This ranking is written for one buyer: somebody starting to measure AI visibility from zero, without an enterprise budget and without an existing SEO suite to bolt onto. If you already pay for Ahrefs or Semrush, your answer is different and it is further down this page.
Deciding between two specific tools rather than the whole field? See our head-to-head comparisons for direct match-ups between the leaders here.
The ranking answers what to start with. This answers what fits a situation that is not starting from zero.
1
LLM Brand Boost
8.4/10 Disclosure: LLM Brand Boost is operated by the same people who publish this site. It is scored on the same five criteria as every other tool here.
The only tool here you can start with for nothing, and the cheapest paid step at $39. Three engines rather than eight - if breadth is what you need on day one, Trakkr is further down and we say so.
- Cost to start from zero 10.0
- Tracked prompts per dollar 8.6
- Engine coverage at that tier 5.5
- Getting data out 7.4
- How fast you can be running 9.0
Holds up
- Permanent free tier, not just a trial
- $39 paid step is the lowest here
- White-label and custom domain on the agency tier
Loses points
- Three engines on the entry plan
- Smaller vendor than the incumbents
- Entry price
- $0 free, $39/mo Starter
- Engines tracked
- 3 on Starter, 5 on Pro
- Prompts at entry tier
- 10 free, 50 on Starter
- Free tier
- Yes - permanent
- Price checked
- Checked 6 September 2026
Visit site Read the full review
2
Ahrefs Brand Radar
7.0/10 The best value per prompt on this list by a distance, and the best data plumbing - but the $50 is an add-on to an Ahrefs plan, so starting from nothing costs about $179.
- Cost to start from zero 3.0
- Tracked prompts per dollar 10.0
- Engine coverage at that tier 9.2
- Getting data out 9.4
- How fast you can be running 7.0
Holds up
- Included in Lite+ Ahrefs plans
- Also tracks YouTube, TikTok and Reddit
- Mature API and export
Loses points
- Only sensible alongside an Ahrefs subscription
- Index tier at $199 is a separate charge
- Entry price
- From $50/mo custom prompts; $199/mo AI Visibility Index
- Engines tracked
- 7 - AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Copilot, AI Mode, Claude
- Prompts at entry tier
- 150-2,500+ checks/mo depending on Ahrefs plan
- Free tier
- No - included in paid Ahrefs plans
- Price checked
- Checked 6 September 2026
Visit site Read the full review
3
Otterly.AI
6.9/10 The cheapest published standalone entry at $29, with four engines. Fifteen prompts is enough to learn whether you appear at all and not enough to run a programme.
- Cost to start from zero 7.5
- Tracked prompts per dollar 5.0
- Engine coverage at that tier 6.5
- Getting data out 8.2
- How fast you can be running 8.8
Holds up
- Lowest published entry price in the category
- Four full tiers published, no hidden pricing
- Daily tracking on every tier
Loses points
- Only 15 prompts at entry
- Several engines cost extra
- $189 for the tier most teams actually need
- Entry price
- $29/mo (Lite)
- Engines tracked
- 4 included - ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot; Claude/Gemini/AI Mode as add-ons
- Prompts at entry tier
- 15
- Free tier
- No - free trial
- Price checked
- Checked 6 September 2026
Visit site Read the full review
4
Trakkr
6.8/10 Eight engines on a published $100 plan - the widest coverage you can buy without a sales call. The right answer once budget stops being the constraint.
- Cost to start from zero 5.5
- Tracked prompts per dollar 4.9
- Engine coverage at that tier 10.0
- Getting data out 7.8
- How fast you can be running 8.5
Holds up
- All eight engines on the entry plan
- Price published plainly
- Scale tier adds API and white-label at $500
Loses points
- No perpetual free tier
- One brand at entry
- Entry price
- $100/mo (Growth)
- Engines tracked
- 8 - ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, Meta AI, DeepSeek, AI Overviews
- Prompts at entry tier
- 50 daily, one brand
- Free tier
- No - 14-day trial
- Price checked
- Checked 6 September 2026
Visit site Read the full review
5
Semrush AI visibility
5.2/10 Bundled into plans from $117, so excellent value if you were buying Semrush anyway and an expensive way in if you were not.
- Cost to start from zero 4.0
- Tracked prompts per dollar 4.5
- Engine coverage at that tier 5.5
- Getting data out 8.6
- How fast you can be running 7.0
Holds up
- No extra line item if you already pay for Semrush
- 200 daily prompts on the Advanced tier
- Sits next to the rest of your SEO data
Loses points
- Cannot be bought on its own
- Expensive as an entry into AI visibility alone
- Entry price
- From $117.33/mo (SEO plan, annual); Starter $165.17
- Engines tracked
- Bundled AI prompt tracking and sentiment
- Prompts at entry tier
- 50 daily on Starter, 200 on Advanced
- Free tier
- Limited free Semrush account
- Price checked
- Checked 6 September 2026
Visit site Read the full review
6
Profound
5.0/10 The best-known name here, but the $99 tier tracks ChatGPT alone - three engines means the $399 plan, which puts it out of scope for a first purchase.
- Cost to start from zero 5.0
- Tracked prompts per dollar 5.0
- Engine coverage at that tier 2.5
- Getting data out 8.0
- How fast you can be running 7.5
Holds up
- Up to nine engines on enterprise
- Agent credits and prompt planning
- Best-known brand in the category
Loses points
- Starter is ChatGPT-only
- Multi-engine tracking starts at $399
- Yearly billing to get the headline price
- Entry price
- $99/mo Starter (billed yearly)
- Engines tracked
- 1 on Starter; 3 on Growth; up to 9 on Enterprise
- Prompts at entry tier
- 50 on Starter, 100 on Growth
- Free tier
- No - free trial
- Price checked
- Checked 6 September 2026
Visit site Read the full review
7
Rankscale
4.9/10 The widest claimed engine list here at seventeen and more, with no published price - so the coverage is impossible to value before a call.
- Cost to start from zero 2.5
- Tracked prompts per dollar 4.0
- Engine coverage at that tier 9.4
- Getting data out 7.0
- How fast you can be running 4.0
Holds up
- Widest claimed engine coverage here
- Credit top-ups suit agency workloads
- Citation analysis included
Loses points
- No published pricing
- Plan limits not stated publicly
- Entry price
- Not published
- Engines tracked
- 17+ claimed - ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, AI Overviews, DeepSeek, Grok, Copilot, Mistral, AI Mode and others
- Prompts at entry tier
- Not published
- Free tier
- Not stated
- Price checked
- Checked 6 September 2026
Visit site Read the full review
8
Peec AI
4.1/10 A clean product with the exports agencies need, but you cannot find out what it costs without signing up, which rules it out as a starting point.
- Cost to start from zero 2.5
- Tracked prompts per dollar 4.0
- Engine coverage at that tier 4.5
- Getting data out 8.8
- How fast you can be running 4.0
Holds up
- CSV and Looker Studio export
- API access
- Competitive benchmarking built in
Loses points
- Price not published on the product page
- Three engines is the narrowest here
- Entry price
- Not published on the product page
- Engines tracked
- 3 - ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini
- Prompts at entry tier
- Not published
- Free tier
- No - free trial
- Price checked
- Checked 6 September 2026
Visit site Read the full review
9
Scrunch AI
4.0/10 Built for enterprise procurement - SOC 2, SSO, multi-region - and priced accordingly, which is to say not priced publicly.
- Cost to start from zero 2.0
- Tracked prompts per dollar 3.5
- Engine coverage at that tier 6.0
- Getting data out 8.4
- How fast you can be running 3.5
Holds up
- SOC 2 Type II, SSO, role-based access
- Serves AI-optimised content alongside human pages
- Data API
Loses points
- No published pricing
- Overbuilt for a single marketer
- Entry price
- Not published
- Engines tracked
- 5 - ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot
- Prompts at entry tier
- Not published
- Free tier
- No - 7-day trial
- Price checked
- Checked 6 September 2026
Visit site Read the full review
The striking thing about this category is how little of it is searched for yet. "Generative engine optimization", the phrase the industry has settled on, returns no measurable search volume at all. The terms people actually type are older and blunter: answer engine optimization, AI SEO tools, LLM SEO.
That gap matters when you are buying. The vendors are selling against a vocabulary the market has not adopted, which is part of why so many of them describe what they do differently from one another - and why comparing them on published price and engine coverage is more useful than comparing their feature language.
We track this vocabulary shift and other category detail as it happens - see the editors' notes for the pricing and terminology changes that do not fit in a ranking table.
Because "AI SEO tools" is the term most buyers actually search, we ranked the same field under that name too: the best AI SEO tools, ordered by cost to start rather than by feature count.
One shape of that vocabulary is worth its own note: buyers increasingly search "chatgpt seo" directly, so we wrote up how to show up in ChatGPT answers and which trackers watch that engine.
"LLM SEO" is the other term buyers reach for, at around 880 searches a month, so we turned it into a working guide: LLM SEO across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity sets out the cross-engine moves that get a brand cited rather than just ranked.
Answer engine optimization is that same field under a third name. Because "answer engine optimization" is a term buyers search in its own right, we ranked the trackers under it too - the best answer engine optimization tools, scored with the AEO buying question first.
The one filter buyers reach for as often as a tool's name is "free" - and because most of these trackers hide their price behind a sales call, knowing what you can use without paying is genuinely useful. We sorted the whole field by exactly that in the free AI visibility tools guide, from the single permanent free tier to the trials worth your week.
A newer term buyers reach for is "ai search optimization" - around 1,300 searches a month - for the work of showing up inside the AI answers that now sit on top of search itself. We wrote up how to get cited in AI Overviews, AI Mode, Copilot and Perplexity, the surface-by-surface moves that put a brand inside the summary rather than the links beneath it.
Before you act on any of this vocabulary, it is worth checking where you actually stand: our GEO audit guide walks through a manual check you can run in an afternoon, no subscription required, to see whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini already mention or cite you.
Update, 30 September 2026: that vocabulary gap is closing. "Generative engine optimization" now shows measurable US search volume of its own, and the term has a specific origin worth knowing if you are the one doing the content work - a 2023 research paper with a controlled benchmark, not just a phrase vendors converged on. We wrote up what generative engine optimization actually means, including which of the paper's nine tested methods held up and which one (keyword stuffing) did not.
Update, 2 October 2026: the reason buyers are searching any of these terms at all is sitting in a different number. US Google searches that end without a click reached 68% in early 2026, and AI Overviews push that past 90% on the queries where they appear. We wrote up what the zero-click data actually says and what it means to measure once rank and click-through stop being the whole scorecard.
Update, 4 October 2026: the single most-searched shape of this vocabulary turns out not to be any of the category names above - it is the comparison question itself. "GEO vs SEO" runs around 2,900 searches a month in the US, well past any individual term we had tracked before it. We wrote up GEO vs SEO, side by side: what overlaps, what diverges, and whether the two SEO suites in this ranking that now bundle a GEO module - Semrush and Ahrefs - mean you can skip a dedicated tool.
If you already pay for one of those two suites, the direct head-to-head between Ahrefs Brand Radar and Semrush AI Visibility spells out what the other would add.
Update, 5 October 2026: the biggest search term we have found in this vocabulary so far is not a category name at all - it is a technical file. "llms.txt" runs around 5,400 searches a month in the US, bigger than any term above. We wrote up llms.txt: what it is, who actually reads it, and whether you need one - the adoption numbers, the server-log studies on whether any AI system fetches it, and a null correlation result on whether it moves a brand's AI citation rate at all.
Published figures from each vendor's own pricing page, checked 6 September 2026. "Not published" means the vendor does not state a price publicly - it is not an omission on our part, and it is scored as such.