Which inventory management systems do AI answer engines actually recommend?

When an SMB buyer asks an AI assistant which inventory management software to buy, a shortlist comes back. We asked 44 different phrasings of that question across 2 engines, 88 answers in total, and counted every product named. This is the result. Nobody paid to be on it, and no vendor list was written in advance — the 113 vendors below are simply everyone the engines named.

Run 3 Aug 2026 Questions 44 Answers 88 Vendors named 113 Top-10 repeatability 10/10

Free to read, raw data included. What is for sale — $9.99/mo monitoring for a single vendor.

The leaderboard

“Answers” is how many of the 88 answers named that product. Share is the same number as a percentage. The two right-hand columns split it by engine. Every row has its own link — the # beside a vendor name gives you something like connexion.me/c/inventory/#zoho.

#VendorAnswers ShareGeminiPerplexity
1Zoho Inventory#6169.3%2833
2Katana#3539.8%296
3Cin7#3337.5%2013
4Sortly#2933.0%1415
5Fishbowl Inventory#2528.4%169
6NetSuite#2427.3%1014
7Cin7 Core#2123.9%1110
8inFlow Inventory#1719.3%611
9Square for Retail#1112.5%65
10Extensiv#910.2%72
11Finale Inventory#78.0%07
12MRPeasy#78.0%43
13Unleashed#78.0%25
14DEAR Systems#66.8%60
15Linnworks#66.8%24
16Inventory Planner#55.7%50
17Odoo Inventory#55.7%23
18Oracle NetSuite#55.7%50
19Ordoro#55.7%14
20QuickBooks#55.7%14
21Skubana#55.7%41
22Square#55.7%14
23Acctivate#44.5%13
24Brightpearl#44.5%04
25Craftybase#44.5%13
26Lightspeed Retail#44.5%22
27SAP Business One#44.5%22
28Veeqo#44.5%13
29DEAR#33.4%30
30Sellbrite#33.4%30
31ApparelMagic#22.3%11
32Ekos#22.3%11
33Epicor Eagle#22.3%20
34Oracle NetSuite ERP#22.3%20
35Orca Scan#22.3%11
36QuickBooks Enterprise#22.3%02
37Shopify POS#22.3%20
38SimplyDepo#22.3%02
39SOS Inventory#22.3%11
40Acumatica#11.1%01
41AIMS360#11.1%01
42Aptean Food & Beverage ERP#11.1%01
43AutoPower#11.1%10
44Batch Expiry Pro#11.1%01
45Beer30#11.1%10
46BevSpot#11.1%01
47Blue Link ERP#11.1%10
48Brahmin#11.1%01
49BrewPlanner#11.1%01
50Breww#11.1%10
51ChannelEngine#11.1%10
52Clear Spider#11.1%01
53Cleverence Inventory#11.1%01
54Digit#11.1%01
55Dynamics 365 SCM#11.1%01
56EasyEcom#11.1%01
57ECi RockSolid MAX#11.1%10
58Epicor Vision#11.1%10
59Erplain#11.1%01
60Fast Inventory Software#11.1%01
61Fleetio#11.1%01
62Fulfil.io#11.1%10
63Gravity Software#11.1%01
64Increff#11.1%01
65Increff WMS + OMS#11.1%01
66iNECTA Food ERP#11.1%01
67Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage#11.1%10
68Inventory & barcode scanner#11.1%01
69Inventory Now#11.1%10
70Kladana Cloud ERP#11.1%01
71Logiwa WMS#11.1%10
72MarketMan#11.1%01
73Microsoft Dynamics 365 SCM#11.1%01
74Mintsoft#11.1%01
75Mobile Inventory: Scan & Count#11.1%01
76Netstock#11.1%01
77Ollie#11.1%01
78OneCart#11.1%01
79OpenBOM#11.1%01
80Oracle Fusion Cloud Inventory Management#11.1%01
81Oracle Warehouse Management Cloud#11.1%01
82OrderCircle#11.1%01
83OrderTime Inventory#11.1%10
84Paladin POS#11.1%10
85ParityFactory#11.1%10
86PartKeepr#11.1%01
87PartsBox#11.1%01
88PartsTech Inventory#11.1%01
89Prediko#11.1%01
90Priority#11.1%01
91QuickSync#11.1%01
92RockSolid MAX#11.1%01
93Rootstock#11.1%01
94SalesBinder#11.1%01
95SAP Extended Warehouse Management#11.1%01
96Sellercloud#11.1%01
97Settle#11.1%01
98Shopify#11.1%10
99Shopify’s native inventory tools#11.1%01
100SkuVault#11.1%01
101Stock Controller#11.1%10
102Stock Tracker#11.1%10
103Stockpile#11.1%01
104Stocky#11.1%10
105Sumtracker#11.1%01
106SyncX#11.1%01
107SYSPRO#11.1%01
108TraceLot#11.1%01
109Trunk#11.1%10
110Unicommerce#11.1%01
111WarePulse#11.1%01
112Wherefour#11.1%10
113Xero#11.1%01

What is free, and what is for sale

Everything above is free and stays free — the leaderboard, the method, all 88 raw answers and the machine-readable ranking, published in full at the bottom of this page. No vendor paid to be listed, no vendor can pay to move, and nothing here goes behind a login later.

What is for sale is one vendor's row, watched: $9.99 a month to be told when your rank moves, who took your mentions, and which phrasings started or stopped naming you — the board is re-run monthly and you get what changed. A one-off $199 deep report on a single row is the other option. What is in each →

Method

Every claim on this page is reproducible from the files linked at the bottom.

The engines

Gemini (gemini-flash-latest), Perplexity (sonar). Each was called through its public API with a near-empty system prompt — “answer the user's question directly and concisely” — and nothing else. The engines were not asked to produce a list, rank anything, or name vendors. Steering them toward a list would have manufactured the thing being measured.

The questions

44 distinct phrasings of one purchase decision, written before any measurement was run. No vendor name appears in any of them.

  1. What is the best inventory management software for a small business?
  2. Best stock control software for a retail store with two locations
  3. We are an e-commerce brand selling on multiple channels and keeping stock in spreadsheets is a mess. What inventory software should we buy?
  4. Recommend inventory tracking software for a small manufacturing business.
  5. affordable inventory management software for SMB
  6. What inventory software do small e-commerce businesses actually use?
  7. Best inventory control system for a wholesale distributor
  8. We keep running out of stock because our online store and warehouse aren't synced. What software fixes this?
  9. Top rated inventory tracking tools for small warehouse
  10. What software should a growing D2C brand use for order and inventory management?
  11. Best inventory management software with barcode scanning support
  12. What is the best software for managing stock across multiple warehouses?
  13. Simple inventory control software for a 10-person boutique
  14. We need inventory software that tracks raw materials and finished goods for assembly.
  15. Best low cost inventory management app for small business
  16. What stock tracking software should a food and beverage distributor buy?
  17. Recommend a batch and lot tracking inventory software for cosmetics brand.
  18. Best inventory management software for multichannel sellers
  19. We are losing track of stock in our stockroom. What software should we implement?
  20. What is the easiest inventory control system for non-technical retail staff?
  21. Best stock management software for apparel and clothing brand with matrix variants
  22. Software to manage purchase orders and supplier inventory for small business
  23. What inventory management platform is best for multi-channel e-commerce sellers?
  24. Top inventory control platforms for small electronics manufacturer
  25. We need automated reorder points and low stock alerts. What software should we get?
  26. Best inventory management software for a 50-person company
  27. What software do small medical supply distributors use for inventory tracking?
  28. Recommend cloud-based inventory control software for light manufacturing.
  29. Best inventory tracking system for small business with multiple web stores
  30. How should a small business replace spreadsheet inventory tracking?
  31. Best software for real time stock synchronization across online marketplace channels
  32. What stock management software is best for high volume e-commerce?
  33. Best inventory software with kitting and bundling support
  34. What software should an auto parts distributor use to track inventory?
  35. Simple stock control tool for small craft brewery inventory
  36. Best inventory management software for hardware store with 15,000 SKUs
  37. Recommend inventory management software with serial number tracking.
  38. What inventory software should a subscription box company buy?
  39. Best mobile inventory management app for barcode scanning in a stockroom
  40. We need software to track stock levels, purchase orders, and lead times. Any recommendations?
  41. What is the best inventory management system for B2B wholesalers?
  42. Best inventory software for small business under $200 a month
  43. Recommend inventory control tool for a small furniture maker managing wood inventory.
  44. What stock tracking system do fast-growing online brands recommend?

How the vendor list was built

Each of the 88 answers was read back and every named product extracted. The vendor list is discovered: a product appears here if and only if an engine named it. Counted are dedicated inventory management systems, stock control software, multichannel inventory and order management tools, and broader ERP or POS suites whose inventory module was named. Excluded, even when named: standalone accounting software, e-commerce storefront builders, POS hardware and cash registers, shipping and label printing tools, enterprise 3PL warehouse management systems (WMS), IT asset tracking software, procurement-only tools, barcode scanner apps without an inventory backend, spreadsheets, and companies named only as an example user.

Spelling variants of one product are folded together — “inFlow”, “inFlow Inventory” and “inFlow Software” are one row, and a trailing “by company” is dropped. An edition name is folded into its product when the plain name is at least three times as common, so “Cin7 Core” counts as Cin7 and “Fishbowl Drive” counts as Fishbowl. No pair was merged by hand in this category: every fold above is the rule applied mechanically, with no human judgement about who is who.

A product is counted once per answer, however many times that answer mentions it.

Is this stable, or is it noise?

The entire run was repeated a second time, same 44 questions, same engines, independent calls. The top ten came back 10/10 identical. What moved: by position, Cin7 was 3 in run A and 4 in run B; Sortly was 4 in run A and 5 in run B; Fishbowl Inventory was 5 in run A and 3 in run B; NetSuite was 6 in run A and 8 in run B; Cin7 Core was 7 in run A and 6 in run B; inFlow Inventory was 8 in run A and 7 in run B. Run B named 100 vendors over 88 answers against run A's 113. The tail moves; the head does not.

A leaderboard whose top ten reshuffles between runs would not be worth publishing, so this check was run before the page was, and the page ships only because it passed.

What this is not

This measures what two answer engines said on 3 Aug 2026, in response to these questions, through their APIs. It is not a quality ranking, not a review, and not advice on which inventory management software to buy. A product can be excellent and rank low here — that gap is the point.

The raw data

All 88 answers, verbatim, one JSON object per line: run A · run B. The per-answer extracted product names: run A · run B. Machine-readable ranking: ranking.json.