Robo-Advisors: AI Visibility Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

Questions This Section Answers

• Who leads the robo-advisor category in AI recommendation coverage, and how close is the race?
• Which brands made the largest coverage gains or declines since the July 2026 baseline?
• How did recommendation-shaped answer share and valid shortlist share change between July and October 2026?

Fidelity remains the category leader with 89.9% valid recommendation coverage in October 2026, up from 83.4% in July 2026. Charles Schwab holds second place at 88.1%, a 1.8 percentage point gap behind the leader. That gap has narrowed from the 3.8 points separating the two brands at the July 2026 baseline.

The largest percentage-point increase across the full July-to-October series belongs to Betterment LLC, a newly tracked entity name that posted 35.1% valid recommendation coverage in October 2026 against a 0.0% July baseline under that name. Because the benchmark also separately tracks the prior entity name, Betterment, which declined sharply over the same period, that movement is best read alongside the entity's full record below. Among the brands tracked continuously under the same name across all four months, SoFi recorded the largest increase, reaching 54.1% in October 2026 from 33.8% in July 2026, a gain of 20.3 points. Vanguard followed, reaching 83.0% in October 2026 from 66.4% in July 2026, a gain of 16.6 points.

Four brands recorded significant declines over the same period, measured under the entity names used at the July 2026 baseline. Betterment fell to 0.0% in October 2026 from 75.6% in July 2026; a newly tracked entity, Betterment LLC, separately posted 35.1% valid recommendation coverage in October 2026. Acorns fell to 0.0% in October 2026 from 19.9% in July 2026; a newly tracked entity, Acorns Grow Inc., separately posted 2.8% in October 2026. Wealthfront fell to 0.0% in October 2026 from 62.5% in July 2026; a newly tracked entity, Wealthfront Corporation, separately posted 18.2% in October 2026. M1 Finance fell to 11.5% in October 2026 from 15.7% in July 2026, a 4.2 point decline, with a 0.1 point rise from September to October that was not beyond normal variation.

The four brands that declined in August 2026 recovered in September and extended gains in October: Charles Schwab, Fidelity, SoFi, and Vanguard each posted increases beyond normal variation in both September and October 2026. Betterment LLC, Acorns Grow Inc., and Wealthfront Corporation appear in the October 2026 measurement under expanded entity names that were not present in earlier months, while the earlier entity names for Acorns, Betterment, and Wealthfront do not appear in the October 2026 measurement. The benchmark records the change in how those entities are named and measured. It does not, by itself, establish why the change occurred.

The benchmark began with 800 prompt-surface observations in each month and produced 495 qualified observations in October 2026 after qualification.

Current Benchmark at a Glance

Qualified surface breadth counts the six canonical AI/search surface families with at least one qualified observation: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. All four months recorded observations across all six families. August 2026 and September 2026 fell between the baseline and current months, with recommendation-shaped answer share at 31.1% in August and 46.7% in September.

For the strategic interpretation of this benchmark, read CiteWorks Studio's analysis of How AI Search Is Recommending Robo-Advisors

Research Scope and Qualification

Questions This Section Answers

• How many prompt-surface observations qualified for the public robo-advisor benchmark in October 2026?
• Why is the qualified benchmark dataset smaller than the raw prompt collection?

The public benchmark is narrower than the raw collection universe by design. The funnel below shows how source prompt-surface observations narrow to the qualified benchmark dataset.

Brand-level percentages use the qualified observations as the public denominator, not the raw collection. AI Visibility Market Discovery Methodology.

Current Brand Standings

Questions This Section Answers

• Which robo-advisor brands lead on valid recommendation coverage, top-three rate, and rank-one rate?
• How large is the gap between the top cluster of brands and the rest of the field?
• Where do sentiment and presence rates separate the tracked brands?

The standings show a top cluster of three brands separated by less than 7 points, followed by SoFi, then a broader field trailing by 20 or more points from the leaders. Betterment LLC and Wealthfront Corporation appear under expanded entity names in October 2026.

How to Read the Standings

• Presence rate: share of qualified observations where the brand is mentioned in any form.
• Valid recommendation coverage: share of qualified observations where the brand appears in a valid recommendation shortlist.
• Top-three rate: share of qualified observations where the brand is recommended in the top three positions.
• Rank-one rate: share of qualified observations where the brand is recommended in the first position.
• Net sentiment: positive minus negative mentions divided by total mentions, scaled 0 to 1.

For formulas and denominator rules, see AI Visibility Market Discovery Metric Definitions.

Recommendation Coverage Movement

Questions This Section Answers

• Which continuously tracked robo-advisor brand recorded the largest recommendation coverage increase since July 2026?
• How did the Acorns, Betterment, and Wealthfront entity name changes affect their measured coverage?
• Did M1 Finance's September-to-October movement exceed normal variation?

From September to October 2026, three of the four rising brands posted their largest single-month moves of the series. Vanguard rose 17.6 points, its largest move in the series. SoFi rose 18.8 points, also its largest move. Charles Schwab rose 10.7 points, also its largest move. Fidelity rose 6.1 points, its second consecutive increase beyond normal variation, though its largest single-month move in the series occurred in September. M1 Finance, by contrast, recorded a 0.1 point rise from September to October, not beyond normal variation, following two consecutive monthly declines.

Largest Increase: SoFi

SoFi's valid recommendation coverage rose to 54.1% in October 2026 from 33.8% in July 2026, a 20.3 percentage point increase beyond normal variation and the largest gain among continuously tracked brands. The increase occurred over two consecutive months, following a decline from July to August. Presence rate rose from 39.1% in July 2026 to 61.0% in October 2026, and top-three rate rose from 4.7% to 14.8%. Rank-one rate was effectively unchanged, at 2.4% in October 2026 compared with 2.5% in July 2026.

Largest Decline: Betterment

Betterment's valid recommendation coverage moved from 75.6% in July 2026 to 0.0% in October 2026, a 75.6 point decline. The brand's entity name changed to Betterment LLC in the October 2026 measurement, and no observation in that month matched the Betterment entity name. Over the same period the new entity, Betterment LLC, posted 35.1% valid recommendation coverage in October 2026. The benchmark records the entity-level change. It does not, by itself, establish why the change occurred.

Category Leader: Fidelity

Fidelity remained the category leader with 89.9% valid recommendation coverage in October 2026, up from 83.4% in July 2026, a 6.5 point increase beyond normal variation and the brand's second consecutive significant monthly gain. Presence rate reached 99.8% in October 2026, up from 98.3% in July 2026. Top-three rate reached 88.3% in October 2026, up from 56.9% in July 2026. Rank-one rate rose to 57.2% in October 2026 from 41.3% in July 2026, a 15.9 point increase.

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Questions This Section Answers

• How did rank-one rates differ among Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and Vanguard despite similar top-three rates?
• Which robo-advisor brand is most often recommended in the first position?

Coverage alone does not show how prominently a brand is recommended. Among the leading brands, first-position rates varied materially even where top-three rates converged.

Fidelity's rank-one rate of 57.2% in October 2026 far exceeded Charles Schwab's 19.8% and Vanguard's 6.9%, even though all three brands posted top-three rates of 60% or higher. Similar coverage levels can still hide very different first-position rates.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

Questions This Section Answers

• Which buyer-intent class do qualified robo-advisor observations fall into?
• Are pricing and multi-brand comparison queries represented in the current benchmark?

All qualified observations in both months fell into the Brand Recommendation class.

The current public series measures Brand Recommendation discovery and does not yet contain qualified observations in the Pricing & Value or Multi-Brand Comparison classes.

Historical Measurement Record

This is an evergreen benchmark URL. New measurements are added to the same report.

Evidence and Source Layer

The benchmark is built from prompt-level observations that retain the query, AI/search surface, answer, brand outcome, recommendation placement, sentiment, and, where exposed, citations or attributable evidence sources. Source presence is evidence about the information environment. It is not automatically proof that the source caused the recommendation.

Scope Boundaries

• This benchmark does not measure market share.
• This benchmark does not measure attributable sales.
• This benchmark does not capture every possible AI response.
• This benchmark does not measure organic-search ranking.
• This benchmark does not measure social mention volume.
• This benchmark does not cover private or sponsored channels.
• A metric movement alone does not establish causality.

Top 10 Cited Domains

Questions This Section Answers

• Which domains are cited most often across AI platform responses about robo-advisors?
• How concentrated are citations among the top 10 domains, and which platform types are citing them?
• How many tracked robo-advisor brand domains appear among the most-cited sources?

Across all AI platform responses in this measurement period, 6,534 citations were observed across 1,050 unique domains. The top 10 domains by citation count accounted for a combined 42.2% of all citations.

Citations are moderately concentrated: the top 10 domains account for 42.2% of citations across 1,050 unique domains, leaving the majority of citations distributed across a long tail. One tracked brand's own domain, fidelity.com, appears in the top 10 at rank 5. The most-cited sources are a mix of personal-finance publishers (nerdwallet.com, investopedia.com, fool.com), general news and commentary outlets (cnbc.com, forbes.com, finance.yahoo.com), and user-generated platforms (youtube.com, reddit.com). Official brand sites are largely absent from the top 10, with fidelity.com the sole exception.

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Visibility Market Discovery Index tracks how often brands appear and are recommended across major AI chat and search surfaces. This industry-level benchmark is published monthly and reflects a neutral, methodologically consistent measurement of AI-driven brand discovery.

• AI Visibility Market Discovery Methodology
• AI Visibility Market Discovery Metric Definitions
• AI Visibility Market Discovery Research Standards
• Modeled AI Visibility Authority Value

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