Research · Run on Oct 18, 2026 · Model: gemini-3-flash-preview · Download CSV
AI recommendation rate: which coding tools does an AI assistant actually recommend?
Headline: in 25 answers, the model named only 10 of the 31 tools we track. GitHub Copilot (12/25) and Cursor (11/25) dominated. In 6 of 8 goals, the tool most discussed in our community data was not named at all (Claude Code for AI game development; Lovable for AI landing page builder; Claude Code for AI mobile app builder; Claude Code for AI code review; n8n for AI automation tools; OpenRouter for Free AI coding tools). Several answers framed themselves as current “as of late 2024”, which suggests training-data lag.
Mentions per tool
By goal: AI answer vs. community pick
| Goal | Answers | Our tracked tools the AI named | Most-discussed tracked tool in community data |
|---|
| AI game development | 3/3 | Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Meshy, ElevenLabs | Claude Code (not named) |
| AI landing page builder | 3/3 | none | Lovable (not named) |
| AI mobile app builder | 3/3 | Replit | Claude Code (not named) |
| AI code review | 2/3 | GitHub Copilot | Claude Code (not named) |
| AI agent builder | 0/3 | none | CrewAI |
| AI automation tools | 1/3 | Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Zapier Agents | n8n (not named) |
| Terminal coding agent | 2/3 | Aider, Cursor, Windsurf, Warp | Aider |
| AI code completion | 3/3 | Cursor, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, Ollama | Cursor |
| AI image generator | 2/3 | none | — |
| AI video generator | 3/3 | none | — |
| Free AI coding tools | 3/3 | Cursor, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, Ollama | OpenRouter (not named) |
| Open-source AI coding agent | 0/3 | none | Ollama |
Method
- Date: Oct 18, 2026. Model: gemini-3-flash-preview via the Gemini API, default settings, no system prompt, no web search.
- Prompt per goal (goal phrase = the real search term behind each scenario page): “What are the best tools for <goal>? Give a short list of your top recommendations.” 3 runs per goal, 12 goals.
- 25 of 36 runs returned an answer; the rest hit the free-tier daily quota and are marked
answered=0 in the CSV and excluded from counts. - A tool counts as mentioned if its name (or a known brand alias, e.g. Codeium for Windsurf, Zapier for Zapier Agents) appears anywhere in the answer. We only tally the 31 tools in our directory; other tools the model named are not counted.
- Small sample, one model, one day. Treat as a snapshot, not a ranking. We plan to re-run with more models.
Data: ai-recommendation-rate.csv (CC BY 4.0, one row per answer × tool). Compare with community-sentiment rankings by goal.
