The retailers, marketplaces, and brands competing for the American home-improvement dollar are now researched inside the chatbox. New 5W research ranks the 25 by how often the AI engines name them.
Source: 5W analysis of AI-generated responses across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, Q2 2026. Share represents the estimated proportion of brand citations across 60+ tracked homeowner prompts spanning retail, online, marketplaces, design platforms, and home brands. Remaining ~27.5% split across ranks 16–25 and unranked brands.
U.S. home improvement retail is one of the most concentrated categories in all of retail. Home Depot commands roughly 52% of the sector by revenue; Lowe's holds about 30%. Together the two chains account for more than 80% of home improvement store sales — a level of concentration virtually unseen elsewhere in retail.
The 5W AI Visibility Index finds that inside the AI engines, the concentration runs tighter still. Asked "where should I buy supplies for a home project" or "best home improvement store," ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's AI Overviews surface Home Depot and Lowe's first, second, and often almost exclusively. Decades of editorial coverage, reviews, and consumer consensus made the two chains the assumed answer.
But the Index also finds a clean split. "Where do I buy it" and "who do I hire" are two different questions — and two different citation surfaces. The home-services marketplaces (Angi, Thumbtack, TaskRabbit) own the hiring query; the retailers own the buying query; few brands compete across both. And one more decoupling: Lowe's leads consumer-satisfaction rankings despite Home Depot's larger share, which gives Lowe's a citation edge on "best" queries that raw market share does not. National scale and a deep content footprint win the answer — and the local operator who never built one is invisible on every surface.
"Two companies ring up more than eighty cents of every dollar spent on home improvement in America — and inside the AI engines, the concentration is even tighter. Home Depot and Lowe's own the answer to 'where do I buy it.' But 'who do I hire' is a different question, and a different citation surface — and the contractor down the street is invisible on both. National scale and a deep content footprint win the answer. The local operator who never built one is not losing the customer at the quote. They are losing them before the search even finishes."
5W analyzed more than 60 common homeowner prompts across six primary sub-categories of the home improvement and home-services market, running each prompt five times per engine in clean sessions. We identified which brands AI models consistently surface, which sources feed those citations, and where the biggest gaps sit between scale and AI visibility.
Home Depot, Lowe's, Menards.
Ace Hardware, True Value, Harbor Freight, Tractor Supply, Floor & Decor.
Wayfair, Amazon home, Ferguson, online supply retailers.
Angi, Thumbtack, TaskRabbit, HomeAdvisor.
Houzz, Pinterest, Yelp home services.
Sherwin-Williams, Behr, Benjamin Moore, and home-materials brands.
Query types tracked. Real-world prompts including "best home improvement store," "Home Depot vs Lowe's," "where to buy tools," "best place to hire a handyman," "how do I find a contractor," "best paint brand," "best site to buy furniture online," "Angi vs Thumbtack," and 50+ variations covering retail, hiring, and project-research intent.
Citation sources tracked. Retail and consumer editorial (Wirecutter, Consumer Reports, Forbes Home, This Old House, Family Handyman), satisfaction sources (J.D. Power, ACSI), homeowner communities (Reddit r/HomeImprovement, r/DIY), news coverage, and brand-owned content.
| # | Brand | Category | AI Visibility | Notable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Home Depot | Big-box retail | Category-dominant | NYSE: HD; ~52% of U.S. home improvement retail; ~$150B 2025 U.S. revenue; the default first answer for "where to buy." |
| 2 | Lowe's | Big-box retail | Citation co-leader | NYSE: LOW; ~30% market share; tops J.D. Power satisfaction at 680 — an edge on "best store" queries. |
| 3 | Ace Hardware | Hardware & specialty | Service-reputation tier | Cooperative; #2 in consumer satisfaction at 672; owns "best local hardware store" and "helpful service" citations. |
| 4 | Wayfair | Online home retail | Online-furnishings leader | NYSE: W; owns "best site to buy furniture and home goods online" citations. |
| 5 | Amazon | Online home retail | Online-everything tier | Cited as the default for tools, hardware, and small home goods; broad but unspecialized in home queries. |
| 6 | Angi | Home-services marketplace | Hiring-query leader | NASDAQ: ANGI; the most-cited brand for "find a contractor / hire a pro" — a separate surface from retail. |
| 7 | Menards | Big-box retail | Regional big-box tier | Private; ~4.6% share; strong in the Midwest, cited as the regional alternative to Home Depot and Lowe's. |
| 8 | Thumbtack | Home-services marketplace | Hiring-query challenger | Cited alongside Angi for hiring local pros; owns "get quotes from contractors" citations. |
| 9 | Harbor Freight | Hardware & specialty | Value-tools tier | Private; ~14.7% of the tools segment by foot traffic; owns "affordable tools" citations. |
| 10 | Houzz | Design & project platform | Design-research leader | Owns "home design ideas" and "find a designer/remodeler" citations; a research-surface brand. |
| 11 | Sherwin-Williams | Materials & paint | Paint-brand leader | NYSE: SHW; the most-cited paint brand; owns a large share of "best paint" citations. |
| 12 | Tractor Supply | Hardware & specialty | Rural-retail leader | NASDAQ: TSCO; ~$15.5B revenue; owns "rural and farm supply" citations — its own distinct niche. |
| 13 | TaskRabbit | Home-services marketplace | Small-job niche | IKEA-owned; owns "hire help for small jobs and assembly" citations. |
| 14 | Floor & Decor | Hardware & specialty | Flooring-category niche | NYSE: FND; owns "best place to buy flooring and tile" citations. |
| 15 | True Value | Hardware & specialty | Neighborhood-hardware niche | Cooperative; cited as a neighborhood hardware option; a recent foot-traffic comeback is lifting visibility. |
| 16 | Benjamin Moore | Materials & paint | Premium-paint niche | Berkshire-owned; owns "best premium paint" citations against Sherwin-Williams and Behr. |
| 17 | Behr | Materials & paint | Value-paint niche | Home Depot exclusive; cited as the value paint pick; citations tied closely to Home Depot. |
| 18 | Yelp | Design / services platform | Review-source tier | NYSE: YELP; cited as a review source for home-services queries more than as a destination brand. |
| 19 | Ferguson | Online / supply retail | Trade-supply niche | NYSE: FERG; owns "where to buy plumbing and fixtures" citations; strong with trade buyers. |
| 20 | The Container Store | Specialty retail | Organization niche | Owns "home organization and storage" citations; narrow but distinct. |
| 21 | Mr. Handyman | Home-services franchise | National-franchise niche | Neighborly-owned franchise; the most-cited national handyman brand — a rare branded answer in a local category. |
| 22 | Builders FirstSource | Materials / supply | Pro-supply niche | NYSE: BLDR; large building-materials supplier; cited mainly in pro and new-construction queries. |
| 23 | Porch | Home-services platform | Services-platform niche | NASDAQ: PRCH; cited in home-services and moving queries; small but defined footprint. |
| 24 | LL Flooring | Specialty retail | Flooring niche | Cited in flooring-specific queries; narrow citation footprint behind Floor & Decor. |
| 25 | Design / inspiration platform | Inspiration-source tier | NYSE: PINS; cited as a home-project inspiration source; a research surface more than a destination brand. |
Home Depot owns the home improvement citation surface the way it owns the market — first, by a wide margin. Roughly half the sector's revenue and decades of editorial and consumer coverage make it the assumed answer to nearly every "where to buy" query.
Lowe's is the smaller chain by share, but it leads consumer-satisfaction rankings — and AI answers to "best home improvement store" retrieve that data. Satisfaction gives Lowe's a citation advantage on "best" queries that market share alone would not.
Ace cannot match the big boxes on scale, so it owns a different word: service. Its #2 satisfaction ranking and "helpful neighborhood hardware store" reputation give it the third citation slot on a fraction of the footprint.
Angi owns "who do I hire" — a query the retailers do not compete for at all. By treating contractor discovery as its own citation category, Angi captures a surface the big boxes leave entirely open.
Local contractors and independent hardware stores are nearly invisible in AI answers. The engines retrieve national brands with deep content footprints — and a local operator who never built one is lost before the search finishes.
Menards is strong in the Midwest but barely registers nationally. AI answers default to the chains with national coverage, leaving regional players cited only inside their own geography.
Retailers that sell a bit of everything but own no specific query — flooring, paint, tools, organization — split the remaining citations thin. The brands that win own one word; generalists below the duopoly do not.
As AI engines answer "how do I find a pro" with their own guidance and ratings, the services-marketplace layer faces the same disintermediation pressure seen across other categories the Index has measured.
Home Depot and Lowe's hold 80%+ of retail sales — and an even larger share of the citation surface. AI amplifies category leaders.
Retailers own one; marketplaces own the other. Few brands compete across both — and the hiring surface is the more open one.
Lowe's and Ace out-cite their market share because AI retrieves satisfaction data. "Biggest" and "best" are different citations.
The engines retrieve brands with deep national content footprints. Local operators are structurally disadvantaged — echoing 5W's Local Services research.
Tractor Supply owns rural, Floor & Decor owns flooring, Sherwin-Williams owns paint. A specific owned query out-cites a broad assortment.
Houzz and Pinterest are retrieved heavily as project-research sources — feeding the answers that retailers and brands then appear in.
After several soft years, home improvement traffic has steadied — and the citation leaders are consolidating their positions.
Lowe's positive 2026 traffic trend, paired with its satisfaction lead, is lifting its share of "best store" answers.
Harbor Freight and a resurgent True Value are claiming "affordable tools" and "neighborhood hardware" citations.
Project how-to queries are increasingly answered in-engine — raising the value of brand-owned project content.
As engines surface their own pro-finding guidance, Angi and Thumbtack face the squeeze seen in other marketplace categories.
Homeowners increasingly plan projects in a chatbot before visiting a store — making citation share the new front of the funnel.
For decades, a home project started with a drive to the nearest big box. Today it increasingly starts with a question typed into ChatGPT, Claude, or Google's AI Overviews — what to buy, what brand, who to hire, how to do it. The citation surface has become the front of the home improvement funnel.
The Index shows what that surface rewards: national scale, decades of editorial and satisfaction coverage, a clear owned category, and a deep content footprint. It rewards the concentration that already defines the market — and amplifies it. Home Depot and Lowe's own the answer. The marketplaces own the separate hiring query. And the local operator who never built a content footprint is invisible on every surface.
AI citation share is the scoreboard. In home improvement, the brand AI names is the brand the project runs through — and that visibility is built in content and coverage, not in store count.