

moveworks.com/us/en/resources/blog/best-hr-service-delivery-software-for-enterprise10

salesforce.com/ap/service/hr-service-management/best-hr-service-delivery-software8

g2.com/compare/servicenow-hr-service-delivery-vs-workday-hcm7

gartner.com/reviews/market/integrated-hr-service-management-solutions7

trustradius.com/hr-service-delivery7

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Applaud's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Applaud, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at applaudhr.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.