Small business=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 13-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 13 pointsRank 56 → 48 of 52
Instant · 1 category · RankedInstant Checkmate
24Judge labels
0First choices
22Negative labels
10 / 14Models named it
1Category
October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.7, every buyer segment counted.
Best standing
0% in Background screening for mid-market buyers
Rank 82 of 83 in the mid-market standingcriticized challenger
0 of 14 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 91% of its 11 labels there were negative.
What the models named instead of Instant Checkmate →By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.
Small business57 of 59
0%7 labels
under the label threshold
Mid-market82 of 83
0%11 labels
criticized challenger
Enterprise70 of 71
0%6 labels
under the label threshold
In background screening · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading
Standing by category
Every category where a model named Instant Checkmate for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.
| Category | Function | Share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Quadrant | Since September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Background screening | Talent acquisition | 0% | 82 of 83 | 91% | 11 | criticized challenger | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 13-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
Movement
Since September 2026, Instant Checkmate held within the floor in its one category: no change cleared 13 points.
Best category · Background screening · by segment
Mid-market=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 13-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 13 pointsRank 58 → 69 of 70
Enterprise=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 13-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 13 pointsRank 48 → 61 of 62
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Background screening | 0% | 0% | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 13-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 58 → 82 of 83 |
Shares here are read over the models both editions asked, so they can differ by a point or two from the standing above, which counts every model in this edition.
The floor is 13 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. Movement is read over the twelve models both editions asked; GPT-6 Luna, Muse Glimmer 30B joined this edition and are in the standing but not yet in the comparison. How the floor is measured · The editions
By model
How each model treated Instant Checkmate across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.ShowHide
By model
How each model treated Instant Checkmate across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.
ShowHide| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Grok 4.1 Fast | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Kimi K2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
By framing
Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.
FramingLabels by classFirst choices
Direct0 labelsNone
Paraphrase0 labelsNone
Comparative3 labelsNone
Budget-constrained0 labelsNone
Scale-constrained0 labelsNone
Negative21 labelsNone
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative24 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 0 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.
What the models said for it
Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.
No positive label carried a quote.
And against it
Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.
“TruthFinder & Instant Checkmate - September 2023 FTC Settlement ... 143 BBB complaints in 3 years (for Instant Checkmate alone)” Kimi K2 · Background screening · negative prompt · hard negative
“the FTC settled with them for $5.8 million over deceiving consumers about report accuracy and FCRA violations” Grok 4.1 Fast · Background screening · negative prompt · hard negative
“the FTC said TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate misrepresented report accuracy and violated the FCRA” GPT-5.4 mini · Background screening · negative prompt · hard negative
“FTC forced the operators of TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate to pay a $5.8 million penalty” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Background screening · negative prompt · hard negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Instant Checkmate, over the 24 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Instant Checkmate was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Instant Checkmate, over the 24 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Instant Checkmate was named but was not.
ShowHideProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.
What carried it into the answer
The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Instant Checkmate. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 24 of the 24 answers that named Instant Checkmate and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
ftc.gov17
bib.com9
checkr.com8
justifacts.com8
bbb.org7
money.com7
trustpilot.com7
topconsumerreviews.com6
consumerfinance.gov5
techradar.com5
Seventy-nine of the seventy-nine domain citations in answers naming Instant Checkmate came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
instant.co is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Instant Checkmate takes 0% of first choices and Checkr takes 31%.ShowHide
Search and answers
instant.co is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Instant Checkmate takes 0% of first choices and Checkr takes 31%.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimatesPosition for “background check provider”
–
not in the top ten
Position for “background check providers”
–
not in the top ten
- Searches for its name, Google
- 33,100 a month (“instant checkmate”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 462 a month
- Its company's site
- instant.co shared with Instant's other products; the figures are the site's
- Organic visits to its site
- about 39,839 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 3,810 · 205 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 1,851
- Paid Google search
- No ads found in the estimate; that does not mean it runs none
In answers
This editionShare of first choices
0%
rank 82 of 83 in background screening
Segment leader
31%
Checkr
- First choices
- 0 across its categories
- Named in
- 24 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 24 of the answers that named it
Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read September 28, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
Follow Instant Checkmate
An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.
Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.
The company
Instant is the company behind Instant Checkmate.ShowHide
The company
Instant is the company behind Instant Checkmate.
ShowHideOn record
Company records- Also from Instant
- Instant Financial
Is this your product?
Claim this page
Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Instant Checkmate's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Instant Checkmate, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.
What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives
A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Instant Checkmate by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Instant Checkmate is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
- the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
- its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
- who was chosen in the answers that did not name Instant Checkmate, and every reason the record gives;
- a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
- one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.