HR AI Index

Index › Vendors › Contra · September 2026 Edition

2 categories · Named, not ranked

Contra

21Judge labels

0First choices

0Negative labels

9 of 12Models named it

2Categories

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

Standing

9 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Contra was named 9 times in Internal talent marketpl and 1 other category, where Fuel50 led with 26%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business27 of 118

under the label threshold

Mid-market20 of 129

under the label threshold

Enterprisenot named

No model named it for this buyer.

In internal talent marketpl · 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 Contra 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
Internal talent marketplace	Performance and talent management	0%	20 of 129	0%	8	under 10 labels · led by Fuel50 at 26%
Skills intelligence	Performance and talent management	0%	54 of 162	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by TalentGuard at 19%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Contra 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 Contra across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	Alternative	Mention	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	1	1
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	1	1
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	1	1	2
Mistral Small	0	0	0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	1	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	0
Kimi K2	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	2	0	2
MiniMax M2.5	1	1	2

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

Direct0 labelsNone

Paraphrase1 labelNone

Comparative13 labelsNone

Budget-constrained0 labelsNone

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative7 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative21 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.

“established marketplaces like Upwork, Fiverr, Toptal, Malt, and Contra generally have escrow-based payments and lower scam risk” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Internal talent marketpl · negative prompt · alternative

“vetted networks like Braintrust/Contra (0% fees, but smaller pools)” Grok 4.1 Fast · Internal talent marketpl · negative prompt · alternative

“Better Alternatives to Consider - Contra - Zero-fee platform” MiniMax M2.5 · Skills intelligence · negative prompt · alternative

“Artist‑ or creator‑centric needs → Contra, Dribbble” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Internal talent marketpl · 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 Contra, over the 21 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Contra was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Upwork21 of 217Not in the top three

Fiverr20 of 213Not in the top three

Toptal19 of 215Not in the top three

Freelancer.com16 of 210Not in the top three

PeoplePerHour9 of 211Not in the top three

Lemon.io6 of 212Not in the top three

Arc.dev6 of 211Not in the top three

Guru5 of 210Not in the top three

Gun.io4 of 211Not in the top three

Braintrust4 of 210Not 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 Contra. 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 16 of the 21 answers that named Contra and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

awesomic.com8

gartner.com8

fastlancer.org7

g2.com7

peoplemanagingpeople.com7

linkedin.com6

memvers.com6

freelancepicks.net5

lemon.io5

recruiterslineup.com5

Sixty-four of the sixty-four domain citations in answers naming Contra came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

gartner.com/reviews/market/internal-talent-marketplaces8

fastlancer.org/en/fastlancer-blog/freelance-platforms7

memvers.com/blog/fiverr-vs-upwork-vs-toptal-comparison-20266

peoplemanagingpeople.com/tools/best-talent-marketplace-platform6

awesomic.com/blog/ultimate-list-talent-marketplaces-for-businesses-in-20255

recruiterslineup.com/best-talent-marketplace-platforms-reviewed5

useme.com/en/blog/freelance-platforms5

6sense.com/tech/talent-marketplace4

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 Contra'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 Contra, 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 contrastsecurity.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.