Independent analysis of marketing tools

We buy the plans, run the same brief through every tool and publish the scores, so you can pick the right tool for your channel, budget and team.

1,412tools tracked
214tools benchmarked
6evaluations in the index
0paid placements
Highlights

Marketing IndexUpdated

Stackranked Marketing Index v1.3 · Higher is better

Time to first result

Hours from sign-up to the first usable output on our test brief · Lower is better

Price per month

Cheapest plan that passes our test brief, USD · Lower is better

Custom Benchmark

by Stackranked↗
New
Weight the six evaluations
your way and re-rank

Tool Recommender

↗
ChannelMonthly budgetTeam sizeSelf-serve or managed

Answer four questions and get a shortlist of three tools, with the trade-off each one makes.

Changelog

Marketing Index

Updated

One score per tool, built from six hands-on evaluations. Every tool gets the same brief for its category, a real budget and a real account.

Stackranked Marketing Index ↗

Marketing Index v1.3 incorporates 6 evaluations: Build-Bench, Audit-Accuracy, Attribution-Match, Citation-Lift, Report-Truth and Agent-Tasks · Higher is better

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22 of 214 tools⌄
▮ Stackranked

Score vs. price

What you get for the money. Tools in the shaded corner score above the median and cost less than the median. The line connects the best score available at each price.

Marketing Index vs. Price per month

Stackranked Marketing Index · Cheapest plan that passes the test brief, USD, log scale

Best value cornerBest score at each price
▮ Stackranked

Top score over time

Marketing Index of the leading tools, re-tested monthly, January to September 2026

▮ Stackranked

Category Indexes

Updated

Each category is scored on the jobs people buy that category for. A paid ads tool is tested on building and fixing campaigns, a GEO tool on getting a brand cited in AI answers.

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Creative Arena

New

Every video and creative tool makes an ad from the same product brief. Voters see two ads side by side without tool names and pick the one they would stop scrolling for.

Creative Arena Elo

Elo from blind pairwise votes, with 95% confidence intervals · Higher is better

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38,400 votes since July 2026. Ads are cropped to the same length and aspect ratio, and watermarks are removed before voting.

Benchmarks

The six evaluations behind the index, each run by us on paid plans. Only tools the evaluation applies to are scored on it.

Pricing

List prices, checked on the date of each test. Enterprise prices come from quotes we requested as a 20-person team. Approximate, verify on the vendor's site.

Price per month, cheapest passing plan

USD per month, billed monthly · Lower is better

▮ Stackranked

Setup and support

How long it takes to get something useful out of a tool, and how long you wait when you ask for help.

▮ Stackranked

Leaderboard

All benchmarked tools on one table. Click a column to sort.

Methodology

The rules we test by. They apply to every tool, including the ones whose makers we know.

01

We pay for every plan

No review accounts and no vendor-run demos. We sign up like a customer and test on the plan a customer would buy.

02

Same brief for every tool

Each category has one written brief, one test brand and one budget. Every tool in the category gets exactly that.

03

Blind where it matters

Creative output is judged in the arena without tool names. Audit and attribution results are checked against known answers.

04

Positions are not for sale

No sponsored slots and no affiliate ordering. Vendors can send corrections. Every change is logged in the changelog.

EvaluationWhat we measureApplies toWeight
Build-BenchA campaign, audit or content plan built from a one-page brief, graded against a rubric by two reviewersAll tools25%
Audit-AccuracyShare of 40 seeded problems the tool finds in a test ad account or test websiteAds, SEO, CRO20%
Attribution-MatchHow closely reported conversions match the real orders in our sandbox Shopify storeAnalytics, ads15%
Citation-LiftChange in how often the test brand is cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI answers over 30 daysGEO, SEO15%
Report-TruthShare of numbers in the tool's reports that match the source platform on the same date rangeAll tools15%
Agent-TasksMulti-step tasks completed end to end without a person stepping inAI-native tools10%

Articles

Category write-ups with the full ranked list, pricing and the cons for every tool.