The short version: AI visibility tools answer one question — when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini about your category, do you get mentioned, and how? The category barely existed two years ago and now has a $1B company in it. Prices run from $29 to several thousand a month for data that is more similar than the pricing suggests. This is an honest guide to which ones are worth paying for, organised by budget and by the job you are actually trying to do.
Quick pick
| You want… | Use |
|---|---|
| Six marketing surfaces watched, not one researched | RunAgents (start here) |
| The deepest enterprise citation analysis | Profound (at Growth, not Starter) |
| Fast, self-serve AI visibility at a startup price | Peec AI |
| The cheapest serious entry point | Otterly.AI |
| AI visibility bolted onto SEO data you already buy | Ahrefs Brand Radar |
| Mentions written by humans, not AI answers | Brand24 |
What these tools actually do
Almost all of them work the same way. They run a set of prompts against a set of AI assistants on a schedule, record which brands and sources get mentioned, and turn that into visibility metrics: share of voice, citation counts, sentiment, position within the answer.
The differences that matter are: how many engines are included rather than metered, how many prompts you get, whether they track sentiment and in-answer position, and whether your own tools can query the data without a tier upgrade.
The difference that matters less than vendors imply: raw model count. Tracking nine models instead of three sounds better than it is, because the answers correlate heavily and the invoice does not.
The tools worth knowing
RunAgents — the monitoring layer
Start here, because it is the assumption every other tool on this list shares that is worth questioning first: they all wait to be asked. You open a dashboard, or your agent queries an API, and you get a good answer about AI visibility.
Two problems with that.
AI visibility is one surface. Your brand can disappear from ChatGPT answers. It can also disappear from Google’s index, which happens faster and costs more. Your email authentication can break. A competitor can cut prices and launch a comparison page against you. Your Core Web Vitals can collapse after a deploy. A dedicated AI visibility tool watches one of those.
Nobody interrupts you. A dashboard is a place you go. Being told is a different product.
RunAgents is built for the second job. It monitors AI search visibility alongside SEO and indexing health, competitor moves, email deliverability, brand mentions, uptime and page quality — continuously — diffs each check against the last, and reports what changed and what it means. MCP is included on the one plan rather than gated behind a tier, so your AI tools can pull the same intelligence inline while they draft, plan or research. See best MCP servers for marketing teams for how that fits alongside the rest of a stack. $99/mo flat, one plan.
Straight concession: on pure AEO depth, Profound goes deeper than we do. More engines, more prompts, more granular citation forensics. If AI visibility is your entire job and you have the budget, buy the specialist.
Our bet is different. Most teams do not have an AI visibility problem. They have a “nobody is watching five of our six marketing surfaces” problem, and AI visibility is the one they noticed first because it is new.
See what changed across your stack today →
Profound — the enterprise leader
Raised $96M at a $1B valuation in February 2026, total funding above $155M, and serves more than 700 enterprises including over 10% of the Fortune 500. Deepest citation analysis in the category, strong sentiment and per-engine breakdown, and an unusually well-designed MCP server that ships a knowledge graph so agents understand how visibility, prompts, topics and citations relate.
Read the tiers carefully. The published $99 Starter is ChatGPT-only with no exports; the capabilities Profound is actually known for start at $399 Growth, and enterprise deployments are commonly cited between $2,000 and $5,000+. Comparing Starter to a rival’s entry tier is comparing the wrong things — we went through the alternatives in 7 best Profound alternatives.
Best for: large brands with a dedicated AI search function.
Peec AI — the fast self-serve pick
Berlin-based, founded 2025 out of Antler, roughly $10M ARR within 16 months. Starter around $95/mo with unlimited users, which is rare in a per-seat category. Covers the core job cleanly: visibility, competitor comparison, daily tracking.
Two things to price in: additional AI models are add-ons at roughly €30 to €140 per model per month, and API plus MCP access sits on Advanced and above. The full picture is in 6 best Peec AI alternatives.
Best for: startups that want AI visibility without a sales call.
Otterly.AI — the cheapest serious option
Bootstrapped, Vienna-based. Lite around $29/mo for 15 prompts; Standard around $189/mo for 100 prompts with API, MCP and a Looker Studio connector; Premium around $489/mo for 400 prompts. Their positioning is deliberately modest and, I think, correct: be a good observability layer that feeds the tools you already use rather than another suite.
Best for: testing whether this category matters to you at all.
Ahrefs Brand Radar — for existing Ahrefs customers
Tracks brand mentions and citations across six AI platforms, modelled on a very large prompt database, with share-of-voice benchmarking. Roughly $199/mo per AI index or $699/mo for all six, on top of your Ahrefs plan. Sensible as an add-on, expensive standalone — and if you are re-evaluating the base subscription anyway, we compared it in 7 best Ahrefs alternatives.
Best for: teams already paying Ahrefs who want AI data in the same place.
Semrush — for existing Semrush customers
AI visibility is folded into the suite, and Semrush now includes MCP access on every plan tier with API units bundled at no extra cost. Adobe completed its $1.9B acquisition in April 2026, so expect roadmap gravity toward enterprise Experience Cloud integration.
Best for: existing Semrush customers. Not a reason to switch suites.
Scrunch AI — now inside Sitecore
Acquired by Sitecore in June 2026, from around $250/mo. Capable platform, increasingly oriented toward enterprise CX.
Best for: Sitecore shops.
Brand24 — mentions, not AI answers
Frequently listed in this category and it does not quite belong. Brand24 monitors what humans write about you across a very wide source set, which is a different question from how an AI assistant describes you. It ships a free MCP server on every plan, which is genuinely generous. Alternatives, including two free ones, are in 7 best Brand24 alternatives.
Best for: social listening. Do not buy it expecting AEO.
Price comparison
| Tool | Entry | Mid | Top |
|---|---|---|---|
| RunAgents | $99/mo flat | — | — |
| Otterly.AI | ~$29/mo | ~$189/mo | ~$489/mo |
| Peec AI | ~$95/mo | tiered (+ per-model add-ons) | Enterprise |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | ~$199/mo per index | — | ~$699/mo all six (plus base plan) |
| Scrunch AI | ~$250/mo | — | Enterprise |
| Profound | $99/mo (ChatGPT-only) | $399/mo Growth | $2,000–$5,000+ |
How to choose
- Want the whole marketing surface watched? RunAgents.
- Enterprise, AEO is a dedicated function? Profound at Growth or above.
- Startup, want it self-serve today? Peec AI.
- Just testing the category? Otterly, or free tools first.
- Already on Ahrefs or Semrush? Use what you are paying for.
Before any of it: connect Google Search Console and GA4. Both are free, both are first-party, and both now ship official MCP servers. They are the ground truth every paid tool estimates from. Our guide to how AI systems pick what to cite covers what to do once you can see the data.
FAQ
What is an AI visibility tool? Software that tracks how your brand appears in answers from AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews — whether you get mentioned, how often, in what context, and how you compare to competitors.
Is AI visibility the same as SEO? No, though they overlap. Traditional SEO is about ranking in a list of links. AI visibility is about being named and cited inside a generated answer. We covered the differences in GEO vs SEO.
Are these tools accurate? Directionally, mostly. All of them sample — they run a prompt set and extrapolate. Answers vary between runs because the models do. Treat trends as meaningful and single data points as noise.
What is the cheapest AI visibility tool? Otterly.AI at around $29/mo. You can approximate the basics for free by running your own prompts by hand, though it does not scale.
Do I need one? If AI assistants send meaningful traffic or influence in your category, yes. If you are not sure, run ten buying-intent prompts manually and see whether you appear. That costs nothing and answers the question. If you do appear and want to stay there, the work itself is in our brand visibility playbook.
Bottom line
The AI visibility category is real, crowded and consolidating fast — two players were acquired in the last year and one is now worth a billion dollars. The data across tools is more similar than the pricing suggests, so pick on budget and motion: Profound at Growth for enterprise depth, Peec for self-serve, Otterly for cheap.
Then ask the harder question. Is AI visibility genuinely your biggest blind spot, or just your newest one? If nobody is watching indexing, deliverability, competitors or mentions either, buying a sixth dashboard is not the fix. Start with the layer that tells you and add a specialist when AEO turns out to be the whole job.
Pricing and funding as of 2026, from the public announcements linked above. Verify current rates before buying.