Claude is one of the assistants a homeowner can ask. We put the same buyer questions to ChatGPT, in the same cities and trades, and counted its answers the way we counted Claude's: the companies it named, what changed when we asked again, the pages it cited and what its text said about Google reviews.
Original study · v1.0
Does ChatGPT name the same contractors as Claude?
We asked ChatGPT the buyer questions we asked Claude, in the same cities and trades. It named fewer companies, kept fewer of them when asked again and linked the companies' own websites more, but most of the companies it named were ones Claude named too.
By Found ClearlyPublished November 1, 20266 min read
Part 7 of 7 in our study How Claude picks contractors, with the method and the other parts.
Found Clearly sells AI-visibility audits and plans.
Can’t find your company?
Find out why with a free check of your website and Google profile, done by hand.
Abstract
In October 2026 we asked ChatGPT the 9 buyer questions we asked Claude, about the same 6 home service trades in the same 4 US metros, each question twice in each city and trade: 432 answers, 18 for each city and trade. We compare them with 432 of Claude's answers to the same questions, two of the four it gave to each question in each city and trade, so both sides stand on the same number of answers. ChatGPT named a mean of 2.75 companies per answer (median 3) and Claude 6.96 (median 6); neither left an answer without a company. Asked the same question again, ChatGPT's two lists overlapped by a median of 0.33 (Jaccard: the names in both lists divided by the names in either) and Claude's by 0.54, over 216 pairs each, and 49% of the names in ChatGPT's first 3 places came back, against 79% of Claude's. Most of Claude's leaders came up on ChatGPT too: ChatGPT named 86.1% of the three companies Claude named most often in each city and trade (over all 36 of Claude's answers there) at least once, and 75.2% of its mentions went to companies Claude named there too. ChatGPT cited 2.66 pages per answer and Claude 7.44, and neither linked a Google page. 46.8% of ChatGPT's citations went to the named companies' own websites (Claude 29.9%) and 16.9% to directories and platforms (Claude 36.5%). In the text, 19% of ChatGPT's answers gave a company's Google rating or number of Google reviews, against Claude's 40%, and Yelp came up in 1 of ChatGPT's 432 answers.
Key points
- Fewer names: ChatGPT named 2.75 companies per answer on average and Claude 6.96, in 432 answers each to the same questions.
- A list that moves more: asked the same question again, ChatGPT's two lists overlapped by a median of 0.33 and Claude's by 0.54 (216 pairs each). Of the names in the first 3 places, 49% came back on ChatGPT and 79% on Claude.
- Claude's leaders came up on ChatGPT too: ChatGPT named 86.1% of the three companies Claude named most often in each city and trade at least once, and 75.2% of its mentions went to companies Claude also named there (Claude's side: all 36 of its answers in each city and trade).
- Other sources: 46.8% of ChatGPT's citations went to the named companies' own websites (Claude 29.9%) and 16.9% to directories and platforms (Claude 36.5%). Yelp came up in 1 of its 432 answers and in 61% of Claude's.
- No Google links from either, but Google ratings in the text: 19% of ChatGPT's answers gave a company's Google rating or number of Google reviews, against Claude's 40%. For every hundred mentions of a company, ChatGPT gave 9.4 such ratings and Claude 9.9.
Our data · Oct 2026 · ChatGPT and Claude · Method →
Side by side
Fewer names, and a list that moves more
Most of this page’s numbers come from 432 ChatGPT answers, each question asked twice, so 18 in each city and trade, and from 432 of Claude’s answers to the same questions, two of the four it gave to each question in each city and trade.
We read ChatGPT’s answers the way we read Claude’s: the companies each answer named, the pages it cited, and what changed when we asked the same question again. We checked ChatGPT’s company names by hand on a seeded sample of 44 answers and found 0 errors in 119 names. The overlap is the Jaccard index, explained in Ask Claude twice, get a partly different list of contractors.
2.75
companies per ChatGPT answer on average, against 6.96 per Claude answer
0.33
median overlap of ChatGPT’s two lists when we asked again (middle half of pairs 0.20–0.50), against 0.54 for Claude (0.41–0.73; 216 pairs each)
ChatGPT and Claude, 432 answers each to the same questions
| Measure | ChatGPT | Claude |
|---|---|---|
| Companies per answer, mean | 2.75 | 6.96 |
| Companies per answer, median | 3 | 6 |
| Answers that named no company | 0 | 0 |
| Asked again: median overlap of the two lists | 0.33 | 0.54 |
| Names in the first 3 places that came back | 49% | 79% |
| Names below them that came back | 35% | 61% |
| Different companies per city and trade, median | 20 | 35 |
| Companies named in one answer only, all pairs together | 49.3% | 38.4% |
| Answers that named the city and trade’s most-named company, median | 58% | 83% |
| Citations per answer | 2.66 | 7.44 |
| Web searches per answer | 2.13 | 2.00 |
ChatGPT gave shorter lists: a median of 3 companies against 6. Its first names came back less often on a repeat (49% against 79%). Across the 18 answers in each city and trade it named fewer different companies, a median of 20 against 35, and a larger share of them only once.
Our data · Oct 2026 · ChatGPT and Claude · Method →
Shared names
Mostly the companies Claude named too
ChatGPT named fewer companies, but mostly ones Claude named too. Here Claude’s side is all 36 of its answers in each city and trade, the base of the other parts, and a company counts as shared when Claude named it in the same city and trade.
86.1%
of the three companies Claude named most often in each city and trade, ChatGPT named at least once
75.2%
of ChatGPT’s mentions went to companies Claude also named in the same city and trade
Of the different companies ChatGPT named in a city and trade, 57.6% were on Claude’s side too. They took a larger share of its mentions than of its names, so the companies only ChatGPT named came up less often than the shared ones.
Our data · Oct 2026 · ChatGPT and Claude · Method →
Citations
More links to company websites, fewer to directories
ChatGPT cited 2.66 pages per answer and Claude 7.44. We sorted every citation the way part two sorted Claude’s, into the same groups and in the same order (Does Claude use Google Maps for contractors?).
46.8%
of ChatGPT’s citations went to the own websites of the companies it named, against 29.9% of Claude’s
0
of 432 ChatGPT answers linked a Google page, and 0 of 432 Claude answers
| Group | ChatGPT | Claude |
|---|---|---|
| Google (Maps, Business Profile or any other Google page) | 0.0% (0%) | 0.0% (0%) |
| List pages, first-pass rule | 5.7% (13%) | 12.3% (51%) |
| Directories and platforms (Yelp, Angi, Houzz, BBB and others) | 16.9% (34%) | 36.5% (86%) |
| The own websites of companies the answer names | 46.8% (64%) | 29.9% (81%) |
| News and media | 0.0% (0%) | 1.0% (7%) |
| Manufacturers | 4.4% (11%) | 0.7% (5%) |
| Other known sites (social, government, associations) | 4.3% (11%) | 1.2% (7%) |
| Not sorted (a domain our dictionary does not know) | 21.9% (47%) | 18.3% (73%) |
Nearly half of ChatGPT’s links led to a website of a company it named. Claude leaned more on directories and platforms such as Yelp, Angi, Houzz and BBB (36.5% of its citations against 16.9%) and on list pages (12.3% against 5.7%, by the first-pass rule). The hand check in Who writes the “best contractors” lists Claude cites corrected Claude’s list pages; ChatGPT’s were not checked by hand.
Our data · Oct 2026 · ChatGPT and Claude · Method →
Google in the text
Google ratings without Google links, in both
We counted the Google ratings in the text the way part two counted Claude’s: a sentence that names Google with a word such as review, rating or stars and gives a number, after links and web addresses are taken out (Does Claude use Google Maps for contractors?).
19%
of ChatGPT’s answers gave a company’s Google rating or number of Google reviews (84 of 432), against Claude’s 40% (173 of 432)
9.4
such ratings for every hundred mentions of a company in ChatGPT’s answers, against 9.9 in Claude’s
Answers that named each site in the text, and that cited it with a link (432 answers each)
| Site | ChatGPT: named / linked | Claude: named / linked |
|---|---|---|
| 87 / 0 | 231 / 0 | |
| BBB | 146 / 94 | 217 / 83 |
| Yelp | 1 / 0 | 262 / 237 |
| Angi or HomeAdvisor | 43 / 24 | 209 / 194 |
| Houzz | 22 / 18 | 135 / 140 |
| Thumbtack | 1 / 1 | 42 / 37 |
Per company named, the two quoted Google ratings about as often; ChatGPT quoted fewer in all, as it named fewer companies. When a ChatGPT sentence with a Google rating said where it read the number, it named a directory or a list page (51 of 111 such sentences, 46%) more often than the company’s own site (9, 8%). The other 51 (46%) did not say. Claude’s sentences named a directory or a list page in 26% and the company’s own site in 13%. ChatGPT also put a link on the line of 110 of its 111 such sentences, 35 of them to the website of a company the answer named.
The question mattered. Asked which providers are licensed and well reviewed, 28 of the 48 ChatGPT answers named Google reviews (Claude 33). Asked about same-day appointments, 0 of 48 did (Claude 1), and asked about transparent pricing, 0 of 48 (Claude 19).
Our data · Oct 2026 · ChatGPT and Claude · Method →
Your company
Where ChatGPT reads about companies
ChatGPT named a median of 3 companies an answer and changed more of them when we asked again, so its lists have fewer places than Claude’s, and they move more. Three things to check:
- Your own website: 46.8% of ChatGPT’s links went to the sites of the companies it named. Say what you do, where you work and your current Google rating and number of reviews, in plain words, on your homepage.
- Your BBB profile: ChatGPT named BBB in 34% of its answers, and Yelp in 1 of 432.
- Both assistants: the companies ChatGPT named were mostly ones Claude named too, so check what each of them says for your trade and city.
Our data · Oct 2026 · ChatGPT and Claude · Method →
We review your website and Google Business Profile by hand and email your first fixes, usually within two business days.
What this cannot tell you
- We asked ChatGPT outside the ChatGPT app, as we asked Claude outside the Claude app. The apps can answer differently: they may know where you are, remember earlier chats and use other settings.
- The two assistants answered on different days of October 2026, and what a web search finds changes from day to day, so part of the gap may come from the day.
- Claude's figures on this page come from 432 of its answers, two per question in each city and trade; only the shared names use all 864. Figures per answer come out close to those in the other parts. Counts per city and trade depend on how many answers each pair has, 18 here and 36 in part one, so they differ from part one's.
- The study covers 4 metros and 6 home service trades. Other cities, trades and wordings can give other lists.
- Link groups come from a dictionary of known domains. Pages from domains it does not know are counted as not sorted, so the other shares are lower bounds.
- The Google ratings and review sites in the text were counted after the answers were collected, by the rule of part two. They describe the data and test no hypothesis.
- We measured which companies each assistant names and where it reads about them, not which assistant is right or whether those companies do good work.
How to cite this
Found Clearly. "Does ChatGPT name the same contractors as Claude?", from "How Claude picks contractors", version 1.0. Published 2026-11-01. Data: ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Claude (Anthropic), October 2026.
The text and the figures on this page are under CC BY 4.0: quote, chart and republish them with credit to Found Clearly and a link to this page. That includes competitors.
Primary sources
FAQ
Related questions
Does ChatGPT recommend the same contractors as Claude?
Fewer names, mostly ones Claude named too. In our data ChatGPT named 86.1% of the three companies Claude named most often in each city and trade at least once, and 75.2% of its mentions went to companies Claude also named there (Claude's side: all 36 of its answers in each city and trade; our data, October 2026). It named 2.75 companies per answer on average and Claude 6.96, in 432 answers each to the same questions.
How many contractors does ChatGPT name in one answer?
A mean of 2.75 and a median of 3 in our data, against 6.96 and 6 for Claude, in 432 answers each to the same questions (our data, October 2026). Neither assistant left an answer without a company.
Does ChatGPT give the same list of contractors if you ask twice?
Only partly, and less than Claude. Asked the same question again, ChatGPT's two lists of companies overlapped by a median of 0.33, against 0.54 for Claude (216 pairs each; our data, October 2026). Of the names in the first 3 places, 49% came back on ChatGPT and 79% on Claude.
Does ChatGPT use Google Maps, Yelp or BBB for contractors?
It linked no Google page in our data, and neither did Claude. ChatGPT's text gave a company's Google rating or number of Google reviews in 84 of 432 answers (19%), named BBB in 34% of them and Yelp in 1 of 432 (our data, October 2026). It sent 46.8% of its citations to the named companies' own websites, against 29.9% for Claude.
Keep reading
Ask Claude twice, get a partly different list of contractorsDoes Claude use Google Maps for contractors?Who writes the “best contractors” lists Claude citesWhat the websites of contractors Claude names have in commonWhat Claude searches for when you ask for a contractorThe sites Claude cites and the details it repeats, by tradeHow Claude picks contractors: the study and its methodAll research
Evidence you can check. Public prices, month to month.