HR AI Index
Index Vendors › Pave · September 2026 Edition
3 categories · Ranked

Pave

267Judge labels
78First choices
22Negative labels
12 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.
Best standing
32% in Compensation benchmarkin for small business buyers
Rank 2 of 144 in the mid-market standingaccepted challenger
2 of 12 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 0% of its 25 labels there were negative.
By buyer segmentStrongest at small business.
In compensation benchmarkin · 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 Pave 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
Compensation benchmarking dataCompensation and total rewards20%2 of 1440%25accepted challenger
Compensation managementCompensation and total rewards18%1 of 1893%66accepted challenger
Pay equityCompensation and total rewards10%4 of 600%12accepted challenger

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Pave 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 Pave across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.
ModelFirst choiceAlternativeMentionNegativeLabels
Claude Haiku 4.510102
GPT-5.4 mini00202
Gemini 3.5 Flash1142017
Perplexity Sonar01203
Grok 4.1 Fast731011
Mistral Small13318
DeepSeek V4 Flash633113
Llama 4 Maverick21205
Qwen 3.7 Flash463013
Kimi K242309
GLM 4.7 FlashX380011
MiniMax M2.525209

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
Direct43 labels16
Paraphrase36 labels12
Comparative67 labels31not counted in share
Budget-constrained58 labels37
Scale-constrained38 labels13
Negative25 labels4not counted in share
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative267 labels in all, every segment counted; 78 of the 113 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.

“Use modern, integration-based salary benchmarking software that pulls live, anonymized data directly from HR and payroll systems (e.g., Pave, Ravio, or Figures)” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Compensation benchmarkin · negative prompt · first choice
“Pave disrupted this by integrating directly with companies' HRIS, ATS, and cap tables to offer real-time, crowdsourced salary and equity benchmarking” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Compensation management · comparative prompt · first choice
“Start with Pave's free Market Data Lite (if you're under 200 employees) — it's the most accessible, current, and comprehensive free option.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Compensation benchmarkin · budget prompt · first choice
“Pave: Excellent if you want built-in, real-time market benchmarking data, tech-forward integrations, and polished total rewards templates.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Compensation management · scale prompt · first choice

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.

“Note: benchmark-first, so execution is lighter.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Compensation management · comparative prompt · soft negative
“or the equity focus of tools like Pave” Mistral Small · Compensation management · paraphrase prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Pave, over the 213 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Pave was named but was not.
ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
Ravio102 of 2131Not in the top three
Salary.com71 of 2133Not in the top three
Mercer57 of 2136Not in the top three
beqom56 of 21317Not in the top three
BambooHR49 of 2136Not in the top three
Radford48 of 2136Not in the top three
Salary.com CompAnalyst44 of 2132Not 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 Pave. 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 172 of the 213 answers that named Pave and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

comprehensive.io109
ravio.com96
gartner.com86
peoplemanagingpeople.com67
g2.com61
worldmetrics.org59
learn.g2.com55
hibob.com52
firsthr.app51
salarycube.com46

682 of the 682 domain citations in answers naming Pave came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Pave

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Pave; a claim can dispute any of them.
Pave (Market Data Lite) 4Pave (Market Data Lite Tier) 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 Pave'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 Pave, 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 pave.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.