Active Competitors
Find out who AI recommends instead of you
You do not pick the competitor list - the engines do. Active Competitors asks them your buying questions, extracts every brand named in the answers, and benchmarks your share of voice against the set they actually recommend.
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What it checks
One buying question, three engines, and every brand they name back.
Every figure on this page comes from one real scan, run on 25 August 2026: 24 buying questions, 3 engines, 72 answers, United States market, answers in English.
If you're looking for stout alternatives to Guinness, there are several excellent options available. Beamish Irish Stout is a popular choice, known for its smooth and creamy texture, making it a great alternative to Guinness [1]. Another excellent option is O'Hara's Irish Stout, which offers a rich flavor profile and is often recommended alongside Murphy's Irish Stout [2]. Both of these stouts provide a unique taste experience while still capturing the essence of traditional Irish stouts.
If you want Guinness-like stout alternatives, the closest matches are usually Murphy’s Irish Stout, Beamish Irish Stout, and O’Hara’s Irish Stout.[4][2] If you’re open to stouts that are less exact but still in the same lane, Left Hand Milk Stout Nitro and Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout are common recommendations for their smooth, creamy texture.[4][1][3]
Murphy's Irish Stout: Often cited as the closest alternative to Guinness, Murphy's offers a creamy head and smooth mouthfeel. It tends to be slightly sweeter and less bitter than Guinness, with more pronounced chocolate and caramel notes [4], [2].
Real answers to that question, returned on 25 August 2026 by the three engines. The ChatGPT answer is complete; the Perplexity and Gemini ones run longer, so these are their opening lines. A public share carries the brands and the counts, never the transcripts, so these three are quoted from our own scan record. Everything below is the same scan.
| Brand discovered | Answers naming it, of 72 |
|---|---|
Guinness You |
60 |
| Murphy's | 34 |
| Beamish | 26 |
| O'Hara's | 24 |
| Left Hand Brewing | 14 |
| Samuel Smith | 11 |
Murphy's is 47.2%, give or take 28 points. Beamish is 36.1%, give or take 23. Their intervals sit almost on top of each other, so calling one second and the other third is a claim 72 answers cannot support. Guinness leading is the finding here; the order behind it is not.
The interval is a cluster bootstrap over intent groups rather than individual prompts - four paraphrases of one buying question are not four independent samples, and pretending otherwise would make every number look sharper than it is.
Who gets named beside you
Answers where both brands appear. Association, not endorsement - being named together is not being ranked against each other.
Guinness- Murphy's 33 answers
- Beamish 25 answers
- O'Hara's 23 answers
- Left Hand Brewing 12 answers
- Samuel Smith 10 answers
Rival teardowns
The top five discovered rivals get taken apart - tracked or not, because you had not heard of some of them an hour ago.
- Citation mix - the sources an engine leans on when it reaches for that brand.
- Entity footprint - how cleanly the brand resolves as a thing engines can identify.
- Freshness - how recent the material behind those citations is.
- Backlinks - the link footprint holding it up.
- Gaps by intent - one verdict per buying question: you are absent and they are named, you are named but never recommended while they are, you are level or ahead, or neither of you came up at all.
What you'll get
See who the engines put you up against
Run a competitor scanActive Competitors
Discover the competitor set from the AI answers themselves, then benchmark share of voice against it, with confidence intervals so you know which moves are real.
