AI Summary
AI visibility tools track whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and other answer engines mention and cite your brand. The category went from a handful of experiments in 2024 to a crowded market in 2026, and U.S. searches for “ai visibility tools” are up 1,900% year over year in our keyword analysis. This guide ranks the 12 best AI visibility tools by price band, from a free HubSpot diagnostic to enterprise platforms like Profound, with the exact AI engines each one tracks and what it costs.
We test these tools hands-on in our own GEO work, so this is a practitioner ranking, not a spec-sheet summary. Prices are current as of June 2026 and shift fast in this market, so check the latest before you buy. If you want the strategy behind the tracking, start with what generative engine optimization is and how to measure AI search share of voice.
Quick comparison: 12 AI visibility tools at a glance
| Tool | Best for | AI engines tracked | Starts at | Free option |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot AI Search Grader | Free diagnostic | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini | Free / $50/mo | Yes |
| Otterly.ai | Lowest paid entry | ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot | $29/mo | No |
| Knowatoa | Data export stack | 3 to 7 engines | $59/mo | Free audit |
| Nightwatch | SEO + AI in one bill | 6 engines, all plans | €79/mo | 14-day trial |
| Peec AI | Unlimited seats | Choose 3 of 6 engines | $95/mo | Trial |
| Rankscale | Most engines covered | 17+ engines, all plans | $20/mo | Free Pro trial |
| AthenaHQ | Hallucination protection | 8 LLMs | $95/mo annual | 67% off month 1 |
| SE Ranking AI Toolkit | SEO-first teams | AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity | $129/mo | 14-day trial |
| Scrunch | Shaping what agents read | 4 to 9 LLMs | $250/mo | 7-day trial |
| Goodie | Revenue attribution | 3 to 11 engines | $399/mo | Free assessment |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Largest prompt database | 7 engines, 405M prompts | $398/mo | Free checker |
| Profound | Enterprise AEO program | ChatGPT to 10+ engines | $99/mo | Trial |
What is an AI visibility tool?
An AI visibility tool monitors whether AI answer engines mention, cite, or recommend your brand. It runs a set of prompts on a schedule, then reports where you appear, which sources the engine cited, and how you compare to competitors. This is a distinct discipline from rank tracking. A page that ranks first on Google can be invisible inside ChatGPT, because each engine builds its own citation pool.
Three things separate the tools: how many AI engines they track, whether they only monitor or also help you optimize, and price. Most tools now cover ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews at a minimum. The 2026 differentiators are Google AI Mode coverage, Claude tracking, and whether the platform turns findings into action. For the metrics that matter under the hood, see our breakdown of tracking brand visibility across 6 AI models and the AI search analytics metrics that actually matter.
1. HubSpot AI Search Grader: best free diagnostic
HubSpot AI Search Grader is the easiest way to start, because it costs nothing and needs no account. It runs a one-time snapshot that scores your brand on sentiment, presence quality, brand recognition, share of voice, and competition. The grader queries GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity, and Gemini, then cross-validates the result.
- Best for: a free first look before you buy anything
- Engines tracked: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini
- Starts at: free, or $50/mo for continuous monitoring (no HubSpot subscription required)
- Free option: yes, the grader is fully free
It does not track Google AI Overviews, Claude, or Copilot, so treat it as a starting point, not a complete program. Pair it with a DIY AI brand visibility audit for a free baseline.
2. Otterly.ai: lowest paid entry price
Otterly.ai has the lowest published paid entry in the category. The base plan tracks brand mentions, website citations, and sentiment across four engines out of the box. It also ships a built-in GEO audit, unusual at this price, plus white-label reporting for agencies.
- Best for: startups and small teams wanting cheap multi-engine monitoring
- Engines tracked: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot (AI Mode and Gemini as add-ons)
- Starts at: $29/mo (Lite, 15 prompts); Standard $189/mo; Premium $489/mo
- Free option: no free tier
3. Knowatoa: best data-export stack for the price
Knowatoa is a lightweight monitor that punches above its weight on data plumbing. The Growth plan unlocks all seven AI services plus API, MCP, Looker Studio, and NinjaCat connectors, which most tools reserve for far higher tiers. It supports unlimited sites on one account.
- Best for: teams that pipe AI visibility data into their own dashboards
- Engines tracked: ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode (Starter); plus Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, Perplexity on Growth (7 total)
- Starts at: $59/mo (Starter); Growth $199/mo
- Free option: free one-time audit
If you would rather build the dashboard yourself, we have a guide to building an AI search traffic dashboard in Looker Studio for free.
4. Nightwatch: best value for SEO plus AI in one bill
Nightwatch bundles traditional rank tracking with AI citation intelligence, so you do not pay for two platforms. All six AI engines are included on every plan, and every plan starts with a 14-day free trial that needs no credit card.
- Best for: agencies wanting SEO rank tracking and AI citations together
- Engines tracked: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews (all 6, all plans)
- Starts at: €79/mo (Starter); Professional €159/mo; Agency €399/mo
- Free option: 14-day free trial, no card
Note that Nightwatch prices in euros, so €79 is not the same as $79. It is still one of the strongest value picks for combined coverage.
5. Peec AI: cleanest UX with unlimited seats
Peec AI is the Berlin-built option that marketing teams reach for when they want clean analytics without complexity. Every plan includes unlimited user seats, with no per-seat fees, and adds Looker Studio and MCP integrations on higher tiers. You pick any three engines per plan, or get all six on Enterprise.
- Best for: marketing teams and agencies that hate per-seat pricing
- Engines tracked: choose 3 of ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini (all 6 plus more on Enterprise)
- Starts at: $95/mo (Starter, 50 prompts, unlimited seats); Pro $245/mo; Advanced $495/mo
- Free option: free trial
6. Rankscale: the widest engine coverage
Rankscale tracks 17-plus AI engines, more than almost anything else, and it does not gate engines behind higher tiers. Every paid plan covers them all. A credit system controls how often prompts run, from hourly to monthly, and credits roll over on the larger plans. Growth adds white-label dashboards and a REST API.
- Best for: agencies needing broad coverage with white-label and API
- Engines tracked: 17+ including ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini, DeepSeek, Mistral, Claude, Grok, Copilot
- Starts at: $20/mo (Essentials); Pro $99/mo; Growth $385/mo; Enterprise $780/mo
- Free option: free Pro trial
7. AthenaHQ: broad coverage plus brand integrity
AthenaHQ covers eight LLMs on its self-serve plan and adds a Brand Integrity module that flags AI hallucinations and factual errors about your brand. No SMB tool at this price matches that. Enterprise adds content agents and a citation engine that improves pages automatically.
- Best for: brands that need broad coverage plus hallucination protection
- Engines tracked: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok (8)
- Starts at: $95/mo billed annually, or $295/mo billed monthly
- Free option: first month 67% off
If AI engines already get facts wrong about you, our guide to fixing what AI engines get wrong about your brand pairs well with this module.
8. SE Ranking AI Search Toolkit: best for SEO-first teams
SE Ranking bolts AI visibility onto a full SEO platform, so you avoid tool sprawl. The AI Search Toolkit tracks brand mentions and domain links across five engines, stores cached AI answers, and runs competitor share-of-voice side by side. The AI visibility tracking is included in its standard plans.
- Best for: SEO agencies that want AI tracking inside their existing stack
- Engines tracked: Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity
- Starts at: $129/mo (Core, AI visibility tracking included; $103.20/mo billed annually)
- Free option: 14-day trial on the base platform
9. Scrunch: shape what AI agents read on your site
Scrunch is the only tool here with an Agent Experience Platform, which serves optimized content directly to AI crawlers so you can influence what they ingest. It monitors mentions, sources, sentiment, and query fan-out across four engines on Core and nine on Enterprise. Scrunch is now a Sitecore company, a signal of enterprise staying power.
- Best for: enterprises that want to control, not just track, AI agent access
- Engines tracked: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Copilot (Core); plus Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, AI Mode, Grok on Enterprise
- Starts at: $250/mo (Core, 125 prompts)
- Free option: 7-day free trial
Controlling crawler access is its own discipline. See our guide to blocking, charging, or allowing AI bots with Cloudflare.
10. Goodie: closed-loop AEO with revenue attribution
Goodie runs the full loop: prompt research, monitoring, optimization actions, and revenue attribution tied to Google Analytics. Its Agentic Commerce Suite tracks SKU-level product visibility in AI shopping results, including Amazon Rufus, which matters for e-commerce.
- Best for: e-commerce and SaaS brands running a complete AEO program
- Engines tracked: ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity (Explorer); up to 11 engines on Enterprise
- Starts at: $399/mo (Explorer, 100 prompts, 30-day money-back guarantee)
- Free option: free AI search assessment
11. Ahrefs Brand Radar: the largest prompt database
Ahrefs Brand Radar brings search-index scale to AI monitoring. Instead of defining prompts yourself, it searches a pre-built index of 405 million-plus monthly prompts drawn from real behavior and shows where your brand appears.
- Best for: SEO teams wanting large-scale passive monitoring on real data
- Engines tracked: AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok (7)
- Starts at: $398/mo (select platforms); $699/mo for all platforms plus custom prompts
- Free option: free AI Visibility Checker
12. Profound: the enterprise AEO benchmark
Profound is the category pioneer and the enterprise benchmark. Its Prompt Volumes data surfaces the real queries millions of people ask AI, with search volume, the AI equivalent of keyword research. Agent Analytics shows how bots crawl and interpret your site, and autonomous agents generate optimized content.
- Best for: enterprise teams treating AEO as a dedicated channel
- Engines tracked: ChatGPT only (Starter); three answer engines (Growth); up to 10 (Enterprise)
- Starts at: $99/mo (Starter, ChatGPT only); $399/mo (Growth, 3 engines)
- Free option: free trial on the Growth plan
The free DIY route: an open-source GEO/AEO tracker
Full disclosure: we built this one. Our open-source GEO/AEO Tracker is a free, self-hosted alternative for teams that would rather own their stack than pay a subscription. You bring your own API keys, define your prompts, and track citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and more from a single dashboard. There is a live demo if you want to see it before cloning.
- Best for: technical teams that want full control and zero subscription cost
- Engines tracked: configurable via API (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and others)
- Starts at: free, open source, self-hosted
- Free option: yes, the whole thing is free
For a narrower deep dive on the five verified citation-tracking tools, including this one, see our roundup of AI search citation tracking tools.
Enterprise AI visibility platforms worth a demo
These platforms publish no public pricing and sell on annual contracts. They suit large brands that want AI visibility inside an existing enterprise stack.
- Conductor: tracks ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, and traditional search in one dashboard, layered on enterprise content intelligence. Conductor publishes no public pricing and sells on annual enterprise contracts.
- BrightEdge: its AI Catalyst module tracks Google AI Overview presence on top of an established enterprise SEO platform.
- Evertune: an enterprise marketing suite for brand discovery in AI search, pairing AI brand monitoring with a consumer panel that tracks 150 million-plus prompts, plus AI advertising.
- Bluefish AI: enterprise GEO focused on AI accuracy and brand safety, with modules to detect and correct AI misrepresentation.
How to choose an AI visibility tool
Match the tool to your budget band and your stack, not to a feature list. Three questions settle most decisions.
- What is your budget? Start free with HubSpot’s grader or our open-source tracker. Under $200/mo, look at Otterly, Knowatoa, Nightwatch, Peec, or Rankscale. At $250 to $400/mo, compare AthenaHQ, Scrunch, and Goodie. Enterprise buyers shortlist Profound, Ahrefs, and Conductor.
- Which engines matter to you? If Google AI Mode and Claude are priorities, confirm coverage before buying. Rankscale, Nightwatch, and AthenaHQ lead on breadth. Most tools cover ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews by default.
- Do you already run an SEO platform? SE Ranking and Ahrefs let you add AI visibility without a second login. That alone can decide it for SEO-first teams.
Whatever you pick, tracking is step one. The point is to lift your citation share, so connect the data to action. Our guides on how to rank in ChatGPT search, get cited by Perplexity, and optimize for Google AI Mode turn measurement into movement. If you are weighing buying a tool against hiring help, compare what AEO services cost.
The bottom line
There has never been a cheaper time to find out whether AI engines mention your brand. Start free with HubSpot’s AI Search Grader or our open-source GEO/AEO Tracker, step up to Otterly, Knowatoa, Nightwatch, Peec AI, or Rankscale when you want daily tracking on a budget, and move into AthenaHQ, Scrunch, Goodie, Ahrefs Brand Radar, or Profound once AI search becomes a channel you manage seriously. The right pick is the one that covers the engines your buyers actually use and fits a budget you can defend.
Whatever you choose, tracking shows you where you stand. The brands winning AI citations treat these tools as a feedback loop: measure weekly, then fix the content, structure, and authority signals that decide who gets cited. Pick a tool this week, set your baseline, and work through a GEO audit to start closing the gap between where you appear and where your competitors already do.
Pure trackers are only part of the toolkit. For the wider field, compare the 15 best GEO tools across every category, from content platforms to enterprise suites.