Search no longer ends at a list of blue links. A growing share of buyer research now happens inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot — answer engines that summarize the web and name a handful of brands instead of returning ten ranked pages. If your company isn't one of the brands they cite, you're invisible to that traffic, and your normal rank tracker won't tell you. That's the job a new category of AI visibility tracking tools exists to do: monitor which prompts mention you, which competitors get named instead, and which sources the models pull from.
We've been testing this category since the first tools shipped, and the honest summary is that it's young, the pricing is inconsistent, and the data is directional rather than precise. This guide compares six tools we'd actually consider in 2026 — on real pricing, real engine coverage, and who each one genuinely fits.
The short version
If you want the fastest answer: Otterly AI is the easiest affordable entry point, Peec AI is the best mid-market pick for agencies and European teams, Profound is the enterprise option with the deepest analytics (and the most painful buying process), and if you already pay for Ahrefs or Semrush, their bolt-on AI modules may be good enough to avoid a second subscription entirely.
What these tools actually measure
Every tool in this category works roughly the same way. You give it a set of prompts (the questions a buyer might type, like "best CRM for a small law firm"), it runs those prompts against the AI engines on a schedule, and it records whether your brand was mentioned, in what position, with what sentiment, and which web pages the model cited. The headline number most tools sell is a "share of voice" or "visibility score."
Two things to understand before you pay anyone:
- Prompt count is the real unit of pricing. Plans are gated by how many prompts you can track, not by features. A 15-prompt plan sounds cheap until you realize a serious campaign needs 100–300 prompts to be statistically meaningful.
- The data is noisy. LLMs are non-deterministic — ask the same question twice and you can get different brands named. Good tools sample repeatedly and report trends; treat any single-day reading with suspicion.
The six tools compared
| Tool | Entry price (2026) | Engines tracked | Best for | Key limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly AI | $29/mo (15 prompts) | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Copilot | Solo founders, freelancers, small agencies | Low prompt counts; extra engines cost more |
| Peec AI | €85/mo (50 prompts) | 3 of 9 on base plans; add-ons €20–30 each | Agencies & European teams, competitor benchmarking | Base plans locked to 3 engines; priced in EUR |
| Profound | Sales-led, four figures/mo | 10+ on Enterprise (Claude, Gemini, Grok, etc.) | Enterprise brands, multi-client agencies | No free trial, no self-serve, 1–3 weeks to data |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | $129/mo base + AI indexes | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot | Teams already on Ahrefs for SEO | All-in cost often $800–1,150/mo |
| Semrush (AI Toolkit / One) | $99/mo add-on; $199/mo One Starter | 5+ platforms | Teams already on Semrush | AEO depth trails dedicated tools |
| AIclicks / LLMrefs | Free tier / ~$49/mo | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok, AIO | Testing the category on a budget | Thinner analytics & reporting |
Otterly AI — the affordable entry point
Otterly AI is where most people should start if they've never tracked AI visibility before. The Lite plan is $29/month for 15 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Microsoft Copilot. Stepping up, the Standard plan is $189/month for 100 prompts and Premium is $489/month for 400 prompts, with a 15% discount for annual billing and a free trial to start.
In our use, Otterly's strength is that it's genuinely simple — you can be tracking real prompts within an hour, and it pairs monitoring with content recommendations. The catch is the steep jump from 15 to 100 prompts: the $29 tier is really a "see if this matters to us" plan, not a working one. Once you're serious you're at $189+, which puts it in the same conversation as the mid-market tools below.
Peec AI — the agency and mid-market pick
Peec AI has become a default for marketing teams and agencies, especially in Europe. Pricing is in euros: Starter is €85/month (50 prompts, 3 models, 1 project), Pro is €205/month (150 prompts, 2 projects) and Advanced is €425/month (350 prompts, 5 projects). Every tier includes unlimited user seats, daily tracking and a 7-day free trial.
What we like is the competitor benchmarking and the unlimited seats — useful when a whole client team wants read access. The honest limitation: Peec advertises nine engines, but the standard plans are locked to three, and adding Claude, Gemini or others costs roughly €20–30 each per month. Full engine coverage is reserved for a custom Enterprise tier. Budget for the add-ons before you compare its headline price to dollar-priced rivals.
Profound — enterprise depth, painful buying
Profound is the most capable platform here and the one enterprise teams gravitate to, with white-label dashboards, sentiment analysis, ChatGPT Shopping visibility and competitive benchmarking across 10+ engines including Claude, Gemini, Grok, Meta AI and DeepSeek. It also has the most confusing pricing in the category. Public references point in different directions — self-serve mentions of a $99 starter and $399 "Growth" plan coexist with sales pages quoting Lite around $499/month and Enterprise commonly landing in the $2,000–$5,000+/month range. There is no free trial, no free tier, and no self-serve signup; every plan is sales-led, and we've seen time-to-first-usable-data run one to three weeks.
That's the trade-off: if you're an enterprise brand or an agency managing many clients and you need the deepest, most defensible data, Profound earns its keep. If you're a small team that wants to start tracking this afternoon, it's the wrong tool — you'll spend more time on sales calls than on insights.
Ahrefs Brand Radar & Semrush — the "you may already own it" options
If you already pay for a major SEO suite, check what's bundled before buying anything dedicated. Ahrefs Brand Radar tracks brand mentions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot with 2,500 prompt checks per month by default — but it requires an active Ahrefs subscription (Lite from $129/month) plus per-platform AI indexes at $199/month each or $699/month bundled. Independent reviews put the realistic all-in cost between roughly $828 and $1,148/month, which is the catch: it's only economical if you were paying for Ahrefs anyway.
Semrush takes a cleaner approach. Its AI Visibility Toolkit is a $99/month add-on, and Semrush One bundles AI visibility with SEO from $199/month (Starter: 50 tracked prompts, 500 keywords), $299/month (Pro+: 100 prompts, 1,500 keywords) and $549/month (Advanced: 200 prompts, 5,000 keywords). For a team that wants AI visibility and traditional SEO in one login, this is the most sensible consolidation play — just know that a dedicated tool like Peec or Profound will go deeper on answer-engine analytics.
Budget and free tools — for testing the waters
If you just want to confirm whether AI search matters for your niche before spending real money, two options are worth a look. LLMrefs has a genuinely free tier that tracks a single keyword across the major models and returns a weekly High/Medium/Low visibility score. AIclicks starts around $49/month and does prompt-level tracking — showing which exact questions trigger a mention and which sources get cited — across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok and AI Overviews. Neither has the polish or reporting depth of the paid leaders, but both are fine for a first read on the opportunity.
When This Is NOT the Right Choice
AI visibility tools are not for everyone, and we'd talk some readers out of buying one at all:
- If your buyers don't use AI search yet. For some local, offline, or relationship-driven businesses, AI answer engines drive almost no qualified traffic. Spend a free month with LLMrefs or AIclicks first; if your prompts return nothing meaningful, skip the category and put the money into channels that work for you.
- If you only need traditional rank tracking. If your goal is classic Google rankings, a dedicated SEO platform (or the rank tracker you already own) is cheaper and more accurate. Don't pay AI-visibility prices for keyword positions.
- If you can't act on the data. These tools tell you that you're under-cited; they don't fix it. Getting named by LLMs still comes down to authoritative content, structured data, third-party mentions and reviews. If you have no capacity to produce or earn that, you're buying a dashboard you can't move — wait until you can.
- If you're a one-person shop on a tight budget. Profound and Ahrefs Brand Radar are over-built and over-priced for you. Otterly's $29 tier or a free LLMrefs account is the honest starting point — graduate up only when the data justifies it.
Our recommendation
For most teams, start cheap and prove the channel: a free LLMrefs account or Otterly's $29 plan will tell you within a month whether AI search is worth chasing in your niche. If it is, agencies and serious mid-market teams should look hard at Peec AI for its benchmarking and unlimited seats (budgeting for engine add-ons), while enterprises that need depth and white-labeling — and can stomach a sales-led rollout — should evaluate Profound. And if you already live in Ahrefs or Semrush, trial their built-in AI modules before adding a sixth subscription to your stack. The category is improving fast, but the smart move in 2026 is to buy the smallest thing that answers your question, not the most impressive demo.