HR AI Index
Index Vendors › Lightcast · September 2026 Edition
2 categories · Ranked

Lightcast

28Judge labels
0First choices
3Negative labels
10 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.
Best standing
0% in Talent intelligence for mid-market buyers
Rank 21 of 77 in the mid-market standingaccepted challenger
0 of 12 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 10% of its 10 labels there were negative.
By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.
In talent intelligence · 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 Lightcast 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
Talent intelligencePerformance and talent management0%21 of 7710%10accepted challenger
Workforce planningWorkforce planning and analytics0%26 of 890%5under 10 labels · led by ChartHop at 31%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Lightcast 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 Lightcast across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.
ModelFirst choiceAlternativeMentionNegativeLabels
Claude Haiku 4.500000
GPT-5.4 mini00000
Gemini 3.5 Flash00101
Perplexity Sonar01102
Grok 4.1 Fast00101
Mistral Small00101
DeepSeek V4 Flash00101
Llama 4 Maverick00202
Qwen 3.7 Flash00101
Kimi K200112
GLM 4.7 FlashX01203
MiniMax M2.500101

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
Direct6 labelsNone
Paraphrase0 labelsNone
Comparative17 labelsNone
Budget-constrained0 labelsNone
Scale-constrained2 labelsNone
Negative3 labelsNone
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative28 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.

“strongest overall market-intelligence option, but it is often more than a mid-market team needs” Perplexity Sonar · Talent intelligence · direct prompt · alternative
“Local labor market insights | Lightcast” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Workforce planning · 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.

“Mid-market teams usually don't need deep labor-market economics (Lightcast)” Kimi K2 · Talent intelligence · direct prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Lightcast, over the 28 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Lightcast was named but was not.
ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
Eightfold AI23 of 2811Not in the top three
Beamery21 of 280Not in the top three
SeekOut19 of 282Not in the top three
Gloat16 of 280Not in the top three
Gem12 of 284Not in the top three
hireEZ12 of 283Not in the top three
Findem12 of 280Not in the top three
LinkedIn Talent Insights12 of 280Not in the top three
Phenom12 of 280Not in the top three
Metaview10 of 281Not 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 Lightcast. 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 27 of the 28 answers that named Lightcast and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

metaview.ai19
pin.com19
guideflow.com18
learn.g2.com18
gitnux.org16
jobspipe.dev16
noon.ai13
g2.com11
hrtechsaas.com11
gartner.com10

151 of the 151 domain citations in answers naming Lightcast came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Lightcast

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Lightcast; a claim can dispute any of them.
Lightcast (formerly Emsi Burning Glass) 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 Lightcast'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 Lightcast, 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 lightcast.io 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.

Subscribe to the pack