Is Tally visible in AI answers? We asked 11 buyer questions, it was missing from 3
When buyers ask an AI model for online form builders, does it name Tally? We put 11 questions a real buyer might type to one AI model on 16 October 2026. Tally was absent from 3 of 11 answers, scored 57/100, and held 21% share of voice against Typeform's 24%.
Key findings
- Absent from 3 of 11 answers, mentioned in 8 of 11.
- Visibility score: 57/100.
- Share of voice: Tally 21% (8 of 38 brand mentions) vs Typeform 24% (9 of 38).
- Ranked first in 2 of 11 answers, with an average rank of 2.4 when mentioned at all.
- 9 cited pages named a rival but not Tally, across 44 distinct cited domains.
- One run cost $0.08 and took 0.9 minutes on our own OpenRouter key.
How we tested
The category was online form builders. We wrote 11 questions the way a buyer would type them into a chat box: "What are the best online form builders?", "What are the cheapest Typeform alternatives?", "Which form tools are best for waitlists and lead capture?", and similar buying-intent prompts. We tracked five competitors alongside the brand: Typeform, Google Forms, Fillout, Paperform and Jotform.
The model was one free model, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning, called through OpenRouter with OpenRouter web search switched on. This is not ChatGPT. We did not test Claude or Gemini, and nothing here describes how those models answer. We ran the 11 questions once, on 16 October 2026.
A brand counts as "named" when its name or a known alias appears as plain text in the answer. Rank is the order of first appearance: the first brand mentioned is rank 1. Pitch targets are cited pages that name a rival but not the brand, after removing competitor domains, the brand's own domain, and platform sites such as GitHub, Reddit, YouTube and Wikipedia.
One limit worth stating plainly: this is one model, one run, 11 questions. Treat it as a signal about which question types the brand wins and loses, not as a stable ranking of the market.
Results, question by question
Every prompt, in the order we asked them, with Tally's position in the answer.
| Question | Tally named? | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| What are the best online form builders? | Yes | 4 |
| What are the cheapest Typeform alternatives? | Yes | 3 |
| Which form tools do you recommend for a small team? | Yes | 3 |
| What are good alternatives to Typeform? | Yes | 3 |
| What free form builders look professional? | No | - |
| Which form builders are easiest to set up? | Yes | 2 |
| Which form tools are best for waitlists and lead capture? | Yes | 1 |
| Compare no-code form builders for startups | No | - |
| Which form builders work well for product feedback surveys? | No | - |
| What form tools have generous free plans? | Yes | 2 |
| Which online forms are best for indie hackers? | Yes | 1 |
The pattern is clear. Tally is strong on use-case questions: waitlists and lead capture, indie hackers, generous free plans, ease of setup. It is first or second on four of the eleven. It is weaker on comparison and category questions, where it lands at rank 3 or 4 behind Typeform, Google Forms and Jotform. It is absent entirely from three prompts, and they are not random ones.
Where Tally went missing
"What free form builders look professional?"
The answer listed Fomr, Formester, ShForm and Uplup. Not one tracked competitor appeared either. Every cited page was one of those tools' own sites (uplup.com, formester.com, shform.com, fomr.io, formaloo.com). This is a positioning gap more than a loss to Typeform: the answer was built from vendor pages that call themselves free and professional.
"Compare no-code form builders for startups"
The answer listed Formstack Forms, Formester, FabForm, FormNX, and named Typeform and Paperform from our tracked set. The cited pages were mostly vendor landing pages (formstack.com, formester.com, fabform.io, formnx.com, paperform.co). Tally, which ranked first on the indie hackers question, had no page in the set the model read for startups.
"Which form builders work well for product feedback surveys?"
The answer listed Sprig, Survicate, Typeform, SurveyMonkey, Refiner and Formsuite, with Typeform the only tracked rival. The answer treated the job as survey software rather than forms, and its sources were survey roundups (dupple.com, thecxlead.com twice, fomr.io, formbricks.com). Tally is a category-boundary miss here: it is not on the survey listicles.
The pages behind those answers
Nine cited pages named a rival but not Tally. They split into two groups, and only one is a real outreach list.
Editorial roundups (worth pitching):
- dupple.com - Best Customer Feedback Tools in 2026: 8 Platforms I Actually Tested
- thecxlead.com - What is the best survey maker?, and 10 Best Online Survey Software To Uncover Insights In 2026
- fomr.io - Customer feedback software: 7 best tools compared (2026) (a vendor's blog, but a comparison post)
- formbricks.com - Best Microsoft Forms Alternative (same: vendor blog, comparison format)
Other vendors' own pages (not pitchable, but they show what the model reads): formester.com (cited twice), fabform.io ("Best Typeform Alternative"), formnx.com, formstack.com. These are tools we did not track as competitors, which is itself a finding: the model's idea of Tally's competition is wider than the usual five.
Why this matters
These 11 prompts are buying-intent questions. Someone asking for the cheapest Typeform alternatives or the best form tool for a waitlist is close to choosing a product. If Tally is not on the shortlist the model produces, that buyer never reaches the site, never starts a trial, and never shows up in analytics as a loss. There is no bounce, no abandoned signup, no support ticket. The absence is invisible in every dashboard the team already watches.
What Tally could do next
- Feedback-survey gap. Pitch the two thecxlead.com survey roundups and the dupple.com feedback-tools test for inclusion, with a concrete angle (free unlimited responses, a product-feedback template). These were the sources behind the one answer where Typeform got in and Tally did not.
- Feedback-survey gap, owned page. Publish a "Tally for product feedback surveys" page so the model has a Tally page that matches the survey framing, not only the forms framing.
- Startup-comparison gap. Publish or update a "no-code form builders for startups" comparison. The answer was built from vendor pages, so a clear comparison page that includes Tally is the missing page type.
- Free-and-professional gap. Put "free" and "professional-looking" side by side in Tally's own copy and examples. The answer that skipped Tally quoted four small vendors whose pages make exactly that claim.
- Next run. Add Formester and FabForm to the tracked list. Formester alone was cited twice.
Run the same check on your brand
- Create an OpenRouter key at openrouter.ai/keys, set a spend limit, and paste it into the app. The key stays in your browser.
- Enter your brand, up to five competitors, and the questions your buyers actually ask. You can also start from the suggested prompts.
- Press Run, then read which questions you lose, who was named instead, and which pages are worth pitching. Export the results as HTML or CSV.
This run cost about $0.08 on our own OpenRouter key and took 0.9 minutes.