GuideMeasurement
What is the best AI visibility tool? 10 trackers compared
Ten AI search visibility tools scored on the same eight criteria, with prices and G2 ratings checked on 2 November 2026. Profound comes out on top, and Ahrefs is the sensible first step for freelancers and small agencies.
The best AI visibility tool for most teams with a budget is Profound. It tracks up to nine AI engines, shows which sources each answer cites, measures AI-driven traffic, and has agents that can act on what it finds. Its weak spot is price: there's no self-serve plan, only a short free trial and custom Enterprise contracts. If you're a freelancer or a small agency, start with Ahrefs, whose Lite plan includes AI prompt tracking alongside a full SEO toolset for £99 a month.
We compared ten tools that report how often ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews and other AI engines mention or cite a brand. Every price and feature below comes from the vendor's own pricing page, and every rating from G2, all checked on 2 November 2026. Where we've used a tool ourselves, we say so.
- 10AI visibility tools compared on the same eight criteria
- 91/100Profound's weighted score, the highest in our comparison
- £99a month for Ahrefs Lite, which includes AI prompt tracking
- $29a month for Otterly.AI Lite, the cheapest paid AI-native plan
What an AI visibility tool measures
An AI visibility tool sends a fixed set of prompts to AI engines on a schedule, usually daily, and records what comes back. From those answers it reports:
- Mentions: how often your brand appears in answers to prompts you care about.
- Citations: which web pages the engine links to as sources, yours and everyone else's.
- Share of voice: your mentions compared with competitors' across the same prompts.
- Sentiment and position: whether answers describe you favourably, and where in the answer your name appears.
- AI traffic: on some tools, visits from AI crawlers and from people clicking through from AI answers.
Two limits apply to all of them. AI answers vary between runs, so a single result means little; trends over weeks are what count. And you only see the prompts you choose to track. Picking prompts that match how buyers really ask is half the work, and our free AI Visibility Prompt Generator builds a starter set from your brand, category and competitors.
The 10 tools at a glance
| Tool | Type | Cheapest paid plan | AI engines | G2 rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profound | AI-native | Custom (free 7-day trial) | 3 on trial, up to 9 | 4.5 (1,133) |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | SEO suite | £99 a month (Lite) | All on the AI Visibility Index tier | 4.5 (723) |
| AthenaHQ | AI-native | $295 a month | 11 | 4.9 (39) |
| Otterly.AI | AI-native | $29 a month | 4, plus 3 as add-ons | 4.7 (54) |
| Scrunch | AI-native | $250 a month | 4, or 9 on Enterprise | 4.6 (74) |
| SE Ranking | SEO suite | £95 a month | 5 | 4.7 (1,620) |
| Peec AI | AI-native | €85 a month | 3 of 6, up to 13 on Enterprise | 4.7 (21) |
| Obsero | AI-native | About £98 a month | Choose from 7 | 4.7 (7) |
| Semrush | SEO suite | $99 a month (AI Visibility Toolkit) | Not listed in full | 4.4 (4,304) |
| Brandlight | AI-native, enterprise | Demo only | Not published | 4.9 (249) |
Prices are monthly list prices before tax, in the currency each vendor shows UK visitors. Annual billing is cheaper on most of them.
How we scored them
We scored each tool from 1 to 5 on eight criteria, weighted by how much each matters when you're choosing a tracker, then converted the total to a score out of 100.
| Criterion | Weight | What earns a 5 |
|---|---|---|
| AI engine coverage | 15 | Nine or more engines, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode |
| Tracking for the money | 15 | A low, published price for a useful number of daily prompts |
| Citation and source analysis | 15 | Shows every cited URL and domain, for you and competitors |
| Help acting on the data | 15 | Recommendations, content tools or agents that turn findings into work |
| Share of voice and sentiment | 10 | Competitor benchmarks, position and sentiment by prompt |
| Traffic attribution | 10 | AI crawler and AI referral tracking, or a GA4 connection |
| Data access | 10 | Exports, an API and an MCP server for AI assistants |
| User reviews | 10 | A strong G2 rating from hundreds of reviews |
Scores reflect the features each vendor publishes for its plans, plus our own hands-on use of Profound, Ahrefs and Obsero. Brandlight isn't scored because it publishes neither prices nor a plan-by-plan feature list.
| Tool | Engines | Value | Citations | Action | Share of voice | Traffic | Data | Reviews | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profound | 5 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 91 |
| Ahrefs | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 76 |
| AthenaHQ | 5 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 76 |
| Otterly.AI | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 73 |
| Scrunch | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 70 |
| SE Ranking | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 69 |
| Peec AI | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 68 |
| Obsero | 4 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 66 |
| Semrush | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 59 |
Best overall: Profound
Profound is the tool we use most, and it does more than any other tracker here. Enterprise plans track up to nine engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Exa Search. The reports cover mentions, citations, share of voice and sentiment, along with ChatGPT Shopping results and estimates of how often people ask about a topic (Profound pricing).
What sets it apart is what happens after the report:
- Agents. Its "AI Marketer" works from a store of brand knowledge, and you can build reusable agents for your team's recurring marketing work, then run them at scale across many pages or prompts.
- Connections. Agent Analytics connects to Cloudflare, Akamai, Fastly, AWS, Vercel, Netlify, WordPress and Google Analytics to show which pages AI crawlers visit and what traffic AI sends you. Data leaves by CSV, JSON or API, and an MCP server lets assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT query your Profound data directly.
- Reviews. 4.5 out of 5 from 1,133 reviews on G2, many times more than any other AI-native tracker, which makes its rating the most reliable of the group.
The limits are real. There's no published price: the free trial runs 50 prompts a day for seven days on three engines, and everything else is a custom Enterprise contract. The MCP server is an Enterprise feature too. It's built for in-house teams and agencies with a budget and a programme of work to run, and it's more than a solo consultant needs.
Best place to start: Ahrefs Brand Radar
Ahrefs is an SEO toolset that also tracks AI search, not a tool built around AI visibility. For this comparison that's a weakness, since the AI features are a layer on top. For a freelancer or small agency it's the strength: one subscription covers keyword research, backlinks, site audits, rank tracking and AI visibility.
Every paid plan includes tracked AI prompts. Lite costs £99 a month with 150 prompt checks, which Ahrefs explains as five prompts checked daily on one platform; Standard (£199) doubles that and Advanced (£359) doubles it again (Ahrefs pricing). For more depth, Brand Radar adds custom prompt tracking from $50 a month and an AI Visibility Index from $199 a month, which shows any brand's visibility across 525 million prompts with no setup. Its AI traffic report is free to install, and so is its AI crawler report while it's in beta.
In our use, Ahrefs is good for top-level citation tracking: which domains AI answers cite in your niche, and where you appear. Brand Radar is improving quickly but still feels unfinished next to the AI-native tools. Ahrefs has 4.5 from 723 reviews on G2.
Best on a budget: Otterly.AI and Peec AI
Otterly.AI is the cheapest paid AI-native tracker. Lite costs $29 a month for 15 prompts tracked daily on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot, with Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini as add-ons. Standard ($189) gives 100 prompts plus an API, an MCP server and AI crawler analytics (Otterly pricing). Every plan includes unlimited users, citation tracking, sentiment and a crawlability audit. It rates 4.7 from 54 reviews on G2.
Peec AI starts at €85 a month for 50 prompts on three engines of your choice, with unlimited users and competitors. Pro (€205) raises that to 150 prompts, and Advanced (€425) to 350 with a Looker Studio connector (Peec pricing). Its share-of-voice and competitor reporting is the strongest at this price. The gaps are AI traffic data, which isn't on its plan list, and an API, which only comes with Enterprise. It has 4.7 on G2, but from only 21 reviews.
Widest coverage: AthenaHQ
AthenaHQ tracks 11 engines on its $295-a-month Starter plan: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral. No other self-serve plan here covers as many. It also connects to GA4 and Google Search Console, and includes a content optimisation agent. Pricing is by credit, one credit per AI answer, with 3,600 a month on Starter. A free plan covers five engines. It rates 4.9 on G2 from 39 reviews.
If you already pay for an SEO suite: Semrush and SE Ranking
Semrush, now owned by Adobe after a deal that completed in April 2026, sells AI tracking two ways. The SEO and AI Search Starter plan costs £161 a month and tracks 50 prompts daily for one domain (Semrush pricing). The standalone AI Visibility Toolkit costs $99 a month for 25 tracked prompts, with share of voice, sentiment and prompt research. If your team already lives in Semrush, it's a reasonable add-on. On its own, it's expensive for the amount of tracking you get.
SE Ranking includes AI visibility tracking, 25 prompts a day on five AI engines, in its £95-a-month Core plan, alongside rank tracking, audits and backlink data (SE Ranking pricing). It's the cheapest way to get SEO and AI tracking in one tool, and it has 4.7 from 1,620 reviews on G2. The AI side is lighter than the dedicated trackers, with few recommendations.
Enterprise options: Brandlight and Scrunch
Brandlight sells only through demos to large brands and pairs its platform with a team of specialists. It has the highest rating in G2's category of any tool with a meaningful number of reviews, 4.9 from 249 (G2), but we can't compare its prices or plan features because none are published.
Scrunch was bought by Sitecore in June 2026. Its Core plan costs $250 a month for 125 prompts and 5,000 answers on four engines, with Enterprise extending that to nine (Scrunch pricing). It goes further than most on the website side, with tools that serve AI agents an optimised version of your pages. It suits Sitecore customers best. It rates 4.6 from 74 reviews on G2.
One to watch: Obsero
Obsero prices by usage in pounds: £0.013 per tracked prompt per day for the first 250, falling to £0.007 at higher volumes, with every feature on every plan. That makes it the best value here for raw tracking. Its features include citation and sentiment analysis, AI crawler analytics, an MCP server and postcode-level targeting, which helps local businesses. When we tried it, it felt thin next to Profound, but it's improving and worth revisiting. It has 4.7 on G2, but from only seven reviews.
What the review sites say
G2 is the only review site with a useful volume of reviews for these tools. Its AI Search Visibility Optimization category lists 846 products. On Trustpilot, Profound and Peec AI have about one review each and Otterly.AI has none, so we've left it out.
| Tool | G2 rating | Reviews |
|---|---|---|
| Semrush | 4.4 | 4,304 |
| SE Ranking | 4.7 | 1,620 |
| Profound | 4.5 | 1,133 |
| Ahrefs | 4.5 | 723 |
| Brandlight | 4.9 | 249 |
| Scrunch | 4.6 | 74 |
| Otterly.AI | 4.7 | 54 |
| AthenaHQ | 4.9 | 39 |
| Peec AI | 4.7 | 21 |
| Obsero | 4.7 | 7 |
The newest tools score highest, but on the fewest reviews. A 4.9 from 39 reviewers can drop sharply after a handful of unhappy customers, while Profound's 4.5 from more than a thousand is unlikely to move much. The all-in-one suites score lower partly because their reviews cover the whole SEO product, not just its AI features. Look at what reviewers praise and complain about as well as the score: G2's review summaries put "expensive" as the top complaint for both Semrush and Ahrefs.
How much tracking you get for the money
Comparing prices directly is hard because vendors count differently: prompts, credits, checks or answers. The fairest common unit is the number of AI answers a plan collects in a month, which is prompts multiplied by engines multiplied by days.
| Tool | Plan and price | How it's counted | Answers a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Obsero | First tier, about £98 | 250 prompt and engine pairs a day | 7,500 |
| Scrunch | Core, $250 | Stated by Scrunch | 5,000 |
| Peec AI | Starter, €85 | 50 prompts, 3 engines, daily (stated by Peec) | 4,500 |
| SE Ranking | Core, £95 | 25 prompts on 5 engines, daily | 3,750 |
| AthenaHQ | Starter, $295 | 3,600 credits, 1 credit per answer | 3,600 |
| Otterly.AI | Lite, $29 | 15 prompts, 4 engines, daily | 1,800 |
| Ahrefs | Lite, £99 | 150 checks, stated by Ahrefs | 150 |
Ahrefs looks poor on this measure, but its £99 also pays for a full SEO toolset, so the comparison isn't like for like. The same applies to SE Ranking. Among dedicated trackers, Obsero and Peec AI give the most answers for the money, and Otterly.AI is cheapest to start.
How many AI engines each tool tracks
Coverage matters more than it used to. ChatGPT and Google's AI features still get the most attention, but Claude, Copilot, Perplexity and others answer buying questions too, and each engine cites different sources. Most tools cover the big four on entry plans and charge more for the rest.
How to choose
- Start with your prompts. List 20 to 50 questions your buyers ask AI tools, from "best [category] in London" to comparisons with named competitors. The AI Visibility Prompt Generator will give you a first draft. A tool is only as useful as the prompts you put in it.
- Check the engines your customers use. If your buyers are in Microsoft-heavy businesses, Copilot matters. If they're developers, Claude and Perplexity do.
- Trial before you commit. Profound, Otterly.AI, Scrunch and SE Ranking offer free trials, AthenaHQ has a free plan, and Ahrefs lets you check any brand's AI visibility for free.
- Connect it to traffic. Mentions only matter if they lead somewhere. Set up an AI traffic segment in GA4 with our GA4 AI traffic regex generator so you can see the visits behind the visibility.
- Check you can be crawled. No tool can fix a site AI crawlers can't read. Our study of FTSE 100 robots.txt files shows how often that's left to chance.
If you'd rather have someone run the analysis for you, our LLM Visibility Audit maps where your brand appears across the main AI engines, who gets cited instead, and what to change.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best AI visibility tool?
On our scoring, Profound is the best all-round AI visibility tool: it tracks up to nine AI engines, analyses citations and AI traffic, and includes agents and an MCP server to act on the data. It's sold on custom Enterprise contracts after a free trial, so smaller teams usually start with Ahrefs, Otterly.AI or Peec AI.
What is the best free AI visibility tool?
AthenaHQ has a free plan covering five engines with a monthly credit allowance, Profound offers a free seven-day trial, and Ahrefs lets you check any brand's AI visibility for free. For ongoing tracking you'll need a paid plan; Otterly.AI is the cheapest at $29 a month.
Is Ahrefs Brand Radar good for AI visibility tracking?
It's good for top-level tracking: which sites AI answers cite in your market, how your brand compares with competitors, and AI traffic to your pages. Its depth is behind AI-native tools such as Profound, but every paid Ahrefs plan includes some AI prompt tracking, which makes it a cost-efficient first step if you also need SEO data.
How much do AI visibility tools cost?
Entry plans ranged from $29 a month (Otterly.AI) to $295 a month (AthenaHQ) on 2 November 2026. SEO suites that include AI tracking start at £95 a month (SE Ranking) and £99 a month (Ahrefs). Profound and Brandlight quote custom prices for enterprise contracts.
How many prompts should I track?
Start with 20 to 50 prompts that reflect how buyers ask about your category, your competitors and your brand, and track them daily on the engines your customers use. Add more once you know which prompts move. Tracking hundreds of loosely related prompts makes the data noisier, not more useful.
Can AI visibility tools show traffic from ChatGPT?
Some can. Profound, Otterly.AI, Scrunch, Obsero and Ahrefs report AI crawler visits or AI referral traffic, and AthenaHQ connects to GA4. You can also measure AI referrals yourself in GA4 with a custom channel or segment.
Sources
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- Ahrefs Brand Radar ahrefs.com
- AthenaHQ athenahq.ai
- Otterly.AI otterly.ai
- Scrunch scrunch.com
- SE Ranking seranking.com
- Peec AI peec.ai
- Obsero obsero.ai
- Semrush semrush.com
- Brandlight brandlight.ai
- MCP server docs.tryprofound.com
- G2 g2.com
- Ahrefs pricing ahrefs.com
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- completed in April 2026 pulse2.com
- Semrush pricing semrush.com
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- June 2026 sitecore.com
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