HR AI Index
Index Vendors › Calm · September 2026 Edition
1 category · Ranked

Calm

42Judge labels
2First choices
12Negative labels
11 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.
Best standing
6% in Employee wellbeing for small business buyers
Rank 27 of 99 in the mid-market standingcriticized challenger
0 of 12 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 32% of its 19 labels there were negative.
By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.
In employee wellbeing · 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 Calm 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.
CategoryFunctionShareRankNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
Employee wellbeing and mental healthOnboarding and employee experience0%27 of 9932%19criticized challenger

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Calm 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 Calm across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.
ModelFirst choiceAlternativeMentionNegativeLabels
Claude Haiku 4.500202
GPT-5.4 mini00000
Gemini 3.5 Flash00202
Perplexity Sonar00000
Grok 4.1 Fast10113
Mistral Small00011
DeepSeek V4 Flash01001
Llama 4 Maverick00011
Qwen 3.7 Flash02013
Kimi K201203
GLM 4.7 FlashX00112
MiniMax M2.500011

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
Direct3 labels1
Paraphrase5 labelsNone
Comparative14 labels1not counted in share
Budget-constrained6 labelsNone
Scale-constrained2 labels1
Negative12 labelsNone
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative42 labels in all, every segment counted; 2 of the 3 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.

“here are the leading consumer ones: Calm, Headspace” Grok 4.1 Fast · Employee wellbeing · comparative prompt · first choice
“Differentiator: Larger content library but less customization; emphasizes sleep improvement” Kimi K2 · Employee wellbeing · comparative prompt · alternative
“licensing these established brands is easier than managing a complex vendor list” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Employee wellbeing · direct prompt · alternative
“Similar to Headspace but particularly strong on sleep and meditation content.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Employee wellbeing · 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.

“Mental health apps that rely on half-baked science, have zero clinical robustness, and show no net health benefits. Examples include Calm, Happify, Headspace, and Moodfit.” Llama 4 Maverick · Employee wellbeing · negative prompt · hard negative
“Calm - Despite popularity, has received privacy warnings” MiniMax M2.5 · Employee wellbeing · negative prompt · hard negative
“major, seemingly reputable apps (like Calm and Headspace) have been bought by private equity firms... critics argue they are becoming more focused on profit” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Employee wellbeing · negative prompt · soft negative
“Examples often cited include Calm, Happify, Headspace, and Moodfit, which admit in their terms that they do not offer clinical or medical advice” Mistral Small · Employee wellbeing · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Calm, over the 42 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Calm was named but was not.
ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
Headspace40 of 422Not in the top three
Wellable22 of 424Not in the top three
Personify Health17 of 422Not in the top three
Wellhub13 of 420Not in the top three
Talkspace11 of 420Not in the top three
Avidon Health10 of 424Not in the top three
YuMuuv10 of 424Not in the top three
Vantage Fit9 of 424Not in the top three
Unmind9 of 422Not in the top three
Spring Health9 of 421Not 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 Calm. 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 32 of the 42 answers that named Calm and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

gartner.com18
avidonhealth.com16
guideflow.com15
peoplemanagingpeople.com13
gopivotsolutions.com11
vantagefit.io11
deskbreak.app10
hrtechsaas.com10
nectarhr.com10
tophrsoftware.com10

124 of the 124 domain citations in answers naming Calm came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Calm

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Calm; a claim can dispute any of them.
Calm Business 3Calm (Calm for Business) 1Headspace for Work / Calm Business 1
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 Calm'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 Calm, 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 calmerry.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.