Evergreen monthly benchmark — Aug 9
Protein Powder
Aug 9Rank Trend
How top brands moved week over week. Rank 1 is the top position.
Transparent Labs led three of the four engines on Jul 29 and leads none of them now. Its mention count fell from 7 to 5. Optimum Nutrition holds the top spot at 10 mentions and is the only brand inside every engine top three. The reversal is narrower than it looks. On the explicit ranking prompt Transparent Labs actually gained ground, from two engines to three.
Top Brands by AI Mention Frequency
Mention frequency counts how many times a brand appeared across all AI responses. This differs from top-pick rank, which reflects each model’s #1 choice.
Opportunity for Brands
- Dymatize is the standout gap, and this is the second run in a row.
- It carries 7 mentions, tied for second highest in the category, and sits outside the top three at all four engines.
- Its volume did not move between runs.
- Its placement did not move either.
- Orgain is the quieter version of the same problem, at 4 mentions and no top-three slot anywhere.
- The tail churned hard this run.
- Seven brands left the set, among them Ghost, Thorne and Garden of Life.
- Six entered, every one of them at a single mention.
- Legion took the sharpest fall among returning brands, from 4 mentions to 1.
Cross-Agent Comparison
How 4 AI models rank the same category. Hover a brand to trace it across models.
4 agents · top 3 each
Dymatize leads in total mentions (7) but doesn’t appear below. High mention volume doesn’t always equal top-pick authority.
| Agent | #1 | #2 | #3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| chatgpt | Optimum Nutrition | Naked Nutrition | Momentous |
| claude | Optimum Nutrition | Transparent Labs | Momentous |
| gemini | Puori | Optimum Nutrition | Transparent Labs |
| perplexity | Ascent | Optimum Nutrition | Transparent Labs |
Dymatize·7 mentions, outside top 3 for all models | |||
What This Means
- The cross-agent table blends all three prompts, and the blend hides where the movement actually happened.
- Transparent Labs lost the open discovery prompt outright.
- It led three of four engines there last run and leads none this run.
- On the explicit ranking prompt it moved the other way, from two engines to three.
- Optimum Nutrition is the reason the table still looks stable.
- It is top three at all four engines and first at two of them.
- The budget prompt lost its unanimity.
- All four engines named Optimum Nutrition first under $50 last run, and this run ChatGPT switched to Naked Whey.
- Two qualifications apply to the Gemini column.
- Gemini answered on its faster Flash tier again rather than its Pro tier.
- The brand it placed first, Puori, appears exactly once in the entire run.
Why These Brands Win
- Third-party testing has become the dominant credential in this category.
- All four engines named NSF Certified for Sport by name.
- Three of the four raised heavy metal contamination without being asked, and two cited the same 2025 Consumer Reports lead testing.
- That marks a shift away from taste and price toward safety as the deciding filter.
- Every engine also told this lifter that total daily protein matters more than the timing of the shake.
- Two of the four went out of their way to reject the premise of protein marketed specifically to women.
- Neither was asked about it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What protein powder does AI recommend most?▾
Which protein powder brand ranks #1 across all AI models?▾
Why does ChatGPT recommend different protein powder than Claude?▾
What protein powder brands are invisible to AI?▾
How we measure this
Each benchmark runs the same standardized prompts across multiple leading AI systems, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. We use consistent, category-specific questions designed to surface genuine product recommendations — not sponsored results.
Responses are parsed to extract brand mentions, rank position, and frequency. We then analyze cross-model agreement, identify which brands consistently appear in top positions, and flag where AI outputs diverge from marketplace trends.
Evergreen categories are benchmarked monthly. Results reflect organic AI behavior at the time of testing. Read the full methodology
How this report was produced
- Evaluation period
- Aug 9
- Cadence
- Monthly
- Prompts evaluated
- 3
- Review status
- Published after human review
- Models included
- ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity
Full details of how prompts are run, parsed, normalized, and scored are in the methodology, and the platform page explains how the system is built and operated.
Are you a brand in this category? Request a private analysis