HR AI Index

Index › Vendors › Guru · September 2026 Edition

3 categories · Named, not ranked

Guru

24Judge labels

1First choices

11Negative labels

11 of 12Models named it

3Categories

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. Guru was named 9 times in Internal talent marketpl and 2 other categories, 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 business108 of 118

under the label threshold

Mid-market125 of 129

under the label threshold

Enterprise73 of 82

under the label threshold

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 Guru 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%	125 of 129	57%	7	under 10 labels · led by Fuel50 at 26%
HR help desk and case management	Onboarding and employee experience	0%	68 of 93	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Zoho Desk at 26%
Internal communications and intranet	Onboarding and employee experience	0%	56 of 80	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Happeo at 16%

Movement

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

Model	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	1	0	1
Perplexity Sonar	1	0	1
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	1	1
Kimi K2	0	1	1
GLM 4.7 FlashX	1	0	1
MiniMax M2.5	1	0	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

Paraphrase3 labels1

Comparative5 labelsNone

Budget-constrained2 labelsNone

Scale-constrained1 labelNone

Negative11 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative24 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.

No positive label carried a quote.

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.

“Often criticized for having outdated interfaces, lower visibility for new freelancers, and less robust client verification” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Internal talent marketpl · negative prompt · hard negative

“Guru.com ⚠️ AVOID” Kimi K2 · Internal talent marketpl · negative prompt · hard negative

“Poor satisfaction (2.2/5 on ComplaintsBoard from 29 cases, 90% unresolved). Issues with support, payment protection failures” Grok 4.1 Fast · Internal talent marketpl · negative prompt · soft negative

“Frequently described as outdated, with limited project volume” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Internal talent marketpl · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Guru, over the 24 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Guru was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Upwork15 of 243Not in the top three

Fiverr15 of 240Not in the top three

Freelancer.com14 of 240Not in the top three

Toptal13 of 244Not in the top three

PeoplePerHour10 of 240Not in the top three

Braintrust5 of 240Not in the top three

Contra5 of 240Not in the top three

Happeo4 of 241Not in the top three

Microsoft SharePoint3 of 241Not in the top three

Gusto3 of 240Not 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 Guru. 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 24 answers that named Guru and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

g2.com7

awesomic.com6

cotocus.com6

peoplemanagingpeople.com6

reddit.com6

complaintsboard.com5

freelancepicks.net5

gartner.com5

lemon.io5

outsourceaccelerator.com5

Fifty-six of the fifty-six domain citations in answers naming Guru came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

cotocus.com/blog/top-10-workforce-marketplace-platforms-features-pros-cons-comparison6

awesomic.com/blog/talent-marketplace-cheat-sheet-speed-cost-quality5

gartner.com/reviews/market/internal-talent-marketplaces5

outsourceaccelerator.com/articles/upwork-and-fiverr-scams-and-how-to-avoid-them5

cbr.exchange/blogs/how-to-choose-a-talent-marketplace-key-criteria-for-20264

checkthat.ai/brands/upwork/reviews4

recruiterslineup.com/best-talent-marketplace-platforms-reviewed4

awesomic.com/blog/ultimate-list-talent-marketplaces-for-businesses-in-20253

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Guru

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

Guru.com 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 Guru'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 Guru, 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 gurusup.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.