Small business▼−2Since September 2026: 2% → 0%, −2 points. Inside the 10-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 2% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 8 pointsRank 12 → 72 of 78
Wave · 1 category · Named, not rankedWave Payroll
10Judge labels
0First choices
7Negative labels
7 / 14Models named it
1Category
October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.7, every buyer segment counted.
Standing
4 labels, too few to rank
A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Wave Payroll was named 4 times in Contractor payments, where Tipalti led with 22%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.
By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.
Small business75 of 81
0%3 labels
under the label threshold
Mid-market78 of 98
0%4 labels
under the label threshold
Enterprise70 of 75
0%3 labels
under the label threshold
In contractor payments · 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 Wave Payroll 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 | Since September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contractor payments | Spend and procurement | 0% | 78 of 98 | 50% | 4 | under 10 labels · led by Tipalti at 22% | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 10-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
Movement
Since September 2026, Wave Payroll held within the floor in its one category: no change cleared 10 points.
Best category · Contractor payments · by segment
Mid-market=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 10-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 10 pointsRank 41 → 68 of 85
EnterprisenewNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now.
0%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 10 pointsRank 65 of 70, unchanged
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contractor payments | 0% | 0% | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 10-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 41 → 78 of 98 |
Shares here are read over the models both editions asked, so they can differ by a point or two from the standing above, which counts every model in this edition.
The floor is 10 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. Movement is read over the twelve models both editions asked; GPT-6 Luna, Muse Glimmer 30B joined this edition and are in the standing but not yet in the comparison. How the floor is measured · The editions
By model
How each model treated Wave Payroll across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.ShowHide
By model
How each model treated Wave Payroll across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.
ShowHide| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Grok 4.1 Fast | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Kimi K2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
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
Direct0 labelsNone
Paraphrase0 labelsNone
Comparative0 labelsNone
Budget-constrained4 labelsNone
Scale-constrained4 labelsNone
Negative2 labelsNone
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative10 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.
“2nd Place: Wave Payroll (Best if you also want free accounting)” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Contractor payments · budget 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.
“Caveat: More manual work required; best for very small operations with few contractors.” Kimi K2 · Contractor payments · budget prompt · soft negative
“Wave - More SMB-focused” MiniMax M2.5 · Contractor payments · scale prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Wave Payroll, over the 10 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Wave Payroll was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Wave Payroll, over the 10 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Wave Payroll was named but was not.
ShowHideProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. 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 Wave Payroll. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 8 of the 10 answers that named Wave Payroll and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
joinhomebase.com6
fitsmallbusiness.com4
gusto.com4
acciyo.com3
firsthr.app3
quickbooks.intuit.com3
techrepublic.com3
wingspan.app3
capterra.com2
deel.com2
Thirty-three of the thirty-three domain citations in answers naming Wave Payroll came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
waveapps.com is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Wave Payroll takes 0% of first choices and Tipalti takes 22%.ShowHide
Search and answers
waveapps.com is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Wave Payroll takes 0% of first choices and Tipalti takes 22%.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimatesPosition for “contractor payment platforms”
–
not in the top ten
Position for “contractor payments and 1099 platform”
–
not in the top ten
- Searches for its name, Google
- 1,600 a month (“wave payroll”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 22 a month
- Its company's site
- waveapps.com shared with Wave's other products; the figures are the site's
- Organic visits to its site
- about 708,862 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 19,080 · 1,532 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 17,040
- Paid Google search
- No ads found in the estimate; that does not mean it runs none
In answers
This editionShare of first choices
0%
rank 78 of 98 in contractor payments
Segment leader
22%
Tipalti
- First choices
- 0 across its categories
- Named in
- 10 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 8 of the answers that named it
Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read September 28, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
Names read as Wave Payroll
What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Wave Payroll; a claim can dispute any of them.
Wave 3
Follow Wave Payroll
An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.
Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.
The company
Wave is the company behind Wave Payroll.ShowHide
The company
Wave is the company behind Wave Payroll.
ShowHideOn record
Company records- Also from Wave
- Wave Accounting, Wave Payments
In its own words
Stated by the vendor, not checked- Positioning
- Run payroll for employees or contractors with peace of mind
- For
- employees or contractors
- Price stated
- add-on from $25/month waveapps.com/pricing
- Starting price
- 25 waveapps.com/pricing
- Certifications
- Wave is a PCI-DSS Level 1 Service Provider
- Customers named
- Joshua NadlerTatiyanna W.Eric Silverberg & Eli GladstoneRobbie Katherine AnthonyTru WilliamsDaeTroy StykeSarah Stockdale
- Not stated on the pages read
- Free plan or trial, integrations, hosting
What Wave Payroll's own pages state, read September 28, 2026: waveapps.com, waveapps.com/pricing. A claimed page can correct any of them.
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 Wave Payroll'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 Wave Payroll, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.
What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives
A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Wave Payroll by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Wave Payroll is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
- the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
- its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
- who was chosen in the answers that did not name Wave Payroll, and every reason the record gives;
- a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
- one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.