The 20 AI Visibility Tools, Compared Honestly (2026)

Most "best AI visibility tools" lists were written by one of the tools, which put itself at number one. This one was written by a vendor too, and we are telling you that in the first sentence rather than the last. What follows is every tool we could verify, with the price its own pricing page states, the engines it actually covers, and the limit that will bite you — sorted by who it is for.

By Tyson McKay · Published 2026-09-04 · Verified 2026-09-04 · 23 min read · How we review

Disclosure: AEOCheck sells a competing product. We write these pages under a published method, we say what the other tool does better than us, and every claim about them is read from their own material and dated.

The conflict of interest, and the state of this SERP

AEOCheck sells a $25 one-time AI visibility report. It appears in the table below and in its own entry, and it competes directly with several tools here. That should make you read this page sceptically, so here is what we did to make it checkable: every price, engine list and prompt limit was read from the vendor's own pricing page or documentation on 4 September 2026, the URL is in the sources list, and where a vendor publishes no number we say "not published" instead of estimating one. Our full rules are on the method page.

We are saying this loudly because the category does not. Search for "best AI visibility tools" and the majority of what ranks is a vendor's own listicle with that vendor at number one, and the trade press barely covers it. There is no Wirecutter for this category. That absence is the reason this page exists, and it is also the reason you should check our claims against the linked sources rather than taking them on trust.

One structural note about prices. Several vendors quote a monthly figure that is only available on annual billing, and a few publish nothing at all. Both are noted per entry. Where a tool's real usable entry point is higher than its headline price, the entry says so.

The question that decides which tier you need

Before any price matters, work out which of two questions you are asking. They sound similar and they have almost nothing in common.

"What do AI engines say about my brand?" This is the question the whole category was built for. You are a company with a name people type — a software product, a consumer brand, a national chain — and you want to know how often you are mentioned, in what tone, and which sources the engines cite about you. Every tool below answers this. Most answer only this.

"Does AI recommend my business when a customer in my town asks?" Nobody types "tell me about Rivera Plumbing" into ChatGPT. They type "who is a good plumber in Mesa", and the engine names two or three businesses. Whether yours is one of them is a different measurement: it needs buyer-intent prompts, run for your trade and your city, several times, because the answers vary run to run.

The gap between those two questions is the most useful thing on this page, because the category's marketing collapses them. A tool that offers a country selector is not a tool that answers a city question. Of everything verified below, only Knowatoa advertises city-level targeting outright; the others offer country or region at best, and several offer a single region on their entry tier. Read the Local column with that in mind, and treat "not stated" as what it says — we did not find a claim either way, so we are not making one for them.

What the prompt limits actually mean

Prompt allowances are where entry tiers get thin, and they are the number to check before the price. A prompt is one question the tool asks the engines on your behalf, usually re-run daily. Five prompts is five questions. That is not a measurement of a market; it is a spot check on your brand name.

The spread on entry tiers is wide: Ahrefs' cheapest qualifying plan tracks 5 AI prompts, Otterly's $29 Lite tracks 15, Semrush's toolkit tracks 25, Profound, Peec and Writesonic track 50, LLMrefs gives 500 and Scrunch gives 350 custom plus 1,000 industry prompts. Knowatoa does not publish its per-tier quota at all, which is worth knowing before you buy its otherwise attractive $59 entry.

There is a second reason the number matters, and it is the one nobody markets: AI answers are probabilistic. Ask the same question twice and you can get two different lists of businesses. A tool that runs each prompt daily is sampling over time, which is the right shape. A single run of a single prompt is an anecdote, and any report — free or paid — that hands you one and calls it your score is overstating what it measured. Our own report runs eight buyer-intent prompts across four engines for one business, which is a sample of a moment rather than a trend, and we say so in the report itself.

Engine coverage is gated more than you would expect

Almost every vendor lists an impressive set of engines somewhere on the site. Fewer include them on the plan you would actually buy.

Profound's $99 Starter tracks ChatGPT only; Perplexity and Google AI Overviews arrive at $399, and the full nine engines are enterprise. Writesonic's Starter through Growth cover ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews only — Perplexity, Claude and Copilot are enterprise-gated. Otterly includes four engines at $29 and sells Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode as paid add-ons at $9 to $29 a month each. If a specific engine is the reason you are buying, check it is on the tier you are buying, not on the website.

One correction worth making, because it appears in a lot of category writing: there is no separate Gemini crawler for Google. Googlebot's crawl is what feeds Google Search and its AI Overviews and AI Mode alike. That matters for what you fix, not just what you measure — and you can check whether Googlebot and the AI retrieval crawlers can reach your site at all with our free crawler check, which is the precondition every tool on this page assumes you have already met.

The tools, by who they are for

Otterly.AI otterly.ai/pricing ↗

Solo marketers and small teams · verified 2026-09-04

The cheapest honest entry into ongoing brand monitoring. $29 a month, four engines included, a free trial that does not ask for a card, and pricing that is fully published — which in this category is less common than it should be.

Good at: The lowest real price for multi-engine tracking, and no card to try it.

The limit: Fifteen prompts at the entry tier, and Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode are paid add-ons at $9 to $29 a month rather than included. Country-level location only. Their own site quotes both a 7-day and a 14-day trial in different places.

Checked 2026-09-04

Knowatoa www.knowatoa.com/pricing ↗

Brands and agencies · verified 2026-09-04

The most interesting tool on this page for anyone with a local question. Its feature documentation advertises "City-Level Targeting Precision", 50+ countries, unlimited locations per account, and location settings that can be set per question rather than only per account. Nothing else verified here says that outright.

Seven engines at $59 is also strong coverage for the money, and unlimited sites suits an agency managing several clients.

Good at: City-level and per-question location targeting, seven engines, and a price a small business could justify.

The limit: The per-tier prompt quota is not published anywhere on the pricing page, so the actual capacity of that $59 plan is unknown until you are inside it. Reviewers also note the near-total absence of third-party user reviews for it.

Checked 2026-09-04

LLMrefs llmrefs.com/pricing ↗

Marketing teams, agencies, SEOs · verified 2026-09-04

The best prompt-to-price ratio verified here: 500 prompts and eleven engines for $79 a month, on a single plan with a seven-day trial that needs no card.

Good at: 500 prompts at $79 is several times what most entry tiers give you, and the engine list is genuinely broad.

The limit: The $79 is flagged as a limited-time offer on their own page, and there is only one plan — no tier to grow into, and nothing to fall back to if the promotional price ends. Geo-targeting is country-level.

Checked 2026-09-04

Profound www.tryprofound.com/pricing ↗

Startups through global enterprise · verified 2026-09-04

The best-known name in the category, and the one most often cited as the reference product. Growth at $399 a month adds Perplexity and Google AI Overviews; the full nine-engine coverage is enterprise.

Good at: The category's most established platform, with a clear ladder from $99 to enterprise.

The limit: The $99 Starter tracks a single engine, a single region and a single seat, and only a yearly billing figure is shown — there is no visible month-to-month option.

Checked 2026-09-04

Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit www.semrush.com/pricing/ai ↗

Teams already inside Semrush · verified 2026-09-04

If your team already lives in Semrush, adding AI visibility to the same account is the path of least resistance, and the free checker below it is the most frictionless in the category.

One distinction worth being precise about: Semrush Local ($30 to $60 per location per month) does not measure AI visibility at all — it is Google Business Profile automation and map rank tracking. AI visibility is a separate purchase. We cover that split on our Semrush Local comparison.

Good at: Sits inside a toolset teams already use, and Semrush's free AI Search Visibility Checker runs three times a day with no account at all.

The limit: Their own documentation states the toolkit has no free trial, and the base price covers 25 prompts and one domain — extra prompts are $60/mo and an extra domain is another $99/mo.

Checked 2026-09-04

Peec AI peec.ai/pricing ↗

Marketing teams and SEO agencies · verified 2026-09-04

A well-regarded European entrant with a clean product and a strong agency story. Worth noting how we got the price: their pricing page renders no figures in the HTML we could read, so the €89 Starter, €199 Pro and €499 Enterprise figures come from Peec's own comparison page rather than the pricing page itself.

Good at: Three engines and 50 daily prompts at the entry tier is a real allowance rather than a spot check.

The limit: Prices are effectively absent from the pricing page, billing is shown as annual, and the agency plans list credit bundles with no currency figures at all. Their marketing discusses tracking cities, but the product documentation defines Location as ISO country codes — country-level.

Checked 2026-09-04

Ahrefs Brand Radar ahrefs.com/brand-radar ↗

SEO teams already on Ahrefs · verified 2026-09-04

Six engines, daily checks, and the data quality Ahrefs is known for. Their free AI Visibility Checker — no signup, no card, no limit — is also the single best free tool in the category, and we say so at length in our roundup of the free checkers.

Good at: Prompts derived from real search demand rather than invented questions, and a genuinely generous free tool.

The limit: Five tracked AI prompts on the cheapest qualifying plan is very thin for $129 a month; more prompts are $50/mo packs on top. No documented city-level filter.

Checked 2026-09-04

Writesonic GEO writesonic.com/pricing ↗

Growth teams, agencies, enterprises · verified 2026-09-04

Reasonable prompt volume for the price, with a no-card trial. The catch is engine gating rather than price.

Good at: 50 prompts and 50 answers tracked daily at $79, with a trial that does not need a card.

The limit: Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Google AI Mode are all enterprise-only. Starter and Growth are both capped at one market — one language and one country.

Checked 2026-09-04

Rankscale rankscale.ai/pricing ↗

Businesses, agencies, enterprise · verified 2026-09-04

The lowest headline price in the category at $20 a month, with a very broad engine list — but read the tier table before assuming that is the price you would pay.

Good at: Ten-plus engines and a genuine agency tier at $385, with a clear ladder.

The limit: Their own comparison table shows Essentials as zero against most metrics and does not state its credit allowance, so the realistic entry is Pro at $99. The trial implies a card.

Checked 2026-09-04

Scrunch AI scrunch.com/pricing ↗

Enterprise brands and agencies · verified 2026-09-04

A serious enterprise product with the most generous prompt allowance verified at any tier, and a seven-day trial that does not ask for a card — unusual at this price point. Acquired by Sitecore in June 2026.

Good at: 1,350 prompts, seven engine surfaces, and a no-card trial before a $250 commitment.

The limit: The real entry cost is $250 to $300 a month, and the lower figure needs annual billing. Not a product a single-location business would buy.

Checked 2026-09-04

AthenaHQ www.athenahq.ai/pricing ↗

Self-guided SMBs, enterprises, agencies · verified 2026-09-04

Credit-based rather than prompt-based — one credit is one AI response — which makes it easier to reason about than a prompt cap once you know your query volume. A free Essential plan with 300 credits lets you test that before paying.

Good at: A real free tier, nine engines, and a credit model that maps to what you actually consume.

The limit: $295 is steep for something branded at SMBs, and the Starter tier is capped at a single region — multi-region is enterprise-only, with the granularity never specified.

Checked 2026-09-04

Gauge www.withgauge.com/pricing ↗

Mid-market and enterprise B2B SaaS · verified 2026-09-04

Six hundred prompts run daily across seven surfaces — roughly 108,000 answers a month — plus 18 articles a month, aimed squarely at B2B software companies. Note the domain: it is withgauge.com, not gauge.ai.

The free-trial-without-a-sales-call is a real differentiator at this price.

Good at: The highest measurement volume verified anywhere here, and you can trial it without talking to anyone.

The limit: $599 a month is the floor — there is no cheaper tier — and Growth covers a single location. Its published customers are developer-tools companies, not local businesses.

Checked 2026-09-04

Brandlight brandlight.ai ↗

Fortune 500 brands · verified 2026-09-04

The best-funded company in the category and, by its own customer list, a genuinely enterprise product. It publishes no pricing anywhere and offers no self-serve entry.

Our honest verdict for the audience this page is mostly written for: if you are a local business or a small marketing team, this is not for you, and no amount of comparison shopping will change that. It is worth knowing about because it will appear in every list you read.

Good at: Serious enterprise capability, with multi-brand and multi-region consolidation.

The limit: No published price, no self-serve, no trial. Also worth knowing: page one for its own brand terms is largely directory shells, and it has no substantial third-party review presence, so there is very little independent information to go on.

Checked 2026-09-04

Birdeye Search AI birdeye.com/ai-visibility-checker ↗

Multi-location local brands · verified 2026-09-04

The most credible local competitor in this whole set, and the one most likely to be pitched to a multi-location business. Their paid Search AI product reports an AI visibility score, mentions and share of voice against competitors, citation sources, accuracy and sentiment, and prompt themes — including literal local buyer-intent prompts of the "best dentist near me" shape.

Their free checker is deliberately limited to ChatGPT and one location, which is a clean example of gating depth rather than the door.

Good at: A real shipped local AI-visibility product from a reputation platform many local businesses already use, with prompt themes at the right altitude.

The limit: Pricing is sales-gated by location count, so you cannot compare it against a published number without a call. The free tier is one engine and one location.

Checked 2026-09-04

BrightLocal Local AI Visibility help.brightlocal.com/hc/en-us/articles/37989673412114-What-is-Local-AI-Visibility ↗

Local businesses and agencies · verified 2026-09-04

The most relevant subscription for a single-location business, because the AI visibility feature is included at no extra cost on all three plans alongside rank tracking, citations, GBP tools and reviews. Visibility score, mention rate, share of voice and average position, per platform and per prompt, with a competitor comparison.

We wrote a full comparison with our own report, including the case for buying theirs instead of ours.

Good at: AI visibility included rather than upsold, at a price a single location can carry, with a no-card trial.

The limit: Perplexity and Gemini are not named in their Local AI Visibility documentation. Exact plan prices are shown by location count on their pricing page rather than as a flat published figure.

Checked 2026-09-04

Synup AEO www.synup.com/pricing ↗

Listings and reputation, with AEO bundled · verified 2026-09-04

AEO scoring per engine bundled into a listings-and-reviews platform from $49 a month for one location, dropping sharply per location on the higher tiers. Our full comparison is here.

Good at: AI scoring included in every plan rather than sold separately, at a single-location price.

The limit: The pricing page does not describe how prompts are chosen, whether they are local buyer-intent or brand prompts, or whether Google's AI surfaces are covered.

Checked 2026-09-04

peekl peekl.io ↗

One-off audit with a ranked fix list · verified 2026-09-04

The closest model twin to what we sell, and an honest one. A one-time audit of 135 checks across three assistants, each question run several times, delivered as a ranked action plan of up to twelve fixes — and their page publishes the actual query shapes, including "best [category] near me" and "a good [category] in [your area]".

If you want a one-off local diagnosis and $99 is within reach, this is a real alternative to ours and we would rather say so.

Good at: Publishes its local query shapes, re-runs each question several times, and hands you a ranked fix list rather than a dashboard.

The limit: Three engines rather than four or more, no Google organic lens, and the $99 is described as a founding price. Turnaround is same-day rather than immediate.

Checked 2026-09-04

Local Vitals getlocalvitals.com ↗

One-off diagnostic plus a founder call · verified 2026-09-04

The most hands-on one-off in the set: a prioritised action plan delivered within 48 hours plus a 30-minute walkthrough call with the founder, backed by a refund guarantee tied to finding three issues. Five engines, and the local framing is explicit.

If the call is what you want, $247 buys a conversation that a $25 report does not include.

Good at: A human walkthrough, five engines, a free 60-second scan with no card, and a refund guarantee.

The limit: The prompt count per report is not published — the "thousands of times across 8 industries" figure is aggregate marketing, not what your report contains. $247 is ten times the cheapest one-off.

Checked 2026-09-04

VisibAI getvisibai.com ↗

Cheapest paid one-off verified · verified 2026-09-04

Six engines and 104 checks for €29, delivered as a PDF with a step-by-step fix list in under five minutes, plus a free audit every ninety days. Technically the broadest engine coverage of any one-off here.

Good at: Six engines at the lowest paid one-off price verified, with a genuinely useful free tier.

The limit: The queries are described as industry-specific rather than local buyer-intent, and the published sample is brand-flavoured. No Google organic lens.

Checked 2026-09-04

AEOCheck (ours) aeocheck.app/#run ↗

One-off diagnosis for a single-location business · verified 2026-09-04

Disclosed, and last on purpose. Eight real buyer-intent searches for your trade and city — "who is the best roofer in Phoenix", not "tell me about Smith Roofing" — across three AI engines plus Google organic, delivered as a report that names the businesses recommended instead of you, audits your site including whether the AI crawlers can fetch it, and gives five prioritised fixes per lens with copy-paste starter files.

The honest positioning against everything above: this is the cheapest way to answer the local question, and it is a snapshot rather than a trend. If you need a trend line, buy a subscription — BrightLocal at $39 or Knowatoa at $59 are the two we would point a local business at first.

Good at: Local buyer-intent prompts, four lenses including Google organic, competitor names, a crawler-access check, and no subscription.

The limit: A one-time snapshot with no dashboard and no trend line, eight prompts rather than hundreds, and three AI engines rather than nine. If you want ongoing monitoring, this is the wrong shape.

Checked 2026-09-04

The bottom line

If you are one local business, the category is mostly not built for you, and the honest options are narrow: BrightLocal at $39 a month if you want a dashboard alongside the rest of local SEO, Knowatoa at $59 if city-level prompt targeting is what you are after, or a one-off report — ours at $25, peekl at $99, Local Vitals at $247 if you want the founder call. Everything else measures a brand.

If you are a marketing team at a brand, start at Otterly's $29 to learn what you actually need, then buy the tool whose engine coverage and prompt allowance match it. If you already pay Semrush or Ahrefs, adding their AI product is the least disruptive path even though neither is the cheapest.

If you are an agency, Rankscale's $385 Growth tier, Knowatoa's unlimited sites and Peec's agency credits are the three built for managing many clients. Insites is worth knowing about for its client-ready free audit, which we cover in the free-checker roundup.

If you are an enterprise, this is where the category's real money and real products are: Profound, Scrunch, Brandlight and Gauge. Expect $250 to $599 a month at minimum and a sales call for the top of that list.

And whichever you choose, check the precondition first. Every tool here assumes AI engines can actually read your website, and a surprising number of sites are quietly refusing the crawlers that decide citation. That check is free and takes ten seconds.

Related reading

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• Profound pricing — https://www.tryprofound.com/pricing (read 2026-09-04)
• Peec AI pricing and comparison pages — https://peec.ai/pricing (read 2026-09-04)
• Peec AI docs — prompt location is an ISO country code — https://docs.peec.ai/setting-up-your-prompts (read 2026-09-04)
• Otterly.AI pricing — https://otterly.ai/pricing/ (read 2026-09-04)
• Semrush AI pricing — https://www.semrush.com/pricing/ai/ (read 2026-09-04)
• Ahrefs Brand Radar — https://ahrefs.com/brand-radar (read 2026-09-04)
• Scrunch AI pricing — https://scrunch.com/pricing (read 2026-09-04)
• Brandlight — https://brandlight.ai/ (read 2026-09-04)
• Knowatoa pricing and location targeting — https://knowatoa.com/features/location-targeting (read 2026-09-04)
• Rankscale pricing — https://rankscale.ai/pricing (read 2026-09-04)
• LLMrefs pricing — https://llmrefs.com/pricing (read 2026-09-04)
• AthenaHQ pricing — https://www.athenahq.ai/pricing (read 2026-09-04)
• Gauge pricing — https://www.withgauge.com/pricing (read 2026-09-04)
• Writesonic pricing — https://writesonic.com/pricing (read 2026-09-04)
• Birdeye AI Visibility Checker — https://birdeye.com/ai-visibility-checker/ (read 2026-09-04)
• BrightLocal — What is Local AI Visibility? — https://help.brightlocal.com/hc/en-us/articles/37989673412114-What-is-Local-AI-Visibility (read 2026-09-04)
• Synup pricing — https://www.synup.com/pricing (read 2026-09-04)
• peekl — https://peekl.io (read 2026-09-04)
• Local Vitals — https://getlocalvitals.com (read 2026-09-04)
• VisibAI — https://getvisibai.com (read 2026-09-04)
• Google — AI features and your website (there is no separate Gemini crawler) — https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide (read 2026-09-04)

More from the review library

• Free AI Visibility Checkers 2026: seven tools compared, and the one thing none of them do

All reviews · AEOCheck vs. the local SEO tools · How we review

See what AI says about your business — $25 report →