Best AI visibility tools in 2026: Profound, Peec AI, Otterly, Ahrefs and more compared

Peec shows euro prices in Europe (€85, or €70 annual). Cost per prompt is the entry price divided by included prompts. It's a rough guide only, because engine counts differ.

Which engines are really included?

This is where costs hide. "Tracks 7 engines" often means 4 included and 3 sold separately.

† Peec's pricing table lists Perplexity under Enterprise, while another part of the same page still lists it as an add-on. Profound's free trial includes ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews.

You can check any single engine for free with our ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overview and AI Mode checkers.

Every tool in this category works the same basic way. It sends a fixed set of prompts to AI engines on a schedule, stores the answers, and turns them into a few core metrics:

• Mentions or visibility: the share of answers that name your brand.
• Position: where you appear when the answer is a list.
• Citations: whether the answer links to your site, and which other sites it cites.
• Share of voice: your mentions compared with competitors in the same answers.
• Sentiment: whether you're described positively, neutrally or negatively.

Our guide to what AI search visibility is explains each one with a worked example.

Buyer prompts vs brand prompts

The prompts matter more than the dashboard. "What is Acme?" only tells you whether AI knows you. "What's the best invoicing tool for a design agency?" tells you whether AI recommends you to buyers who've never heard of you. Track mostly buyer-style prompts that don't name your brand, and keep a few brand prompts to check how you're described.

Your prompts vs an index

Most tools (Otterly, Peec, Profound, Scrunch) track prompts you write. Ahrefs Brand Radar also offers a pre-built index of hundreds of millions of prompts generated from search data. That's great for research, but Ahrefs says it covers brands with little search demand poorly, which includes most startups.

Profound: enterprise depth, no self-serve plan

Profound is the best-funded company in the category, having raised a $180M Series D at a $1.8B valuation in September 2026. It covers up to 9 engines daily and adds prompt-volume data, AI crawler analytics, ChatGPT Shopping tracking and AI agents that act on the findings. In September 2026 it removed its $99 and $399 plans, so it's now a free 7-day trial followed by custom Enterprise pricing. Best for: enterprise brands with a team to act on the data. Watch out: many comparison pages still quote the old $99 price. Read our Profound review.

Peec AI: self-serve, clean dashboard

Peec is a Berlin startup with self-serve plans from $95/month ($80 billed annually; €85/€70 in Europe) for 50 prompts on 3 engines of your choice, daily, with unlimited users. Its standout is source analysis, showing which domains and URLs feed the answers and where competitors are cited and you aren't. Best for: mid-market teams and agencies. Watch out: only 3 engines below Enterprise, and Claude is Enterprise-only. Read our Peec AI review.

Otterly.AI: the cheapest credible tracker

From $29/month for 15 prompts, run daily on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot. Gemini, AI Mode and Claude are add-ons that cost $9–$439/month depending on plan. It includes a GEO audit, crawler analytics on higher plans, and published formulas for every metric. Best for: small teams that know which questions to track. Watch out: 15 prompts can only show large changes. Read our Otterly.AI review.

Ahrefs Brand Radar: research at index scale

Search any brand across 481M+ prompts on 6 engines, with no setup, plus custom prompts (Claude included) since January 2026. The index starts at $199/month (including 2,500 custom-prompt checks) or $699 for all models, and custom-prompt packages start at $50/month. It can be bought standalone. Best for: Ahrefs users and category research. Watch out: the index is re-tested monthly and is thin for brands with little search demand. Read our Ahrefs Brand Radar review.

Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

$99/month per domain for 25 tracked prompts (50 more cost $60/month), plus prompt research and an AI search site audit. There's no free trial. Prompt tracking refreshes daily and the brand performance report weekly. Semrush's help text names ChatGPT and Google AI Mode, and third parties list more engines, so confirm coverage in the app. Best for: teams already on Semrush.

Scrunch

$300/month ($250 billed annually) for 350 custom prompts on 7 engines, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, both Google AI surfaces and Meta AI, with no per-engine add-ons. A 7-day trial needs no card. Many reviews still quote an older $250 "Core" plan. Best for: teams that want broad engine coverage without add-on math.

AthenaHQ

A free tier (300 credits on 5 engines) and a $295/month Starter plan with 3,600 credits on 11 models, where one credit is one AI response. Best for: teams that want many engines and are comfortable with credit-based pricing.

SE Visible (SE Ranking)

SE Visible's pricing lists plans from $99/month for 200 prompts on 5 engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode, Perplexity and AI Overviews), with a 10-day trial and 20% off annual billing. It says Claude is coming soon. Best for: price-conscious teams that want several engines included.

Budget options worth a look

LLMrefs, Rankscale, ZipTie and Nightwatch all appear on several lists with entry prices around $20–80/month. We couldn't verify their current plans on official pages, so check them directly.

Profound vs Peec AI

The most common head-to-head. Peec is the self-serve tool you can set up this afternoon from published prices. Profound is the enterprise platform with more engines and data, bought through sales. If you're asking which one to choose, you're probably a Peec-sized buyer.

Many "best tools" pages are out of date. The main changes this year:

• January: Ahrefs launched custom prompt tracking in Brand Radar and added YouTube and Reddit tracking.
• February: Profound raised a $96M Series C at a $1B valuation.
• Mid-2026: Otterly added an API, an MCP server, a Claude add-on and Agent Analytics. Peec added brand perception, ChatGPT ads tracking and AI shopping.
• September: Profound raised a $180M Series D and removed its $99 and $399 plans.
• Throughout the year: Peec changed its pricing and model coverage several times, and now shows prices in euros.

If a comparison page quotes Profound at $99, Otterly at $989 or Scrunch "Core" at $250, it's out of date.

1. Which engines are included in this price, and which are add-ons or Enterprise-only?
2. How many prompts do I get, and is that per engine or across all engines?
3. Can I write and edit my own prompts, or only use suggested ones?
4. How often does each prompt run, and how many times per run?
5. Do you collect answers from the real chat interface or the API? Interface answers are closer to what buyers see.
6. Which location, language and login state are the prompts run in?
7. Can I read the full answer text and cited sources behind every number?
8. How long is history kept, and can I export it (CSV, API, Looker Studio)?
9. How many competitors can I track, and how is share of voice calculated?
10. What happens when I go over my limit: overage charges, paused tracking, or a forced upgrade?

The answers explain most of the price differences between tools.

Ask the same question twice and an AI engine can name different brands. Search results shift daily, models get updated, and answers are generated probabilistically. Every tool deals with the same noise. The good ones are open about it.

• Small prompt sets are coarse. With 15 prompts, one prompt changing moves your mention rate by about 7 points. Our Otterly review works through what that means for confidence.
• Daily runs reduce noise but don't add breadth. Running the same 15 prompts every day is still only 15 questions.
• Freeze your prompt set for at least a month, or 60–90 days for a pilot, so the trend means something.
• Judge trends, not single days. A one-day drop is usually noise. A month-long slide is a signal.
• Read the answers. The text and sources tell you why you're missing, and no score can.

Our methodology page shows exactly how our own scan handles this, including what we leave out of the score.

You don't need an enterprise platform to start. Here's the order we recommend:

1. Free baseline. Run our free scan across 6 AI surfaces. It's deliberately small (3 buyer prompts and 1 brand prompt), so treat it as a "are we in the game?" check, and see who's named instead of you. Compare it with the sample report.
2. Free fixes. Clarify your positioning, publish comparison and "alternatives" pages, and get listed on the sources AI cites. How to rank in ChatGPT walks through it.
3. Re-scan after 3–4 weeks.
4. Cheap ongoing tracking, once you're in some answers: Otterly Lite ($29, plus $9 add-ons if your buyers use Gemini or AI Mode), or Peec Starter if you need 50 prompts.
5. Upgrade only when the data drives decisions every week.

Do you need an AI visibility tracker yet?

Probably not if AI doesn't mention you anywhere today. A tracker will just chart a flat line at zero. Get into the answers first, then measure. When you're ready, you can join the waitlist for our AI Visibility Tracker: weekly runs on all 6 engines, built for startups.

Not sure which path fits? Book a free 30-minute strategy call. We'll go through your scan and tell you honestly whether to buy a tool, fix things first, or both.

Every tool here measures. None of them, on its own, gets you recommended. The work that moves the numbers is the same whichever tool you choose:

• Make it obvious what you are, with one plain sentence naming your category and audience, used everywhere.
• Publish pages AI can quote: pricing, comparisons, "X vs Y" and "alternatives to X".
• Get mentioned where AI looks: the listicles, review sites, directories and community threads your tool shows being cited.
• Fix technical blockers, such as AI crawlers blocked in robots.txt or content that only renders with JavaScript.

Our guide to generative engine optimization covers each step. If you'd rather have it done for you, our done-for-you audit builds a buyer prompt set, analyzes competitors and cited sources, and hands you a prioritized fix plan. More context for founders is in AI visibility for startups.