EnergySage vs SolarReviews: Which One AI Reads (130 Answers)

When we asked ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Mode for the best solar installer in 26 US cities on 7 and 8 October 2026, energysage.com was cited in 106 of the 130 answers (81.5%) and solarreviews.com in 10 (7.7%). Inside Google's AI Overviews on 52 homeowner solar searches the gap closed to 63.5% against 30.8%. If you are an installer deciding where to spend your profile effort, your review requests or your lead budget, that split is the most useful fact in this comparison, and the rest of this post explains where it comes from and what to do about it. Orkkid is an SEO and GEO agency that sells services to solar companies, so read our recommendations with that in mind; neither EnergySage nor SolarReviews paid us or was asked to comment, and every citation number comes from our own dataset.

TL;DR

• In our October 2026 test of 130 AI answers across 26 US cities, EnergySage was cited in 81.5% of answers and SolarReviews in 7.7%, and SolarReviews was the only one of the two cited in just 1 answer (0.8%).
• Claude and Perplexity cited EnergySage in 26 of 26 answers each; Claude never cited SolarReviews, and Google AI Mode was the only assistant where SolarReviews (15.4%) came within 8 points of EnergySage (23.1%).
• In Google's AI Overviews on 52 solar searches, EnergySage was cited on 63.5% and SolarReviews on 30.8%, and SolarReviews was cited without EnergySage on 7 searches (13.5%).
• The AIs cite different kinds of pages from each site: 93.8% of EnergySage citations in assistant answers were city, county or state "Best Solar Companies" lists, while 87.5% of SolarReviews citations in AI Overviews were blog guides.
• Both sites publish their lead model only partly: SolarReviews states a $25 to $300 per-lead range on its own site, while EnergySage describes "a small fee" with no public price (checked 10 October 2026).

This post is a companion to the Orkkid AI Recommendation Study and to our list of the 20 sites AI reads before recommending a solar installer, where EnergySage ranks first and SolarReviews fifteenth. Here we put the two side by side for the person who has to choose between them. If you only want to know how the EnergySage marketplace works from the installer side, our EnergySage for installers guide goes deeper on that one platform.

EnergySage vs SolarReviews at a glance

Citation numbers are from our October 2026 study. Everything about the platforms themselves comes from the two companies' own public pages, checked on 10 October 2026, with links in the sections below.

The first thing the table tells you is that these two sites are read by AI for different reasons. EnergySage is the ranking the assistants lean on when a homeowner asks who to hire. SolarReviews earns most of its AI exposure one step earlier, when the homeowner is still asking whether solar is worth it, how a PPA works or what a Powerwall costs.

How each AI uses the two sites

We counted a site once per answer, merged subdomains, and recorded the URL of every citation. Each engine answered the same prompt in the same 26 cities, so the columns are directly comparable.

Two patterns matter for an installer. First, in 9 of the 10 answers that cited SolarReviews, EnergySage was cited as well, so SolarReviews rarely replaces EnergySage as a source; it is added alongside it. The single exception was a Google AI Mode answer. Second, Google AI Mode behaves differently from the four chat assistants. It cited EnergySage in only 6 of 26 answers because it leans on Google's own business listings instead (see our city-by-city breakdown), and that leaves more room for SolarReviews, which it cited in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Houston and Newark.

The assistants also talk about the two sites differently. Claude in Phoenix wrote: "EnergySage lists it first among the top five Phoenix installers, based on shopper feedback." ChatGPT in Raleigh wrote: "NC Solar Now is based in Raleigh and appears in SolarReviews' best North Carolina installer list with an "Elite" expert rating." In both cases the AI is quoting the platform's ranking position or rating tier as the reason for the recommendation, which is why your position on those lists matters more than the existence of a profile.

Where SolarReviews showed up

SolarReviews was cited in 9 of the 26 cities: Phoenix (Google AI Mode), Seattle (Gemini), Las Vegas (Google AI Mode), Houston (Google AI Mode), Raleigh (ChatGPT and Perplexity), Salt Lake City (Perplexity), Boston (Perplexity), Newark (Google AI Mode) and Minneapolis (Gemini). EnergySage was cited in all 26 cities, and in 6 of them (Phoenix, Seattle, Houston, Miami, Boston and Newark) all five engines cited it.

Which pages got cited

The URLs tell you what to optimize on each platform. Across the 129 EnergySage citations in assistant answers (48 unique URLs), 108 (83.7%) were "Best Solar Companies in {City}" city or county pages under /local-data/solar-companies/, 13 (10.1%) were the state version of the same list, 5 (3.9%) were individual installer profiles under /supplier/, and 3 (2.3%) were city solar cost pages. Across the 11 SolarReviews citations (11 unique URLs), 7 (63.6%) were city pages such as "Best Solar Companies in Raleigh, NC" and 4 (36.4%) were state pages such as "7 Best Solar Companies in Arizona". Not one SolarReviews installer profile was cited. For context, here is where the two sit among every site the assistants cited.

The AI Overview columns look nothing like the assistant columns. Of EnergySage's 46 AI Overview citations, 28 were guides under /solar/ (for example "Are Solar Panels Worth It? 2026 Guide"), 2 were battery guides, 1 was a news post, 12 were local cost and incentive data pages, and only 3 were installer profiles (Sunrun, SunPower and one local company, all on "{brand} reviews" searches). Of SolarReviews' 16, 14 were blog posts, including "Are Solar Panels Worth It? (And 7 Reasons Not to Buy Them)" on two searches and "Solar Panel Scams: 7 Solar Red Flags" on two more, plus one Texas incentives page and the main /solar-companies hub.

What Google's AI Overviews change

Our AI Overviews study checked 60 homeowner solar searches on Google US desktop; 52 showed an AI Overview. On those 52, EnergySage was cited on 33 (63.5%), SolarReviews on 16 (30.8%), both on 9 (17.3%), SolarReviews alone on 7 (13.5%), and neither on 12 (23.1%). EnergySage was the first reference listed on 14 AI Overviews and SolarReviews on 3. Weighted by Google Ads search volume, the searches citing EnergySage add up to 155,060 monthly US searches (81.9% of the 189,390 across all 52) and the searches citing SolarReviews to 26,110 (13.8%). In the ordinary organic top 10, the two were level: each appeared on 18 of the 60 searches.

The intent split below shows where SolarReviews is genuinely competitive.

For an installer, the practical reading is that a SolarReviews profile has less effect on whether an assistant names you than an EnergySage listing, but SolarReviews' editorial content is in front of homeowners on the "is it worth it" and "how do I pick an installer" searches that come before a quote request. If your own site has an honest page answering those questions for your state, you are competing with both of them for the same AI Overview slot; our guide to ranking in AI Overviews covers how.

EnergySage for installers

EnergySage is a quote marketplace. Homeowners enter their property and usage details, matched installers are alerted, and, in the company's words on its installer page, "your team submits quotes online and connects with customers to close the sale." The same page lists the screening bar: "over two years of experience installing solar PV," "licensed and insured for solar PV," a "reputation for excellent customer service and quality solar installations," and the ability to "offer high-quality equipment at great value to homeowners." A separate vetting article adds that EnergySage asks about certifications such as NABCEP's PV Installation Professional credential, and defines four tiers: Approved, Advanced, Elite and Elite+, with Elite+ reserved for installers that keep "Elite level of service for a high volume of customers for a year or more." EnergySage also names a Local Installer of the Year by state each year, and both Gemini and Claude cited that award when recommending the Austin winner.

On money, EnergySage's how we make money page says: "Installers and other service providers pay us a small fee to join our marketplace, but only after we vet them through our rigorous standards." It also states that "installers can't buy their way to the top, and they can't influence what we recommend." No per-lead, per-quote or per-sale price is published anywhere we could find on the site as of 10 October 2026, so treat any figure you see elsewhere as a quote from one installer's contract, not a public rate.

Reviews on EnergySage carry an "EnergySage shopper" verification when the reviewer found the installer through the marketplace, and the AIs quote those profile scores often: ChatGPT in San Diego recommended an installer partly because it is "listed by EnergySage as an Elite+ Installer." In our data, 103 of 130 assistant answers mentioned EnergySage by name in the text, usually as the reason for the pick.

What this means in practice: EnergySage's city pages are the page the AI reads, and your rank on that page is driven by shopper ratings, response speed and tier. Our longer EnergySage for installers guide walks through the profile fields and response habits that move that rank.

SolarReviews for installers

SolarReviews started as a review site and now runs three things an installer can use: a free company profile, a lead marketplace and an outside-sales partnership. The company registration page says "your credit card will not be charged unless you set up a lead buying campaign after registration," and that "to have your company appear in searches on SolarReviews complete your profile." The lead page describes four lead types ("Exclusive: A lead sold only to you," then Duo, Trio and Quad, shared with one, two or three other companies), says "solar leads cost between $25 and $300," and notes that exclusive opt-in leads in a dense market like San Diego "will sell for as much as $300 per lead." It also claims "only 48% of the raw leads pass and are sold" after an address check for shade, roof viability, mobile homes and existing solar, and that "there are no lock-in contracts for SolarReviews leads." For the outside-sales partnership, the registration page requires that "you must have been in business for at least three years, have appropriate licenses and insurance, agree to a background check for the owners of the company, and have quality reviews on at least one leading reviews site."

On rankings, SolarReviews publishes an explanation of its rating system that scores installers on what it calls 13 criteria, from years in business and license verification to loan competitiveness and employee safety, and sorts the result into Elite, Excellent, Very Good, Good, Average or Poor. ChatGPT in Raleigh quoted exactly that tier when it named two installers with an "Elite" expert rating. The about page states that "unless otherwise marked, reviews on our site have been uploaded by consumers," names Solar Investments Inc. as the owner, and says none of its journalists or editors has a financial relationship with a specific solar company. We did not find a public page describing the review verification steps in detail, and the per-market lead price list is only visible after registration, so the honest description of SolarReviews' pricing transparency is "a published range, not a published price."

What this means in practice: the SolarReviews pages that AI reads are the state and city "Best Solar Companies" lists and the blog, and the installer profile itself was never cited in our 130 answers. A SolarReviews profile is worth completing because it feeds those lists and because the Expert Rating tier gets quoted, but it is a review and ranking asset first and a lead source second.

Which one should you use? A recommendation by situation

The right answer depends on where your company is, so here is how we would decide for four common installer situations. Our solar lead generation companies comparison covers the wider market of paid lead sources, and our solar companies page explains how we help installers get named by AI without paying per lead.

A new installer (under three years in business)

Start with SolarReviews, because the free profile has no stated minimum tenure, while EnergySage's own screening asks for over two years of solar PV experience and the SolarReviews sales partnership asks for three. Use the profile to collect your first verified reviews and get onto your state list. Apply to EnergySage the month you pass the experience bar, because 81.5% of assistant answers cite it and your city page there is the single most-read source. In the meantime, build the reviews that both platforms and the AIs weigh; our Google review link generator makes the ask easier.

An established local installer

Prioritize EnergySage and treat your rank on its city page as a KPI. Of the 48 unique EnergySage URLs cited by the assistants, 41 were city, county or state lists, so the question is whether you are in the top five of the list for your city, not whether you have a profile. Keep SolarReviews as a secondary review channel so that when Google AI Mode or Perplexity does cite its city list, you are on it; Perplexity cited SolarReviews city pages in Raleigh, Salt Lake City and Boston. Run both profiles through our AI citation checker every quarter to see which one the assistants actually attribute your name to.

A battery and storage specialist

SolarReviews earns a relative advantage here through its editorial content: its battery guide ("Solar Batteries: Are They Worth The Cost?") and its Tesla Powerwall cost article were cited in AI Overviews, and in "is it worth it" searches it reached 57.1% of AI Overviews against EnergySage's 85.7%, its closest gap of any intent group. Neither site's installer profile distinguishes storage specialists in the pages AI cited, so the better move is to publish your own storage cost and payback page for your utility territory and compete for the same AI Overview slot. Our AI Overviews study lists the storage searches that showed one.

A commercial installer

Neither platform was cited for commercial work in our data, because the prompt and the 60 searches were residential. EnergySage's marketplace and SolarReviews' lead products are built around homeowner quote requests, so for commercial pipeline the honest answer is that both are peripheral. Spend the effort on your own site, on case studies, and on the trade and government sources the AIs cite for commercial questions, and use the residential profiles only for the reputation signal (an Elite tier on either site is something an AI will quote).

What both platforms have in common

Both sites rank installers from reviews and operating data, both publish city and state lists that AI reads instead of installer profiles, and both leave the per-installer price off the public page. The money question is therefore the same on either: can you get a position on the list that an AI will repeat? In our study, installers named by at least one AI had a median of 129 Google reviews against 16 for installers in the Maps top 20 that no AI named, so review volume moves every list at once. Our solar company SEO guide and our generative engine optimization service page cover the rest of the work: a site with pricing, licenses and NABCEP credentials visible, local pages the AIs can quote, and schema that confirms who you are. NABCEP certification deserves a visible place on that site: the assistants mentioned NABCEP in 47 of the 130 answers when explaining how to vet an installer, and EnergySage asks applicants about it, so link your credential to NABCEP's certification page. SEIA membership is the other trade signal worth showing, even though no assistant cited seia.org in our sample.

How we got this data

• Dates: 7 and 8 October 2026 for the AI assistant answers and Google Maps data; the AI Overview SERPs were collected in the same study window. Platform pages were checked and quoted on 10 October 2026.
• Engines and models: ChatGPT (gpt-5.5), Perplexity (sonar-pro), Gemini (gemini-3.8-flash) and Claude (claude-sonnet-5-5), all with web search on, via the DataForSEO LLM responses endpoints, plus Google AI Mode via the DataForSEO SERP API with the city as the location.
• Prompt: "Who is the best solar installer in {City}, {State}? Give me your top picks." in 26 US cities: Denver, Austin, Phoenix, Charlotte, Seattle, Tampa, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Orlando, Miami, Atlanta, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Tucson, Boston, Newark, Baltimore, Chicago, Minneapolis and Honolulu. One run per engine and city, 130 answers in total.
• Counting: a domain counts once per answer no matter how many of its URLs were cited; subdomains were merged. "Cited together" means both domains appear in the same answer's source list. Page types were classified from the cited URL paths. "Mentioned in the text" means the site name appears in the answer body, which is separate from the source list.
• AI Overviews: 60 homeowner solar searches on Google US desktop with AI Overview loading on; 52 returned an AI Overview, and the citation shares use those 52. Search volumes are Google Ads monthly US averages.
• Platform facts: every claim about joining, screening, reviews and fees is quoted from EnergySage's and SolarReviews' own pages, linked inline. Where a price is not published, we say so rather than estimate.
• Limits: one run per prompt is a snapshot, and AI answers change between runs. The AI Overview sample is 52 searches, so per-intent shares rest on 5 to 10 searches each. The study is residential only. Full method and the parent dataset are in the Orkkid AI Recommendation Study.

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FAQ

Is EnergySage or SolarReviews better for solar installers?

For getting named by AI assistants, EnergySage: it was cited in 81.5% of the 130 answers in our October 2026 test and SolarReviews in 7.7%. For reaching homeowners earlier through Google's AI Overviews, SolarReviews is closer (30.8% against 63.5%), largely through its blog guides. Most established installers should hold both profiles and treat EnergySage city rank as the priority.

How much does EnergySage charge installers?

EnergySage does not publish a price. Its how-we-make-money page says installers "pay us a small fee to join our marketplace" after vetting and that "installers can't buy their way to the top." Any specific figure you see has come from an individual installer, not from EnergySage's public pages (checked 10 October 2026).

How much do SolarReviews leads cost?

SolarReviews' own lead page says "solar leads cost between $25 and $300," depending on the market and whether the lead is exclusive or shared with one, two or three other companies, and it states that there are no lock-in contracts. The per-market price list is shown after registration, not publicly.

Do AI assistants cite SolarReviews installer profiles?

Not in our sample. All 11 SolarReviews URLs cited by the assistants were city or state "Best Solar Companies" lists, and the 16 cited in Google AI Overviews were almost all blog guides (14 of 16). EnergySage installer profiles were cited 5 times in assistant answers and 3 times in AI Overviews, all on review-style searches.

Can a new installer get onto EnergySage?

EnergySage's installer page says it screens for "over two years of experience installing solar PV" plus licensing, insurance and reputation. Until you clear that bar, a free SolarReviews profile and a steady flow of Google reviews are the practical place to start; both platforms' rankings draw on review performance.

Do EnergySage and SolarReviews get cited in the same answer?

Rarely by the assistants: 9 of the 130 answers (6.9%) cited both, and SolarReviews appeared without EnergySage in only 1 answer. In Google AI Overviews the overlap was larger, with both cited on 9 of 52 searches (17.3%) and SolarReviews alone on 7.