Startup & small team · Prompt 4 of 8 · September 2026

A real buyer question from the September 2026 snapshot, asked 3× to each of the three models. 9 answers recorded.

“Which dental software is best for a startup solo practice on a budget?”

ChatGPT answered 3× this snapshot

…budget-conscious startup solo practices, the best options to look at first are: Open Dental — best overall value if you want strong features at lower cost CareStack — good cloud-based all-in-one option for startups Dentrix Ascend — good if you want cloud software with a polished mainstream ecosystem, but often pricier Curve Dental — easy cloud option, often liked for simplicity, but compare pricing carefully My…

Named across its answers: 1. Open Dental2. Curve Dental3. CareStack4. Dentrix Ascend5. Dentrix

Verbatim excerpt from one collected ChatGPT answer; formatting flattened, words untouched.

Open Dental wins this question decisively, appearing in all 9 answers and leading 5 of them, though its average position of 2.8 shows it often shares the top spot rather than running away with it. Curve Dental is a solid runner-up at 2.7 average position across 7 answers, but its single first-place finish means it follows more than it leads.

AI-generated read of the September 2026 measurements.

Who wins this question

Leaning Open Dental Consensus

All three models name Open Dental and Curve Dental on this question.

ChatGPT

Claude

Gemini mentioned · first · avg. pos

Open Dental 141367111 9/9 · 5× first · #2.8

Curve Dental 4134322 7/9 · 1× first · #2.7

Dentrix Ascend 321136 6/9 · 2× first · #2.7

CareStack 2233 4/9 · never first · #2.5

tab32 4242 4/9 · never first · #3

Dentrix 5555 4/9 · never first · #5

Eaglesoft 6576 4/9 · never first · #6

Carestream Dental 221 3/9 · 1× first · #1.7

Denticon 3 1/9 · never first · #3

DentiMax Cloud 3 1/9 · never first · #3

Practice-Web 4 1/9 · never first · #4

NexHealth 4 1/9 · never first · #4

Each square is one collected answer; the number is the brand's position in that answer. Lime = the very first recommendation. Unlinked brands were named by the models here but sit outside this category's published top 15 overall. Showing the top 12 of 16 brands named at least once. Never mentioned here: Weave, AWS, Azure, Carestream.