Which platform your web application actually runs on
Summary
As of Aug 18, 2026, the market’s strongest steer is Vercel — followed by Netlify and Render.
The engines name 10 of the 37 products measured here — the other 27 are never mentioned in an answer.
Buyers search for Cloudflare Pages by name more than anything else here — which is not where the engines steer.
The rest of the board, ranked by what the market says — every score’s receipts one click away.
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnamed by Claude, Gemini, Google's AI Mode and Google's AI Overview
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand150,300 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnamed by Claude, Gemini, Google's AI Mode and Google's AI Overview
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand286,400 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnamed by Claude, Gemini, Google's AI Mode and Google's AI Overview
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand900,000 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnamed by Claude, Gemini, Google's AI Mode and Google's AI Overview
- Search resultsranks #10 where buyers search
- Buyer demand0 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnamed by Claude, Gemini, Google's AI Mode and Google's AI Overview
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand15,390 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnamed by Claude, Gemini, Google's AI Mode and Google's AI Overview
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand47,500 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnamed by Google's AI Mode
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand201,000 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnamed by Claude
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand29,600 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnamed by Google's AI Mode
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand6,600 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand148,000 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand49,500 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand12,100 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand12,410 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand1,600 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand880 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand390 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand590 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand340 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand320 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand290 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand110 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand30 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand0 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand0 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand0 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand0 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand0 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand0 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand0 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand0 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand0 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand0 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand0 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand0 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand0 searches a month by name
Why it ranks here →
- AI answersnot named in AI answers
- Search resultsnot in the top results where buyers search
- Buyer demand0 searches a month by name
What the engines say
Verbatim, from the answers themselves. We quote what an engine said and when it said it — never a paraphrase, and never our summary of it.
“Cloudflare Pages - Fast global CDN with Git integration and serverless functions at the edge.”
Claude on Cloudflare Pages · Aug 18, 2026
“Render supports preview deployments for static sites and web services, allowing teams to test full-stack changes safely before merging to production. - Coolify : Best for teams who want a self-hosted, open-source alternative to Vercel/Heroku.”
Google's AI Mode on Coolify · Aug 18, 2026
“Container & Cloud Run - Google Cloud Run: Serverless container platform that scales down to zero and handles any language packaged in a Docker container. - Self-Hosted VPS (DigitalOcean, Hetzner): Gives you absolute control using Docker and tools like Dokploy…”
Google's AI Overview on DigitalOcean · Aug 18, 2026
“It simplifies the deployment of web apps, APIs, background workers, and static sites with predictable pricing. * Heroku: A long-standing platform, Heroku is a managed container platform that uses "dynos" to run applications in various programming languages.”
Gemini on Heroku · Aug 18, 2026
“Vercel excels in serverless deployment and provides features like Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) and automatic image optimization. * Netlify: A strong competitor to Vercel, Netlify pioneered the JAMstack movement and is known for its versatility in…”
Gemini on Netlify · Aug 18, 2026
“Railway - Modern alternative to Heroku with good developer experience for deploying full-stack apps.”
Claude on Railway App · Aug 18, 2026
Engines asked for this category: Claude, Gemini, Google's AI Mode and Google's AI Overview.
Check it yourself
Ask ChatGPT about this market →
You will not get our answer back, and you should not expect to. A single reply varies by the day, the account and the wording; the board is what several engines named across a fixed set of buying questions, recorded over time. What you can check is the part that matters — whether the products we say the engines name are the ones you are shown.
What decides a position
Four signals, chosen because a vendor cannot buy any of them directly. Each is a measurement of what the market does, not of what a company says.
What AI engines answer when buyers ask what to use for a job.
Where the product stands in the search results buyers actually see for the category’s buying queries — including who owns the answer box.
How many buyers search for the product by name.
Whether the product is gaining or losing ground against the others in its market, measured between dated captures rather than claimed.
A product is scored on the signals we could actually measure for it, and a signal we could not measure is left out rather than counted as zero. This is not a quality rating and not a recommendation. It measures how present and how well-regarded a product is across public surfaces — a different question from whether it is right for you.
Cite this
Free to quote, with attribution. Add your own accessed date if your style needs one — the date below is when we measured, which is the one that decides whether a number is still current.
The Lytms Index. "Which platform your web application actually runs on." Lytms AI. Measured Aug 18, 2026. https://lytms.ai/best/app-hosting
Prefer the numbers? Download the application hosting board as CSV — every row and every evidence line exactly as shown above, nothing extra.