Buyer's guide
Prefer is the best AI visibility tool to track how ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI cite your brand, from $24/mo. 9 tools compared, with prices.
The short answer
Prefer is the best AI visibility tool in 2026 for teams who want their AI visibility measured across five engines and the content written in one place, from $24 a month; Prefer Managed also deploys the fixes and does the off-page work. Profound is the most established enterprise tracker, with the deepest data. Peec AI is the best value if you only need clean monitoring and your team already has the capacity to act on what it finds.
Prefer Measurement plus the content written for you 
Profound The deepest real-user prompt data 
Peec AI Clean prompt-level tracking from $95/mo DisclosurePrefer publishes this list, and Prefer is on it. Every competitor entry is written from that vendor's public documentation, carries a checked-on date, and names what it does better than us. A roundup with no stake in the outcome would be better, and it does not exist yet in this category.
In short
How we evaluated
Prefer is the pick if you want your AI visibility measured across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode and the work that moves it done, from $24/mo. AI visibility tools track how often AI models cite your brand, and most only measure. Profound has the deepest enterprise tracking, Otterly daily tracking from $29/mo, and AthenaHQ a free tier with action built in.
Not the coverage on the pricing hero, the coverage on the plan you will actually buy. Several tools track one engine at entry and reserve the full set for Enterprise, so the honest number is engines-per-dollar at the tier you can afford.
Being named in an answer and being the source behind it are different events, and only one is something you can influence directly. A tool that reports a single blended visibility score is hiding the more useful of the two.
The category splits hardest here. Some tools stop at a dashboard and an alert. Some add source-level data and crawler logs. A few draft the content, deploy the technical fix, and re-run the prompt to confirm the answer moved. Decide which you are buying.
Entry price alone is misleading. Weigh it against what the tool actually includes and what you would pay a contractor or agency to do the acting a monitor leaves to you.
The scores
Each dimension is scored 0 to 5 on the scale below and the overall is the plain average, so you can check every number against the facts on this page. Prefer is our product and is scored on the same scale.
| Tool | Engines at entry | Prompt-level data | Citation sources | Action layer | Price per prompt | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prefer (our product) | 4.0 | 5.0 | 5.0 | 5.0 | 5.0 | 4.8/5 |
| Profound | 5.0 | 5.0 | 5.0 | 4.0 | 1.0 | 4.0/5 |
| Otterly | 3.0 | 5.0 | 5.0 | 1.0 | 4.0 | 3.6/5 |
| Ahrefs | 4.0 | 5.0 | 5.0 | 1.0 | 2.0 | 3.4/5 |
| Peec AI | 2.0 | 5.0 | 5.0 | 1.0 | 4.0 | 3.4/5 |
| Scrunch | 3.0 | 5.0 | 3.0 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 3.2/5 |
| Semrush | 4.0 | 5.0 | 3.0 | 1.0 | 2.0 | 3.0/5 |
How each number is set
Scored 26 September 2026 from the facts on this page: the capability table, the engines and prompt counts stated in each entry, and our verified pricing index (competitor pricing pages read in a rendered browser between 16 and 23 September 2026). Three tools are not scored. AthenaHQ meters its plans in credits (one credit is one AI response), not tracked prompts, so its prompt-level data cannot be placed on the scale below. AirOps publishes no price and no prompt count on any tier. Both stay in the ranked list on their documented strengths. Ahrefs Brand Radar is scored on the 19 September 2026 rendered read of its plans (Lite $129 includes 5 tracked AI prompts across up to seven platforms), which is why its price-per-prompt figure is the highest here. Prefer's row uses the same rules as every other row. The scores do not use our 2 September 2026 ChatGPT run, in which Profound was the tool ChatGPT named most; that run is on this page so you can see who the engine itself shortlists.
Three kinds of tool
Track what AI answers say about you and report it, cleanly and cheaply. The output is a dashboard and an alert. Fastest to set up, and only worth it if someone already has time to act on what they surface.
Buy one if execution capacity already sits in your team or your agency.Track the same answers and add the depth monitors cannot reach: source-level citation data, server-log crawler behaviour, page-level coverage, and in Prefer's case the drafting, with the deployed fix on Prefer Managed.
Buy one if you are accountable for the number moving, not for the dashboard existing.Come at visibility from a content engine, so drafting and measurement live in one tool. Strong if producing content at scale is your bottleneck, shallower if measurement rigor is what you are buying.
Buy one if content production is the job and tracking is a welcome attachment.The ranked list
Ordered by overall fit for a team that needs AI visibility to actually move.
PreferPrefer measures how often AI models cite your brand across five engines, then writes the content that wins more citations, in one loop; Prefer Managed also does the off-page work.
ProfoundProfound is the deepest AI-visibility tracker for enterprise teams, with real-user prompt volumes and broad model coverage.
Peec AIPeec AI is the best budget monitor for tracking brand mentions across AI engines, with clean prompt-level analytics agencies like.
AthenaHQAthenaHQ is the best free way to start, pairing monitoring across five models with a content agent and on-page and off-page actions.
ScrunchScrunch is the enterprise multi-brand pick, with monitoring, citations, site audits, and agent-traffic analytics at scale.
SemrushSemrush adds AI-visibility tracking on top of the full SEO suite you may already pay for, from one vendor.
AirOpsAirOps comes at AI visibility from the content side: it ships AI-optimized content at volume, with tracking attached to the workflow.
OtterlyOtterly is a low-cost way to start daily AI visibility tracking: $29/mo for 15 prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot.
AhrefsAhrefs Brand Radar layers AI visibility tracking over a 459M-prompt index and seven AI surfaces, inside the Ahrefs suite you may already pay for.
Side by side
Capability at the checked-on date. Partial means the tool does something adjacent. Prefer's self-serve plans recommend the technical fixes; Prefer Managed and Enterprise deploy them for you.
| Tool | Tracking | Sources | Crawler logs | Deploys fixes | Verifies | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prefer | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | ✓ | $24 |
| Profound | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | - | ~ | Custom |
| Peec AI | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | - | - | $95 |
| AthenaHQ | ✓ | ~ | ~ | - | ~ | Free |
| Scrunch | ✓ | ~ | ✓ | ~ | ~ | $250 |
| Semrush | ✓ | ~ | ~ | - | ~ | $99 |
| AirOps | ✓ | ~ | - | ~ | ~ | Free |
| Otterly | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | - | - | $29 |
| Ahrefs | ✓ | ✓ | - | - | - | $129 |
The map
PreferOur productProfoundScrunchPeec AIAthenaHQSemrushAirOpsOtterlyAhrefsWhat changed in 2026
This list looked different a year ago. These are the changes that moved it.
In 2024, simply seeing AI answers was the whole pitch. By 2026 every tool here tracks the major engines competently, so a visibility number on its own no longer tells you which tool to buy. The question moved from what does AI say to what do we do about it.
A large share of unexplained absence traces to AI bots being blocked, rate-limited or served errors, and none of that shows up in answer monitoring. It only appears in server logs, which is why crawler-log analysis moved from a nice-to-have to a diagnostic requirement, and why the tools that skip it report absence they cannot explain.
Most platforms now draft or generate content, so drafting stopped being a differentiator. What almost none of them do is re-run the exact prompt after the change to confirm the answer actually moved. Measuring a trend is common; proving a specific fix worked is rare.
Monitoring commoditised and the $79 to $99 entry cluster broke apart. The spread reopened at the top, where execution depth, enterprise controls and multi-brand scale justify $250 and up, and at the bottom, where sub-$30 plans and free tiers compete for a way in.
Red flags
Every tool here demos well. These are the questions that separate them once the trial ends.
If a tool shows a visibility number but not the answer text and cited URLs behind it, you cannot verify it or act on it. Ask to open a single answer before you trust the chart.
Auto-generated prompt sets are a fine start and a bad finish. If you cannot add the questions your sales team actually hears, the tool is measuring a market that is not quite yours.
A single score across engines, markets and personas hides exactly where you are losing. Ask how it splits before you ask what it is.
If the tool cannot tell you whether crawlers fetch your pages, it will report absence without ever explaining it, and the fix you need most stays invisible.
Ask how many times each prompt runs, on what schedule, and whether results are deduplicated. Without that, week-on-week comparisons are noise dressed as a trend.
A tool can track ten engines and surface none of it where your team decides. Ask how the data reaches an action, not only how many engines feed the chart.
The basics
An AI visibility tool measures how AI assistants like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude describe your brand, and the better ones help you change it. It runs your buyers' real questions across those engines on a schedule, records whether you are named and whether your pages are cited as the source, and identifies which third-party domains the answers were built from.
The vocabulary is still settling, and vendors use the same words to mean different things. The definitions here are how the terms are used on this page; where the industry has not agreed on a word, we have said so.
AI visibility tools measure how often, and how favorably, AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude mention or cite your brand when buyers ask them what to use. The good ones do more than measure: they help you move the number. This roundup ranks the nine tools worth your money in 2026, with pricing and engine coverage verified on each vendor’s live pricing page (the original seven in July 2026, Otterly and Ahrefs in September 2026). Prefer ranks first because it measures five engines on every plan and does the work that moves the number, from $24 a month.
First, the map. The category is crowded and its labels blur together, so here is the whole landscape in one view, every tool placed by the primary job it actually does.
The category answers to several names (AI visibility tools, LLM visibility tools, AI search visibility platforms) and they describe the same products. At its core, AI visibility is three numbers. Citation rate: how often a model names you across the prompts your buyers ask. Share of voice: how your mentions compare to the competitors cited in the same answers. Sources: which domains each model pulls from, and whether any are yours. A tool that reports these across the major engines on a fixed schedule, and shows the variance between engines and sessions is measuring honestly. A tool that hands you one flattering score is selling a vanity metric.
The single most important question is what happens after the chart. If the answer is “you export the insight and brief your team,” you are buying measurement and staffing the action yourself. That is fine for enterprises with deep benches, and slow for everyone else.
Before you pay for any of them, get your baseline: the free AI visibility checker runs your buyers’ questions across four engines (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Gemini) and returns your answer share, the sources quoted, and a ranked fix list, with no card and no account. Ahrefs, Semrush and HubSpot ship free checks too (compared on that page); ours is the one that runs live prompts and returns the receipts.
Before ranking anything ourselves, we measured the market’s answer. On September 2, 2026 we ran 50 real buyer questions about this category through ChatGPT (the consumer default model, web search on) and recorded every tool it named and every source it cited. Three findings worth knowing before you buy:
Profound is the tool ChatGPT names most. It was named first in 7 of the 8 “best tools” question variants we ran. The recurring shortlist behind it: Peec AI, Semrush, Ahrefs, Otterly, and Scrunch. If you have heard of a tool “because ChatGPT recommended it,” it was probably one of these.
One publication shows up in a quarter of the answers. TechRadar was cited in 12 of the 46 web-grounded answers that listed sources, across five of its pages (its review of Ahrefs alone in 7). Only OpenAI’s help center (15 answers) and arXiv (13) appeared in more. Nearly half of all sources ChatGPT cited in our run were pages published by the tool vendors themselves.
The answers are not stable. The same question re-run returns a shifted shortlist and different sources. That is why this page reports what we measured with a date on it, and why any tool selling you a single visibility score without variance is oversimplifying. One run is a reading, not a ranking.
We publish this measurement because it is the same instrument Prefer runs for customers, applied to our own category. Draw your own conclusions from it; the ranking below is ours, the criteria are stated, and the two lists do not have to agree.
Every tool here claims broad coverage, but the entry plan is where it gets real. Profound’s free trial covers ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews for 7 days, and its only paid brand plan is a custom Enterprise quote. AirOps’ free plan surfaces ChatGPT insights only. Scrunch’s $250 Core covers four engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Copilot); the full nine are Enterprise. Otterly’s $29 Lite also covers four engines, but only 15 prompts. Semrush’s full LLM coverage is Enterprise-only, and Ahrefs’ Brand Radar rides on a paid Ahrefs plan. Prefer and AthenaHQ are the outliers that put five engines in reach at or near the entry.
Prefer is our product, so read this with that in mind. We built it because we kept watching teams buy monitoring, see the gaps, and stall. Prefer runs a free audit that shows where AI engines name and cite you, monitors your citations and share of voice against named competitors, and then writes the content, with citation building and the off-page presence models actually read done on Prefer Managed. It starts with a free AI visibility audit, no card, and a free trial on every paid plan; plans start at $24/mo. If you only want a dashboard and have the team to act on it, a cheaper pure monitor below may serve you better.
Profound is the most established tracker in the category, with measurement depth that is hard to match: real-user prompt volumes, broad model coverage, and mature enterprise compliance. Large in-house teams that mainly need reliable data to feed their own machine will be well served. The trade-offs are the ones you would guess: brands get no published price (a free 7-day trial on three engines, then a custom Enterprise quote for up to 9 engines), and execution is an add-on.
Peec AI covers most major engines with clean prompt-level analytics at a starting price around $95/mo, with agency-friendly workflows; on 19 September 2026 its self-serve menu left out Perplexity and Claude. For multi-client agencies that need credible AI-visibility reporting without enterprise pricing, it is the sensible default. Entry plans include three models of your choice, and the doing remains yours.
AthenaHQ stands out for starting free: its Essential plan gives 300 credits across five models, plus a content agent and content recommendations. Its $295/mo Starter tier adds 11-model coverage, on-page and off-page actions, and GA4 and Search Console integration. Unlike the pure trackers, AthenaHQ genuinely acts, through self-serve agents rather than done-for-you execution. It is the best pick if you want a free way in and are happy to run the work yourself.
Scrunch aims at multi-brand enterprises and agencies: monitoring, citations, site audits, and agent-traffic analytics, with an “Agent Experience Platform” angle, from $250/mo. Its Core tier covers four engines and includes limited optimization (one page optimization a month); the full nine-LLM list is Enterprise. It is a serious product that prices out most small teams.
If your team already lives in Semrush, its SEO + AI Search plans add AI-visibility tracking to the suite you pay for, from $139/mo for the SEO plan and $199/mo for the Semrush One tier that includes AI-visibility prompt tracking (50 prompts a day), or $99/mo per domain for the AI Visibility toolkit on its own (25 prompts a day). Depth trails the dedicated tools, and full LLM coverage is Enterprise-only, but one vendor is one vendor.
AirOps comes at the category from content operations: it is built for shipping AI-optimized content at volume, with visibility tracking attached to the workflow, and a free Solo tier that tracks ChatGPT insights only. If your bottleneck is producing content at scale, it is a strong fit; if your goal is measuring and winning citations, the measurement here is the attachment, not the core.
Otterly is a low-cost dedicated tracker: $29/mo buys 15 prompts across four engines (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot), with daily tracking and a free trial (pricing verified September 2026). The Standard tier at $189/mo raises that to 100 prompts and adds API and MCP access plus agent analytics. The limits are the mirror of the price: 15 prompts is a small window on your market, Claude, AI Mode and Gemini are paid add-ons ($9 to $439/mo, per our verified pricing index), and Otterly measures without doing any of the work. For a solo marketer who wants a real reading before committing real budget, it is the sensible first step.
Ahrefs’ Brand Radar tracks seven AI surfaces (AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude) against a 459M-prompt index, and custom prompt tracking is included with paid Ahrefs plans from $129/mo. Like Semrush, the pitch is one vendor: if your team already lives in Ahrefs, the AI layer arrives without a new contract. The deeper AI Visibility Index is $199/mo per platform, or $699/mo for all, on the vendor’s own page (verified 19 September 2026), and like every suite play, it measures for a team that will do its own acting. See the full Brand Radar review.
Pick by what happens after the measurement. The deepest enterprise data: Profound. Multi-client reporting on a budget: Peec AI. A daily reading on a small budget: Otterly at $29/mo. A free tier with action you run yourself: AthenaHQ. Multi-brand at enterprise scale: Scrunch. One vendor for SEO and AI: Semrush, or Ahrefs if that is your suite. A hundred pages a month of content ops: AirOps. Measurement and the work that moves it, in one loop, starting free: run the Prefer audit and see your baseline in ten minutes. For the deeper definition of the metric these tools report, see our share of voice glossary entry, and for how the category is framed, our AI visibility hub and the best GEO tools roundup. For hands-on evaluations, read our independent tool reviews, including the Profound, Peec AI, Scrunch, Otterly, AirOps, Semrush AI Toolkit, and AthenaHQ reviews, and the verified AI visibility tool pricing index.
The questions buyers ask next.
With three numbers and their sources, tracked over time; Prefer tracks all three across five engines. Citation rate is how often a model names you across your tracked prompts. Share of voice is how that compares to the competitors named beside you. And the source domains are the pages each answer was built from. A tool measuring honestly reports all three across every major engine, on a consistent schedule, and shows the variance rather than one flattering figure.
See how it works →A few. Prefer offers a free audit and a free trial on every paid plan. AthenaHQ's Essential tier is free with 300 credits across five models, and AirOps has a free Solo tier that tracks ChatGPT only. Free tiers trade engine coverage or volume for a way in, so read what each one actually includes before you commit.
Less traffic per impression than search, and better-qualified traffic when it converts, because the buyer arrives already recommended. Prefer tracks whether you are named in those answers across five engines. Being in the consideration set is the outcome; the click is one way it shows up.
Not in the organic answer itself, at least not yet. Prefer helps you earn those slots instead: it shows the sources each answer is built from and writes the content that wins citations. Advertising is arriving in AI surfaces, but it is labelled and kept separate from the recommendation. The named slots in an answer are earned through sources, not bought.
Nothing substantial. Prefer does both: it measures your AI visibility across five engines and writes the content that wins citations. AI visibility emphasises the measurement; AEO and GEO emphasise the work of winning citations. Every tool here would appear in an AEO roundup too. The distinction that matters is whether a tool only measures or also helps you move the number.
See the best AEO tools →Questions
Prefer is our pick for the best overall AI visibility tool in 2026 because it measures how AI models cite your brand across five engines and ships the work that wins more citations, from $24 a month. It is our own product, so weigh that disclosure. Profound is the deepest enterprise tracker, Peec AI is the best budget monitor, and AthenaHQ is the best free tier with action built in.
Prefer is the best AI visibility platform for teams that want the tracking and the content in one place, from $24 a month: it tracks your buyer prompts on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, shows the sources behind each answer, and writes 15 AI articles a month on the entry plan. Prefer Managed adds the off-page work for teams that want it done for them.
You measure AI visibility with three numbers: your citation rate (how often a model names you), your share of voice (how you compare to competitors cited in the same answers), and the source domains each model cites. Prefer tracks all three across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, from $24 a month. Good tools track these across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews and show the trend over time, with variance shown rather than a single flattering score.
Yes. Prefer offers a free AI visibility audit and a free trial on every paid plan. AthenaHQ's Essential plan is free with 300 credits across five models, and AirOps has a free Solo tier that tracks ChatGPT insights only. Prefer's paid plans start at $24/mo; most other dedicated trackers start around $95 to $99/mo, and enterprise platforms start around $250 to $295/mo.
Prefer has the cheapest paid entry on this list, $24/mo for 30 prompts on five engines plus 15 AI articles a month. As of September 2026, Otterly's Lite tier is next at $29/mo (15 prompts, four engines). Peec AI starts at $95/mo, and the entry tier is where coverage hides: that Starter includes three models of your choice. Profound lists no paid brand price (a free trial, then a custom Enterprise quote, checked 16 September 2026). Enterprise-leaning platforms start higher, Scrunch at $250/mo and AthenaHQ's action tier at $295/mo; Semrush adds AI visibility to its SEO plans from $199/mo and Ahrefs bundles Brand Radar with paid plans from $129/mo. AthenaHQ has a free tier; Prefer has a free trial and a free audit.
They are the same category described from two angles. Prefer does both jobs: it measures how often five AI engines cite you and writes the content that wins more citations. An AI visibility tool emphasizes measurement, how often and how favorably AI names you. A GEO (generative engine optimization) tool emphasizes the work of winning those citations. Most tools in this roundup describe themselves with both terms; the real distinction is whether a tool only measures visibility or also helps you move it.
References
How to choose
If yes, a monitor is enough, so buy the cheapest one that tracks accurately. If no, buy a tool that does the work, such as Prefer, which writes the content that wins citations, with the off-page work on Prefer Managed. A finding nobody actions is a cost, not an insight.
Only crawler-log analysis answers this, and Prefer includes it. Blocked or 404ing pages are invisible to every monitoring-only tool, and this is the single most common cause of unexplained absence. It rules out several tools on this list immediately.
Check the entry tier, not the hero. If you need more than ChatGPT and cannot reach Enterprise pricing, Prefer and AthenaHQ are the ones that put five engines within reach near the bottom of the market.
If procurement and a security review are involved, weight enterprise maturity heavily. If it is a card on a marketing budget, weight entry price, engine coverage and setup time; Prefer starts at $24 a month with five engines and a free trial.
Keep going
See how answer engines describe your brand today, and where the openings are to outpace the competition.
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