Ahrefs Brand Radar review: what the dashboard shows, and the catch for startups

Most AI visibility trackers start empty: you add prompts and wait for data. Brand Radar is different. Ahrefs has already asked AI engines hundreds of millions of questions, so you can type in any brand and see its AI visibility immediately.

The AI Visibility Index vs Custom Prompts

Custom Prompts launched in January 2026. Before that, Brand Radar was index-only, which is why older reviews describe it as research rather than tracking.

Where the 481 million prompts come from

The index is built from Ahrefs' keyword database. Real Google searches are expanded into questions using People Also Ask and related "fanout" queries, then each question is run in the web version of each AI engine, with no personalization, and the answers are stored. As of October 2026, Ahrefs lists about 273 million AI Overview prompts, 94 million for AI Mode, and around 28–29 million each for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot.

There's also a second, search-query-based index for Google's AI surfaces. It tracks which Google keywords trigger an AI Overview or AI Mode answer, and whether you appear in it.

The index has grown fast, from about 150 million prompts in early lessons to 481 million+ now, so reviews quote figures anywhere in between.

Here's what each report shows, based on Ahrefs' academy course and help center.

Setting up a report

Create a report with your brand, your competitors, an optional market or niche, a location, and how often custom prompts should run. Each brand can include name variants and URLs, so "Acme", "Acme HQ" and acme.com count together. Quickstart detects your brand and competitors from a domain.

Overview

The command center. It charts mentions, citations, impressions and AI share of voice across platforms over time, against your competitors. It also shows branded search demand, web visibility and video visibility. You can combine a brand with a topic (for example "toyota" plus "SUV"), or leave the brand blank to see the top brands in a niche. A Dataset filter switches between Ahrefs' index prompts, your tracked prompts, or both.

AI Responses

The actual answers, platform by platform. The useful filters are unbranded prompts, "Others only" (competitors mentioned and you absent), and mentioned but not cited. Ahrefs' own example found about 2,000 queries where Mailchimp's competitors were named and Mailchimp wasn't.

Topics

Groups AI answers into topics, so you can see which subjects AI links to your brand on each platform and where a competitor owns a topic you don't.

Cited Domains and Cited Pages

The sources AI engines cite for a brand or topic, per platform, down to individual pages. Filter by a domain such as reddit.com and exclude competitors to find citation gaps: pages that shape answers in your category but don't mention you. This is the most actionable report for outreach.

Search Queries

The search-query-based index: Google keywords that trigger an AI Overview or AI Mode answer, and whether you appear in it. It's the closest thing to classic SEO in Brand Radar.

Custom Prompts

Your own tracked prompts. A Generate button suggests prompts from competitor comparisons, pricing pages, People Also Ask and forum threads. You can see the fanout queries behind each prompt, tag prompts by topic or funnel stage, and set the refresh rate per platform. First data arrives within about 24 hours.

YouTube, Reddit and TikTok (beta)

YouTube finds mentions in titles, descriptions, transcripts and thumbnails, weighted by views. Reddit lists threads that rank in Google and mention you, with a flag for threads that are cited in AI answers. TikTok is coming. These are free for paid Ahrefs plans during the beta, and Ahrefs says they'll become a paid add-on.

Search demand, web visibility and AI traffic

Branded search volume over time, pages ranking in Google that mention you, and, through Ahrefs' Web Analytics and Bot Analytics, which pages AI assistants send visitors to and which pages AI crawlers fetch.

Exports and integrations

CSV exports, Report Builder widgets, a Looker Studio connector, an MCP server, and an API with 22 Brand Radar endpoints covering mentions, citations, impressions, share of voice, AI responses, topics and cited pages. Ahrefs says custom-prompt data is free to pull through the API.

Three things are worth knowing:

• Impressions favor big brands. Because they're built on search volume, a prompt tied to a high-volume keyword counts far more than a niche B2B question.
• Share of voice has two definitions. The help center calculates it from impressions. The product FAQ describes it as a share of responses. Ask which one your report uses before comparing numbers.
• Spikes aren't always real. Ahrefs notes that sudden jumps in mentions are often caused by new prompts being added to its library, not by AI answers changing. Look for the notes on the chart.

For a plain-English introduction to mentions, citations and share of voice, read what AI search visibility is.

Ahrefs shows prices in your local currency. These are the US dollar prices from ahrefs.com/brand-radar, checked on October 15, 2026.

Paid Ahrefs plans include a small custom-prompt allowance: 150 checks a month on Lite (about 5 daily prompts on one platform), 300 on Standard and 600 on Advanced. Ahrefs' pricing FAQ says Brand Radar is also sold standalone, without a paid Ahrefs plan.

What a "check" is, and what a startup setup costs

One check is one prompt, run on one platform, in one location, once. Claude counts as 8 checks per run. Here's a startup-sized example (our arithmetic, from the prices above):

• 25 buyer prompts on 4 engines, daily: 25 × 4 × 30 = 3,000 checks a month. That's over the Basic package, so you'd need Growth at $100/month.
• Add Claude daily for the same 25 prompts: 25 × 8 × 30 = 6,000 more checks, 9,000 in total. That's about $130/month on Growth with overage.
• Switch to weekly runs and the same setup drops to roughly a quarter of the checks.

Is there a free version?

Partly. Ahrefs has a free AI Visibility Checker that previews a brand's mentions, top topics and cited domains, and a free public AI Visibility Index leaderboard. Paid Ahrefs plans also include the small custom-prompt allowance above.

This is the part most reviews miss, and Ahrefs is upfront about it. Its FAQ says the index "may have limited coverage for brands with little or no search volume", and that it's "best once your brand already appears in AI search".

There are three reasons a young company can look invisible in Brand Radar even when buyers are discovering it through AI:

1. The index is built from Google search demand. If few people search for your category's long-tail questions, those prompts may not be in the index at all.
2. Real buyers ask chat-style questions. "What's the best SOC 2 tool for a 20-person startup that already uses Vanta for HR?" isn't the kind of prompt that comes out of a keyword database.
3. Impressions are weighted by search volume, so niche B2B prompts barely register even when you appear in them.

One competitor's test found Brand Radar reported far fewer ChatGPT mentions of its own brand than a manual check. That's a single test by an interested party, but it fits Ahrefs' own warning.

How to validate for free before you buy

1. Run a free scan on your buyers' questions. Ours checks 3 buyer prompts and 1 brand prompt across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and shows who's named instead of you.
2. Look yourself up in Ahrefs' free AI Visibility Checker. If the index shows almost nothing but the scan shows you in some answers, the index doesn't cover your niche well yet.
3. If you already pay for Ahrefs, use the included custom-prompt checks for your 5 most important questions.
4. Only then decide whether you need the index (category research), custom prompts (tracking), or a dedicated tracker.

If you'd like help interpreting the results, book a free 30-minute strategy call. We'll tell you which approach fits your stage. More context for founders is in AI visibility for startups.

We read nine third-party reviews, eight of them written by competing tools or agencies, plus Ahrefs' own documentation.

Pros

• Fits into Ahrefs. No new vendor, login or security review if your team already uses Ahrefs (5 of 9).
• Instant research on any brand. The index needs no setup, which is perfect for competitor and category analysis (4 of 9).
• Excellent citation analysis. Cited domains and pages, with filters to find gaps (3 of 9).
• Both Google AI surfaces plus Copilot, which some trackers lack.
• Flexible refresh for custom prompts, set per platform.
• Strong data access: API, MCP, Looker Studio and CSV exports.

Cons

• Costs stack up across indexes, checks, platforms and locations (6 of 9).
• Measurement only. It shows the gaps; your team does the fixing (5 of 9).
• Index prompts come from search data, which misses chat-style questions and under-represents young or niche brands (4 of 9, and confirmed by Ahrefs).
• Monthly refresh on the chatbot indexes, which is slow for tracking the effect of changes.
• No native sentiment or answer-position metric in the core reports.
• Confusing pricing, with checks, indexes and regional currencies.

Several pages ranking for "Ahrefs Brand Radar" are out of date. As of October 2026:

• "You need an Ahrefs plan." Ahrefs' pricing FAQ says Brand Radar is sold standalone.
• "It doesn't track Claude." True for the index, but Claude is available in Custom Prompts (at 8 checks per run).
• "It only covers 3 platforms." The index covers 6.
• "No AI crawler data." Ahrefs' Bot Analytics shows AI crawler visits, free during its beta.
• "It's free in beta." Only the YouTube, Reddit and TikTok reports are free in beta. The AI indexes are paid.
• "199 million prompts." The index is 481 million+ as of October 2026.

Profound vs Ahrefs Brand Radar

Brand Radar is a research engine: instant data on any brand from a giant index. Profound is a monitoring platform: your own prompts, run daily across up to 9 engines, with enterprise pricing. Teams with big budgets sometimes use both.

Peec AI or Otterly vs Brand Radar

Peec and Otterly track the prompts you choose every day, so they suit startups whose buyers ask long-tail questions the index may not cover. Brand Radar wins on breadth, letting you see the whole category, and for teams already paying for Ahrefs.

For a side-by-side of every major tool, see the best AI visibility tools.

A strong fit:

• SEO and content teams already on Ahrefs.
• Agencies researching a client's category or pitching prospects.
• Established brands with meaningful search demand.
• Anyone mining citation gaps: the pages that shape AI answers in a category.

A weaker fit:

• Early-stage startups with little search demand, who should validate with their own prompts first.
• Teams that need daily monitoring of a specific prompt set across many engines, which a dedicated tracker does more simply.

Measuring isn't fixing

Whatever tool you use, the work is the same: be clearly described on your own site, and get mentioned on the pages AI cites. Our guides on generative engine optimization and how to rank in ChatGPT cover it step by step. If you'd rather have it done for you, our done-for-you audit turns your results into a prioritized fix plan.