Best AI visibility tools in 2026, and the catch with each

The best AI visibility tools track how often ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews and other assistants name your brand. They differ most in price and coverage, and in how often and how they collect the answers they report. If you already pay for Semrush, Ahrefs or SE Ranking, start with its AI tracking. Of the dedicated trackers below, the cheapest paid plan is $29 a month. Every fact about a tool comes from the vendor's own website, checked between 19 and 21 September 2026.

One of the nine is Shruwd, the tool we are building. To keep that from tilting the list, every tool gets the same headings, and Shruwd's catch is listed like everyone else's. I didn't buy these plans and run them side by side. Where a line describes how a tool behaves, it's the vendor's own description.

How I chose and compared them

The other eight are among the tracking tools named most often by six of the top-ranking lists for "best AI visibility tools" and similar searches, and by Google's AI Overviews for them. Between them, the six lists name 38 different tools, and none appears on all six. I left out platforms whose main job is writing content.

For each tool I looked at the same things:

• What the cheapest paid plan costs, and whether there's a free option.
• Which AI assistants it covers on that plan.
• How often it runs your questions.
• How it collects the answers, where the vendor says.
• Whether it shows which AI crawlers visit your site.

How often it runs and how it collects the answers decide how far you can trust a number. The same question can get a different answer every time it's asked, and an answer fetched through an API isn't always what a person sees in the app. I went into why that matters in how to measure AI visibility.

The best AI visibility tools at a glance

"Not stated" means the vendor's pages I read didn't say when I checked. Prices are per month, as the vendors list them; several are lower if you pay yearly.

If you already pay for an SEO suite

1. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

Semrush's AI tracking, sold alongside its SEO tools.

• Price: from $99 a month per domain, with 25 prompts of your own tracked daily. The Semrush One bundles, which combine SEO and AI tracking, start at $199 a month.
• AI engines: "Mentions from ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, and Perplexity".
• How it runs: prompt tracking updates daily. Semrush says its answers are "captured from real requests and not via any APIs of LLMs", and prompt tracking supports desktop searches only.
• The catch: the price is per user as well as per domain. Semrush's help page: "Each user must have their own AI Visibility Toolkit subscription."
• AI crawler visits: not stated. Its AI Search Site Audit checks your site against "eight different AI crawlers (such as OAI-SearchBot)" for access problems.
• Best for: teams already working in Semrush every day.

2. Ahrefs Brand Radar

Two products under one name: an index of AI answers that Ahrefs collects itself, and tracking for prompts you choose.

• Price: tracking your own prompts starts with a $50-a-month package of 2,500 checks, which Ahrefs puts at about 80 prompts a day on one platform. The AI Visibility Index starts at $199 a month for selected platforms, or $699 for all of them.
• AI engines: the index covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. Custom prompts add Claude.
• How it runs: your own prompts run daily, weekly or monthly. The index is "re-tested monthly on a 90-day reporting window".
• The catch: the headline index measures Ahrefs' prompts, not yours. Brand Radar's page describes it as "454M+ prompts" built from real queries in Ahrefs' keyword database, so the questions your buyers ask may not be among them.
• AI crawler visits: Bot Analytics shows AI crawlers "in real time", free while in beta.
• Best for: comparing your visibility with competitors across a large sample, with no setup.

3. SE Visible, from SE Ranking

SE Ranking's standalone AI visibility tracker. SE Ranking's own SEO plans also include AI prompt tracking, 100 prompts a day on its $129 Core plan.

• Price: $99 a month for 200 prompts and 3 projects, with a 10-day free trial.
• AI engines: "ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode, Perplexity, AI Overview".
• How it runs: "Results are refreshed daily across all tracked prompts and AI platforms." SE Ranking says it collects them "using a browser and graphical user interface, not simulated answers or API-based results".
• The catch: each prompt runs once a day on each engine. The $99 plan's 200 prompts come to "~30,000 AI answers analyzed/month", one answer per prompt per engine per day, so a single day's number rests on a single answer to each question, and a week's on seven.
• AI crawler visits: not stated on the pages I read.
• Best for: broad daily coverage at a fixed price.

Dedicated trackers for small teams

4. Shruwd

It measures how often AI answers name you, and reports likely reasons you're missing as findings.

• Price: free, or $49 a month for 25 prompts, and $149 for 100 prompts across 3 brands. The free plan measures once, 10 prompts, and keeps reading your crawler logs.
• AI engines: Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT.
• How it runs: weekly, with each prompt asked three times on each engine. Every number comes with a range, and none is shown with fewer than ten answers behind it.
• The catch: two engines only, and weekly rather than daily. The ChatGPT answers come through OpenAI's API with web search switched on, not from the app a person uses, so they're a stand-in for what one person sees. The methodology page explains the trade-off. It's also new: sign-ups opened in September 2026, so there are no reviews yet.
• AI crawler visits: on every plan, the free one included, counting only hits verified against each crawler vendor's published IP ranges.
• Best for: small teams that want a range on every number and a likely reason when they're missing.

5. Otterly.AI

A dedicated AI search tracker, with the lowest paid price of the nine.

• Price: $29 a month for 15 prompts, $189 for 100, $489 for 400. There's a free trial.
• AI engines: "ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, MS Copilot" on every plan.
• How it runs: "Daily tracking frequency", on every plan.
• The catch: other engines cost extra. On the $29 plan, Google AI Mode and Gemini are $9 a month each and Claude is $29, so tracking all seven more than doubles the price.
• AI crawler visits: Agent Analytics separates AI bots from people, on the $189 and $489 plans.
• Best for: a small budget and a short list of questions.

6. HubSpot AEO

HubSpot's AI visibility tracker, sold on its own or as part of Marketing Hub.

• Price: $50 a month, or $45 a month billed yearly, for 25 prompts, "with no additional HubSpot subscription required". It's included with Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise. You can also track 25 prompts free.
• AI engines: ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
• How it runs: not stated.
• The catch: HubSpot labels it beta, and its product page doesn't say how often prompts run or how answers are collected.
• AI crawler visits: not stated on the pages I read.
• Best for: teams already in HubSpot. It gives "clear, prioritized recommendations".

7. Peec AI

A daily tracker with a wide choice of models.

• Price: $95 a month for 50 prompts, $245 for 150, $495 for 350, with unlimited users. Its site offers a free trial.
• AI engines: each self-serve plan covers three models you choose from ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Naver AI and Gemini. More cost from $35 a month.
• How it runs: daily, through what Peec calls "UI scraping technology to interact with AI platforms exactly as real users do". The result, in its words, is "the reality for a logged-out user". Its own docs suggest reading "trends over weeks rather than daily changes".
• The catch: three models on each self-serve plan, so covering all six adds to the price.
• AI crawler visits: connections to CDN and log providers on every plan.
• Best for: teams that want daily data and a choice of models. Shruwd's Peec AI comparison goes further.

For larger teams

8. Profound

The enterprise option, with up to 9 engines on its Enterprise plan.

• Price: for brands, Enterprise is "Custom", with a "Get a Demo" button. Agencies get a self-serve plan at "$99/month + add-ons".
• AI engines: up to 9 on Enterprise, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek and Anthropic Claude.
• How it runs: daily on Enterprise. Profound says it captures answers "directly from the browser".
• The catch: for a brand, the only fixed-price way in is the free Trial, which runs 10 prompts on ChatGPT once.
• AI crawler visits: Agent Analytics reads server logs, and the Trial includes it.
• Best for: larger teams tracking many engines, regions and languages. Shruwd's Profound comparison has the detail.

9. Scrunch

An enterprise-leaning tracker that also serves AI crawlers a version of your site built for them.

• Price: $250 a month for 125 prompts on its Core plan, charged per brand.
• AI engines: "ChatGPT Perplexity Google AIO Copilot" on Core; nine on Enterprise.
• How it runs: "daily for the first 14 days", then "a default 72-hour refresh cadence". Scrunch says it collects answers through "browser automation and official platform APIs".
• The catch: the 7-day trial needs a credit card and rolls into a paid plan unless you cancel. The crawler-serving feature, AXP, is on Enterprise only.
• AI crawler visits: "AI Agent / Bot Traffic" on Core, through CDN and hosting integrations.
• Best for: larger brands that want to shape what AI crawlers receive.

Free AI visibility tools

• Shruwd's free plan: one measurement of 10 prompts on both engines, plus ongoing crawler logs.
• Profound's Trial: 10 prompts on ChatGPT, run once, with Agent Analytics included.
• HubSpot AEO: "You can track 25 prompts in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini for free."
• HubSpot's AEO Grader: "A free, one-time diagnostic". HubSpot notes that its ChatGPT and Gemini results "pull from training data", and only Perplexity's come from live search.
• Amplitude's free AI Visibility report: covers "ChatGPT and Google AI Overview" among others.
• Free checkers from the suites: Ahrefs' AI visibility checker gives a "limited preview (top 5 results per section)", Semrush's can be used "three times per day for free, without registering", and SE Ranking's gives "5 free checks per day".
• Google's own data: Search Console's Generative AI performance report, and GA4's AI Assistant channel for visits from ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot.

A free check gives you a first look. It won't tell you whether a change you made moved the number, because that needs the same questions asked repeatedly over time.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best AI visibility tool?

It depends on what you already pay for and what you need to know. Semrush, Ahrefs and SE Ranking customers can start with their suite's AI tracking. Of the nine tools here, Otterly.AI has the lowest paid price, from $29 a month. For the most models, look at the enterprise plans: Peec AI's tracks up to 13, Profound's up to 9 and Scrunch's 9. Shruwd suits teams that want each number with its range and a likely reason when they're missing.

Are there free AI visibility tools?

Yes. HubSpot's AEO Grader, Amplitude's AI Visibility report and the free checkers from Ahrefs, Semrush and SE Ranking give one-off snapshots. HubSpot AEO lets you track 25 prompts free. Profound's Trial and Shruwd's free plan each measure 10 prompts once, and both include crawler logs. Google's Search Console and GA4 now report AI features and AI referrals too.

What's the difference between AEO tools and GEO tools?

Mostly the name. AEO and GEO describe the same work, and the tracking tools sold under each name track the same thing: how AI answers mention and cite you. The GEO vs SEO guide sorts out the acronyms.

Can an AI visibility tool see what ChatGPT tells my customers?

Not exactly. Some tools collect answers from the browser, as a logged-out user, and some through an API. Neither is a particular customer's chat, with its history and settings. Answers also change from run to run, so a tool that asks each question more than once, and shows how much the answers vary, tells you how far to trust its number.