HR AI Index

Index › Vendors › Donut · September 2026 Edition

2 categories · Named, not ranked

Donut

13Judge labels

1First choices

0Negative labels

8 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. Donut was named 9 times in Employee onboarding and 1 other category, where BambooHR led with 29%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business21 of 77

under the label threshold

Mid-market17 of 104

under the label threshold

Enterprisenot named

No model named it for this buyer.

In employee onboarding · 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 Donut 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
Employee onboarding	Onboarding and employee experience	0%	17 of 104	0%	7	under 10 labels · led by BambooHR at 29%
Recognition and rewards	Onboarding and employee experience	0%	25 of 55	0%	2	under 10 labels · led by Bonusly at 22%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Donut 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 Donut 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	1	0	1
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	1	1	2
Perplexity Sonar	0	1	1
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	0
Mistral Small	0	1	1
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	0	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	2	0	2
Kimi K2	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	1	0	1
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0

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

Direct1 labelNone

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative10 labelsNone

Budget-constrained1 labelNone

Scale-constrained1 label1

Negative0 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative13 labels in all, every segment counted; 1 of the 1 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.

“Pair your HR platform with Donut or Hibob to enhance social integration.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Employee onboarding · comparative prompt · alternative

“The Best "No New Software" Solution: Donut (via Slack/Teams)” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Recognition and rewards · budget prompt · alternative

“Donut Journeys is an onboarding platform built for Slack” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Employee onboarding · comparative prompt · alternative

“Best "Slack-First" Onboarding: Donut (Journeys)” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Employee onboarding · direct 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 Donut, over the 13 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Donut was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Rippling9 of 134Not in the top three

BambooHR9 of 131Not in the top three

Gusto7 of 132Not in the top three

Deel6 of 130Not in the top three

HiBob6 of 130Not in the top three

Enboarder5 of 130Not in the top three

Workday5 of 130Not in the top three

Trainual4 of 130Not in the top three

WorkBright4 of 130Not in the top three

Asana3 of 130Not 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 Donut. 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 7 of the 13 answers that named Donut and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

asana.com7

gartner.com6

forbes.com5

peoplemanagingpeople.com4

trainual.com4

donut.comYour site3

siit.io3

emptrust.com2

hr.university2

hrtechsaas.com2

Thirty-five of the thirty-eight domain citations in answers naming Donut came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

asana.com/resources/best-employee-onboarding-software7

gartner.com/reviews/market/onboarding-software6

forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-onboarding-software5

peoplemanagingpeople.com/tools/best-hr-software-for-onboarding4

trainual.com/manual/best-employee-onboarding-software-20264

donut.com/blog/best-employee-onboarding-tools-20263

siit.io/blog/best-employee-onboarding-software3

hr.university/tools/onboarding-software2

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Donut

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Donut; a claim can dispute any of them.

Donut (Journeys) 1Donut (for Slack) 1Donut Journeys 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 Donut'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 Donut, 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 donut.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.