Best AI Visibility Tools: 12 AI Rank Trackers Compared by Engine and Cost

AI visibility tools run fixed prompts through AI engines such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity. They record whether your brand is mentioned or cited. The best picks in 2026 depend on budget. ZipTie and Otterly.AI start under $30 a month. SE Visible and ZipTie collect an AI answer for about 1 cent or less. LLMrefs covers 9 engines for $79. Semrush and Ahrefs suit teams already in those suites, and Profound or Scrunch suit enterprises.

This guide compares 12 AI visibility tools and AI rank trackers on engine coverage, prompt limits and cost per answer. We checked every price and engine list on the vendor's pricing page on October 30, 2026. This compares published plan data; it is not a hands on accuracy test. We sell no tracker and use no affiliate links.

What are AI visibility tools?

AI visibility tools measure how often AI assistants name your brand, link to your pages and recommend you over competitors for the questions your buyers ask. They are the AI search version of a rank tracker. A classic rank tracker records a position for a keyword. An AI visibility tool records an answer for a prompt.

Most trackers report some or all of these 6 metrics, and each vendor calculates them slightly differently:

• Mention rate: the share of AI answers that name your brand.
• Citation rate: the share of answers that link to one of your URLs as a source.
• Share of voice: your mentions divided by all brand mentions in the answers, across you and the competitors you track.
• Position: where your brand appears in a list style answer, for example third of five.
• Sentiment: whether the answer describes your brand positively, neutrally or negatively.
• Cited sources: the domains and pages the engine used, such as review sites, Reddit threads, YouTube videos and listicles.

Cited sources matter most for growth, because they show which third party pages shape answers in your niche. The wider practice of earning those mentions is covered in our answer engine optimization guide.

How do AI visibility trackers work?

AI visibility trackers send the same prompts to each AI engine on a schedule, store every answer, and parse it for brand names, links and sentiment. In practice, tracking follows 4 steps:

1. Build a prompt set. You enter prompts or import them from keywords. Ahrefs Brand Radar also offers a large prebuilt prompt index.
2. Run the prompts. The tool queries each engine daily or weekly. Some tools scrape the public chat interface, and others call the model API. SE Visible, for example, lists its 5 core engines under web scraping and its API models separately.
3. Parse the answers. The tool detects your brand, your competitors, your URLs and the cited sources.
4. Report trends. Dashboards show mention rate, share of voice and sources over time.

Every tracker samples prompts you chose, so the quality of your prompt set decides the quality of your data.

What are the best AI visibility tools in 2026?

The 12 AI visibility tools below cover every budget from free to enterprise. Engine needs and prompt volume decide the right pick more than brand name does. Prices are the cheapest self serve plan shown on each vendor's pricing page on October 30, 2026. The order is not a ranking; each tool carries the label for the job it does best.

1. Otterly.AI: best low cost starting point

Otterly.AI Lite costs $29 per month for 15 prompts tracked daily across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Google AI Mode and Gemini are $9 per month add ons, and Claude is a $29 add on. Standard costs $189 for 100 prompts.

2. SE Visible: lowest cost per AI answer

SE Visible from SE Ranking starts at $89 per month, or $71 with the 20% annual discount. Basic tracks 75 prompts daily on 5 engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini and Copilot. The vendor states this as about 11,250 AI answers a month. Perplexity is not on Basic, and Claude is marked "Soon".

3. LLMrefs: widest engine list at a low price

LLMrefs sells one plan at $79 per month for 500 prompts. It covers 9 engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Copilot and Meta AI. Reports refresh weekly, not daily.

4. Peec AI: best for competitor benchmarking

Peec AI Starter costs $95 per month for 50 prompts tracked daily on 3 models of your choice. The model list includes ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI. Pro costs $245 for 150 prompts, and Advanced costs $495 for 350 prompts. Annual billing saves 15%. Perplexity and extra models are paid add ons.

5. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit: best for Semrush users

The Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit costs $99 per month per domain. The pricing page shows that price with annual billing. It tracks 25 custom prompts daily and reports mentions from ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity. Extra domains cost $99 each, 50 extra prompts cost $60 per month, and there is no free trial.

6. Ahrefs Brand Radar: best for market wide research

Ahrefs Brand Radar has 2 parts. The prebuilt AI index shows brand mentions across a large database of prompts and starts at $199 per month for selected platforms, or $699 for all platforms. Custom prompt tracking starts at $50 per month for 2,500 checks, with overage at $0.02 per check. A Claude update costs 8 checks. Engines include Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Claude.

7. Writesonic: best for teams that also write content

Writesonic Starter costs $79 per month billed annually. The plan lists 50 prompts and 50 answers tracked daily. Its engines are ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. All 9 AI platforms appear only on the custom Enterprise plan. It suits teams that want tracking and article drafting in one subscription.

8. Rankscale: best for flexible credit budgets

Rankscale Pro costs $99 per month for 1,200 credits. A ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or AI Mode answer costs 0.25 credits, so 1,200 credits buy about 4,800 answers. A Claude answer costs 2 credits. An Essentials plan starts at $17 per month on yearly billing for 120 credits.

9. AthenaHQ: best free tier and widest model list

AthenaHQ offers a free Essential plan with 300 credits across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot. Starter costs $295 per month for 3,600 credits, where 1 credit equals 1 AI response, across 11 models including Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral.

10. Scrunch: best for mid market brands that want optimization guidance

Scrunch Starter costs $300 per month month to month, or $250 per month billed annually. It includes 350 custom prompts, 1,000 industry prompts, 3 personas, 5 page audits and 3 users. Coverage spans ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews and Meta AI. A 7 day trial needs no credit card.

11. ZipTie: best pay per check pricing

ZipTie charges per check instead of per plan: $0.01 per prompt per engine. The rate drops to $0.0087 per check on all 7 engines. Its Starter preset begins at $25.65 per month. The 7 engines are ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Bing AI Overview. Each prompt runs daily, weekly or every 30 days, and annual billing saves 20%. A 7 day trial covers 25 daily prompts on 3 engines with no card.

12. Profound: best for enterprise programs

Profound publishes no self serve price. Its free trial tracks 50 prompts daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Enterprise pricing is custom and covers up to 9 answer engines, including Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Copilot, Claude and DeepSeek, plus SSO and CSV or JSON exports.

Which AI engines does each tool track?

Only 2 of the 12 tools include all 9 major AI engines without add ons: LLMrefs at $79 and AthenaHQ Starter at $295. The rest cover 3 to 7 of these 9 engines, and Claude, Grok and Meta AI are the engines most often missing or sold as extras. The table shows coverage on the cheapest paid plan, or the free trial for Profound, so "No" can mean the engine sits on a higher tier.

"Pick 3" means Peec Starter tracks any 3 of its listed models. "Google AI" means the Semrush pricing page reports Google's AI answers without splitting AI Overviews from AI Mode. "No" for Grok and Meta AI means the vendor does not list that engine on its pricing page.

Match coverage to where your buyers search. A US B2B software brand needs ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and Perplexity at minimum. A consumer brand adds Gemini and Copilot. Claude and Grok matter mostly for technical and developer audiences.

How much do AI visibility tools cost?

AI visibility tools cost $0 to $300 per month on entry plans, and enterprise contracts such as Profound are priced on request. Sticker price misleads, because plans differ in prompts, engines and frequency. The fairer comparison is cost per tracked prompt and cost per AI answer collected.

We calculated both figures from each vendor's published plan. Answers a month equals prompts multiplied by engines multiplied by 30 daily runs, unless the vendor states its own answer volume. These are our calculations from published plans, not vendor claims.

Three findings stand out. SE Visible and ZipTie collect an AI answer for about 1 cent or less, the lowest of the tools that publish an answer volume or check price. Semrush costs the most per prompt at $3.96, so its value lies in the connection to Semrush SEO data rather than raw tracking volume. LLMrefs tracks 500 prompts for $79, but on a weekly schedule, so its low cost per prompt partly reflects fewer runs.

Budget a tracker as a measurement cost, not a growth cost. A $99 tool shows where you are missing. The placements that change the answers cost separately, for example a brand mention in a listicle or review at $286 per placement.

Are there free AI visibility tools?

Yes, 3 free options exist: the Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker, the HubSpot AI Search Grader and the AthenaHQ Essential plan. Each gives a snapshot or a small credit allowance rather than ongoing tracking.

• Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker: free with no signup. It reports AI mentions across 6 engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. The preview shows the top 5 topics, cited domains and cited pages.
• HubSpot AI Search Grader: a free one time check across OpenAI, Perplexity and Gemini that scores sentiment, presence, recognition, share of voice and competition out of 100. Ongoing tracking moves to HubSpot AEO at $50 per month.
• AthenaHQ Essential: a free plan with 300 credits, which equals 300 AI responses, across 5 engines.

Free trials add a fourth route. Scrunch, Profound, ZipTie and LLMrefs each offer 7 days, SE Visible offers 10, and Writesonic and Otterly.AI also offer trials. Run your real prompt set during a trial, not the demo prompts, to judge whether the data matches what you see by hand.

A spreadsheet works too: run 30 to 50 prompts by hand each month with the manual protocol in our AEO guide.

How do you choose an AI visibility tool?

Choose an AI visibility tool by matching 3 factors: your buyers' engines, your prompt count and the suites you already pay for. The table maps 7 common situations to a shortlist.

Before you buy, check these 7 points on the vendor's pricing page and in the trial:

1. Confirm engine coverage on your plan, not on the top tier.
2. Count prompts after add ons, because extra engines often eat into credits.
3. Check frequency: daily, weekly or on demand.
4. Check cited source reporting at the URL level, not only the domain level.
5. Check competitor tracking limits, for example 5 or 10 brands.
6. Check location and language options for each market you sell in.
7. Check exports: CSV, API or Looker Studio, so the data reaches your reports.

How many prompts should you track?

We recommend 30 to 100 prompts for a single brand site, with the exact count set by your topics and buyer questions rather than a vendor tier. A simple formula keeps the set honest: products or services, multiplied by the question types buyers ask, multiplied by 2 to 3 phrasings each.

Here is a worked example with sample numbers, not client data. A company sells 4 services. Buyers ask 4 question types about each: definitions, "best X for Y" comparisons, pricing and problem questions. Two phrasings per question give 4 × 4 × 2 = 32 prompts. Add 10 brand prompts, such as "is [brand] legit" and "[brand] vs [competitor]", for 42 in total.

That set fits SE Visible Basic (75 prompts) or Peec Starter (50 prompts) with room to grow. It does not fit Otterly Lite (15 prompts) or the Semrush toolkit base (25 prompts) without add ons. Size the prompt set first, then pick the plan.

What can AI visibility tools not do?

AI visibility tools measure exposure; they do not earn citations, see real user prompts or guarantee results. Know these 3 limits before you report the numbers to a client or a manager:

• They sample. Answers change with wording, location, login state and chat history, and no tracker sees real user prompts. A 40% mention rate means 40% of the tool's runs, not 40% of real conversations.
• They disagree. Two tools can show different share of voice for the same brand, because vendors use different prompts, engines and parsing rules. Compare trends inside one tool, not numbers across tools.
• They do not change answers. A dashboard shows the gap. Content, mentions and links close it.

Any vendor or agency that promises a guaranteed AI citation is overselling. Our brand mentions service guarantees Google indexing and lifetime placement, not a citation, because no one controls what a model writes.

What should you do with AI visibility data?

Turn the cited sources report into a target list: the pages AI engines quote in your niche are the pages to win. This step is where most teams stop, and it is the step that moves share of voice.

Export the top 50 cited URLs for your priority prompts each month. Group them by source type, then act on each group:

Run the same prompts again 30 and 60 days after new placements go live, and compare mention rate in the same tool. Keep the prompt set fixed while you measure, otherwise the trend reflects your edits instead of your progress. Report AI visibility next to the classic metrics in your SEO KPIs, so stakeholders see both channels in one view.

Frequently asked questions