Online Doctors: 2026 AI Market Discovery Index

Answer Capsule

In the Online Doctors category for June 2026, AI systems are concentrating recommendation power around two dominant brands while leaving established players visible but rarely shortlisted. PlushCare leads with the highest AI Authority Value at $844,165, followed by Sesame at $535,802. Teladoc, Amwell, and Doctor on Demand appear frequently but capture far less recommendation value. The market is compressing around brands with strong source-layer evidence, comparison content, and positive patient sentiment.

Executive Summary

AI search platforms are reshaping how patients discover and select online doctor services. The June 2026 benchmark reveals a market where being mentioned is no longer enough. PlushCare and Sesame have pulled ahead, capturing a combined $1.38 million in modeled monthly AI Authority Value, while the remaining eight brands share just $735,000.

PlushCare leads across all three public high-intent clusters, appearing in 52.6% of all observations and earning valid recommendations in 18.6% of them. Sesame holds second position with strong performance in evaluation-stage prompts, particularly on Google AI Overviews where it achieves a 27.7% recommendation rate. Together, these two brands are setting the evidence and sentiment benchmarks that every other platform is now measured against.

The most striking finding is the gap between visibility and recommendation power. Teladoc appears in 20.6% of observations but earns valid recommendations in only 6.2% of them. Amwell shows a similar pattern: 21.2% presence but just 6.8% recommendation coverage. Both brands are being listed as options but are not being advanced as top choices when patients are ready to decide.

Doctor on Demand presents a meaningful contrast. It appears in only 15.3% of observations yet converts that presence into a 7.5% recommendation rate, with the highest net sentiment score in the category at 0.50. Its AI Authority Value of $198,752 exceeds both Teladoc and Amwell, demonstrating that efficient recommendation conversion matters more than raw visibility.

The AI Discovery Shift in Online Doctors

Patients searching for virtual care increasingly receive AI-generated shortlists rather than ranked search results. These responses act as de facto recommendation engines, compressing the consideration set to three to five brands per query before a patient ever clicks a link or reads a review.

The critical distinction is that AI systems do not simply list brands. They rank, compare, and advance brands based on available public evidence. A brand that appears in a response but is not recommended in the top positions is effectively invisible to the patient making a decision. Presence in the response is a floor, not an outcome.

This creates a two-tier market. Brands with strong citation architecture, structured official content, comparison coverage, and positive patient sentiment get advanced. Brands that rely on name recognition alone get mentioned but not recommended. The data in this benchmark shows the pattern clearly: high mention rates do not predict high recommendation rates.

For category participants, the commercial implication is direct. AI shortlist eligibility is becoming the upstream determinant of patient acquisition. Brands that do not appear in the top recommendations on ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity are losing consideration before the patient reaches any owned channel.

Directional Category Leaders

1. PlushCare

PlushCare dominates the Online Doctors category with an AI Authority Value of $844,165, more than 1.5 times the next closest competitor. It appears in 52.6% of all observations and earns valid recommendations in 18.6% of them. Its Top 3 rate is 14.5% and it achieves the highest Rank 1 rate in the category at 8.8%. On Google AI Overviews, PlushCare reaches a 30.3% recommendation rate with an average rank of 1.59, making it the default first recommendation for patients searching that platform.

The public interpretation: PlushCare is the AI system's preferred online doctor recommendation across all buyer stages and all six platforms tracked.

2. Sesame

Sesame holds second position with an AI Authority Value of $535,802. It appears in 33.4% of observations and earns valid recommendations in 13.2% of them. Sesame performs particularly well on Google AI Overviews, where it achieves a 27.7% recommendation rate and a 25.6% Top 3 rate. Its average recommended rank of 2.13 is competitive with the category leader, and it nearly matches PlushCare in the evaluation cluster, capturing $279,636 in recommendation value versus PlushCare's $296,072.

The public interpretation: Sesame is the strongest challenger in the category and the dominant brand in evaluation-stage prompts where patients are actively comparing platforms.

3. Doctor on Demand

Doctor on Demand captures $198,752 in AI Authority Value despite appearing in only 15.3% of observations, the most efficient recommendation conversion outside the top two. It achieves the highest net sentiment score in the category at 0.50 and a positive visibility rate that exceeds Teladoc despite lower overall presence. On Google AI Overviews, Doctor on Demand reaches a 19.5% recommendation rate with an average rank of 1.55.

The public interpretation: Doctor on Demand converts limited visibility into recommendation power better than any other brand in the category, suggesting strong underlying sentiment and source-layer evidence.

4. Amwell

Amwell appears in 21.2% of observations but earns valid recommendations in only 6.8% of them. Its AI Authority Value of $155,703 is less than one-fifth of PlushCare's despite comparable visibility levels. Amwell performs best on ChatGPT, where it achieves a 15.5% recommendation rate, but underperforms materially on Gemini and Google AI Mode.

The public interpretation: Amwell has the visibility of a category leader but the recommendation conversion of a mid-tier brand, pointing to a structural gap in its AI evidence architecture.

5. Teladoc

Teladoc appears in 20.6% of observations but earns valid recommendations in only 6.2% of them. Its AI Authority Value of $151,808 is the lowest among the five most visible brands. On Google AI Mode, Teladoc appears in 17.4% of responses but earns zero Top 3 recommendations. Its Rank 1 rate across the full dataset is just 3.0%, compared to PlushCare's 8.8%.

The public interpretation: Teladoc is widely recognized by AI systems but is not being trusted to lead recommendations, a gap that represents significant displaced commercial value given the brand's scale.

The Buying Moments That Now Decide the Category

Best Telehealth Platforms and Top Virtual Care Services (Consideration)

This cluster represents patients in the awareness stage, searching broadly for the best options before narrowing their choice. It accounts for 304 observations. PlushCare leads with an AI Authority Value of $425,465, followed by Sesame at $148,948. Teladoc captures $86,247 and Amwell holds $64,102. The gap between first and second in this cluster is wider than in any other, suggesting PlushCare has built a commanding early-funnel position that competitors have not matched.

Telehealth Platform Comparisons and Alternatives (Evaluation)

This cluster captures patients actively comparing platforms before making a selection. It accounts for 318 observations and carries a 1.25 buyer stage multiplier, reflecting higher commercial intent. PlushCare leads at $296,072, with Sesame close behind at $279,636. Doctor on Demand captures $144,967 in this cluster. The competitive proximity between PlushCare and Sesame here is the tightest in the dataset, making this the highest-stakes battleground in the category.

Telehealth Pricing, Cost and Plans (Decision)

This decision-stage cluster carries a 1.5 buyer stage multiplier and accounts for 207 observations. It represents patients who have narrowed their options and are ready to convert. PlushCare leads at $122,628, followed by Sesame at $107,218. Amwell captures $56,625 in this cluster while Teladoc drops to just $8,725. The collapse of Teladoc's recommendation value at the decision stage is the sharpest competitive signal in the public dataset.

Why Recommendation Power Is Concentrating

AI platforms build recommendations from layers of available public evidence. The brands leading this category share common characteristics: structured official website content with clear pricing and service descriptions, extensive coverage in independent comparison and review sources, positive and consistent patient sentiment signals, and strong entity recognition across multiple authoritative references.

PlushCare and Sesame both maintain high net sentiment scores (0.41 and 0.42 respectively) alongside strong positive visibility rates. These signals help AI systems weight these brands favorably when constructing ranked shortlists. It is not that AI systems have decided these brands are better. It is that the evidence available to those systems supports advancing them.

The citation architecture behind a recommendation matters at the source level. Brands appearing in authoritative comparison articles, consumer health publications, and structured pricing content are more likely to be retrieved, trusted, and advanced. Brands that are prominent in traditional marketing channels but underrepresented in the sources AI systems index heavily are losing ground they may not yet recognize as competitive.

The Category's Most Visible Warning Sign

Teladoc is the most commercially significant warning sign in this benchmark. It is one of the most recognized names in telehealth, built through years of investment in brand awareness, media presence, and provider network scale. Yet in June 2026, it earns valid recommendations in only 6.2% of AI observations and earns zero Top 3 recommendations on Google AI Mode.

The warning is not about Teladoc's quality as a service. The warning is structural. Teladoc's brand equity does not translate into the source-layer signals that AI systems use to rank and recommend. On the platform where patients are increasingly starting their care search, Teladoc is present but not advanced. The patients who see it listed and see PlushCare ranked first are making a choice shaped by AI systems, not by Teladoc's marketing investment.

This pattern is likely to compound. As AI shortlists become more habitual for patients, the brands that are not being recommended today will face progressively steeper recovery costs.

What This Means for the Category

The Online Doctors market is experiencing shortlist compression at a pace that most established brands have not yet responded to. Two brands now capture the majority of AI recommendation value across all buyer stages. If this pattern holds, the brands currently underperforming will face compounding disadvantage as AI platforms entrench their recommendation preferences through reinforcing evidence.

Competitor displacement is visible in the data. Teladoc and Amwell, despite significant brand recognition and market history, are being displaced in AI-generated recommendations by brands with stronger source visibility and more favorable patient sentiment signals. This displacement does not require a patient to actively choose a competitor. It happens before the patient reaches any owned channel.

Trust-source dependency is becoming the primary competitive moat in this category. The brands that invest in structured content, independent comparison coverage, patient reviews indexed by AI sources, and clear entity architecture will accumulate recommendation power over time. Those that rely on legacy brand recognition will see their AI recommendation share erode further.

For brands currently underperforming against their visibility levels, the commercial case for intervention is clear. The gap between appearance rate and recommendation rate is a direct measure of displaced value. In a category with a $19.7 million monthly AI opportunity, a five-percentage-point improvement in recommendation conversion rate represents material revenue at scale.

What This Public Benchmark Does Not Include

- Full cluster dataset covering all 10 prompt clusters

- Prompt-level response tables showing exact AI outputs by platform

- Citation-source failure maps identifying missing or weak evidence layers

- Platform-by-platform recovery priorities for each brand

- Entity and schema diagnostics

- Source-layer gap analysis by content type and publisher category

- Company-specific content and coverage recommendations

- Exact competitor threat profiles by cluster and platform

- Full paid opportunity model with brand-level projections

This page shows the market shape. The paid report shows the repair map.

Methodology and Disclaimers

Market studied: Online Doctors, covering telehealth and virtual care platforms.

Brands and entities included: Amwell, Doctor on Demand, HealthTap, K Health, Lemonaid Health, LiveHealth Online, MDLive, PlushCare, Sesame, and Teladoc. This universe may not include every active brand in the category.

Data collection window: June 2026, with a snapshot date of June 16, 2026.

AI platforms tested: ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, and Google AI Overviews.

Observations analyzed: 829 observations were analyzed across three public high-intent clusters.

Prompt categories: Consideration (Best Telehealth Platforms and Top Virtual Care Services), Evaluation (Telehealth Platform Comparisons and Alternatives), and Decision (Telehealth Pricing, Cost and Plans).

Definition of a mention: A mention means the company appeared in an AI-generated response, regardless of sentiment or rank.

Definition of a valid recommendation: A valid recommendation is a positive, shortlist-quality or ranked recommendation that earns recommendation credit. Visibility is not equivalent to recommendation credit.

Metrics used: Valid recommendation coverage, Top 3 rate, Rank 1 rate, Top 10 rate, average recommended rank, net sentiment score, monthly AI Authority Value, monthly AI Recommendation Value, monthly AI Visibility Assist Value, and captured share of AI opportunity.

Limitations: This is a point-in-time benchmark. AI platform outputs can change. Modeled values are estimates and do not represent actual revenue. This report is not a full audit or complete market census.

For a company-specific Authority Index report, the deeper analysis would show which prompts each company wins or loses, which AI platforms are under-recognizing the brand, which source layers are shaping recommendations, and what changes may improve AI shortlist eligibility.