Short answer: an AI visibility tool runs a fixed set of prompts through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google’s AI answers on a schedule and records whether your brand gets mentioned, cited and recommended. For a small team, the cheapest real entry is Otterly.AI Lite at $29/mo, the best self-serve value is Peec AI Starter at $95/mo with MCP included, and if you already pay for Semrush, Ahrefs or SE Ranking, use their AI add-on before buying anything new. Profound is now enterprise-only for brands.
The pricing spread in this category is wild: from $29 a month to “talk to sales” for data that’s more alike than the invoices suggest. So instead of ranking tools by vibes, the matrix below normalizes every entry plan to one number: what you pay per prompt, per engine, per month.
What “tested” means on this page
No invented hands-on scores here. On 26 Sep 2026 I opened every vendor’s pricing page and the relevant docs, and checked each price, prompt limit, engine list and MCP claim against the vendor’s own words. Every number below links to where it came from. Prices are as of September 2026, monthly billing unless marked.
What I didn’t do: run ten paid accounts side by side for a month. Anyone claiming they did should show you the prompts, the run count and the variance. More on why that matters in a minute.
The AI visibility tool buyer matrix
Entry plan for each tool, the prompts and engines it includes, and the unit cost that makes them comparable. “Cost per prompt-engine” = monthly price ÷ (prompts × engines), all tracked daily. “Runs per check” is how many times the vendor says it asks each prompt per refresh.
| Tool | Entry plan (Sep 2026) | Prompts × engines | Cost per prompt-engine/mo | Runs per check | MCP on entry plan | SEO data in same tool | Free way in |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly.AI | Lite, $29 | 15 × 4 | $0.48 | Not published | No (Standard, $189) | No | Free trial |
| Peec AI | Starter, $95 | 50 × 3 | $0.63 | 1 answer per prompt per model, daily | Yes, all paid plans | No | Free trial |
| Frase | Starter, $49 ($39 annual) | 50 × 2 | $0.49 | Not published | Yes, every plan | Content + SEO scores | 7-day trial, no card |
| Semrush AI Visibility | $99 per domain, billed annually | 25 × 4 | $0.99 | Not published | Via Semrush One or SEO Classic plans | Yes, if you also buy the SEO plan | 7-day trial |
| SE Ranking | Core $129 + AI Results Tracker $89 | 200 × 4 (add-on) | $0.11 (add-on alone) | Not published | Yes, on Core | Yes | 14-day trial, 20 prompts/day |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Custom prompts from $50 | 80 × 1 (example package) | about $0.60 | 1 check per prompt, platform, location, update | Yes, on Ahrefs Lite and up | Yes | Free AI Visibility Checker |
| Scrunch | Core, $250 | 125 × 4 | $0.50 | Not published | No (Enterprise only) | No | 7-day trial |
| ZipTie | Usage-based, from $42.75 | You configure | Depends on build | Re-runs once per window | +$10/mo add-on | Captures top-10 organic with AIO checks | 7-day trial, 25 prompts |
| Profound | Enterprise, custom | Up to 9 engines | Not public | Not published | Not stated on pricing page | No | 7-day trial, 50 prompts |
| RunAgents | Not published | Per-engine citations and mentions | n/a | n/a | Yes | Yes, joined with rankings and competitors | n/a |
Three things jump out.
SE Ranking’s add-on is the unit-cost winner by a mile. $89 for 200 prompts across AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity and ChatGPT works out to about 11 cents per prompt-engine. The catch: it sits on top of Core at $129, so the real bill is $218. If you’d use the SEO suite anyway, nothing else here comes close on price per data point.
Almost nobody publishes how many times they ask. Three vendors spell out the unit. Ahrefs: “Each prompt uses 1 check per platform, location and update.” Peec’s pricing FAQ counts one chat result per prompt per model per day (25 prompts × 3 models × 30 days = 2,250 answers). ZipTie says each prompt re-runs every 24 hours. All three describe one run per prompt per engine per refresh. Everyone else is silent. For a category whose core data is probabilistic, that’s the question that matters most.
MCP is table stakes, but not on every entry plan. Peec, Frase, SE Ranking and Ahrefs include it. Otterly gates it at Standard ($189), Scrunch at Enterprise, ZipTie charges $10/mo extra. Semrush’s toolkit alone doesn’t get it: Semrush MCP ships with Semrush One Starter, Pro+, SEO Classic Pro and Guru (50,000 MCP API units), while Advanced and Business need a separate units package.
Quick pick
| Your situation | Pick |
|---|---|
| Seed-stage, just want to know if you show up | Otterly Lite, or the free checkers below first |
| Want self-serve depth plus MCP for your agents | Peec AI Starter |
| Already pay SE Ranking, Semrush or Ahrefs | Their AI add-on. Don’t buy a second tool yet |
| Lowest cost per data point, fine with an SEO suite | SE Ranking Core + AI Results Tracker |
| Content team that wants tracking next to writing | Frase |
| Enterprise, AEO is a dedicated function | Profound |
| Want AI visibility joined with rankings and competitor moves, with alerts | RunAgents |
The noise problem nobody prices in
Ask ChatGPT the same question three times and you’ll often get three different brand lists. That isn’t me being cynical: Ahrefs’ own team wrote that “if you run the same prompt three times, you’ll likely see three different answers”, and that “AI rank tracking” is a misnomer.
This is why the per-prompt-engine number above matters more than the sticker. A single daily run of 15 prompts gives you a snapshot. Mention rate only means something in aggregate. The Ahrefs piece says to treat it like polling: pool answers across lots of prompts and read the trend, not any single result.
So before you trust any dashboard, run this check yourself. It costs nothing but an afternoon:
- Write 10 buying-intent prompts your customers would actually type (“best feature flag tool for a 10-person team”, not your brand name).
- Run each one 5 times in a fresh chat on ChatGPT and Perplexity. Log whether you’re named, and in what position.
- Calculate your mention rate per prompt (mentions ÷ 5).
- Any prompt that swings between 0 and 5 out of 5 is noise at single-run resolution. That’s the prompt a once-a-day tool will show “dropping” when nothing happened.
If most of your prompts are stable, a cheap single-run tool is fine. If they swing, you need more runs per prompt or a longer averaging window, and you should ask vendors how they handle it (checklist below).
The tools, compared
RunAgents: when AI visibility is one of several things you need to watch
Full disclosure: this is us. Every other tool here is a place you go look. RunAgents watches AI search alongside the rest of your marketing surface and tells you when something moves: a lost AI citation, a drop in AI share of voice, a competitor showing up in an answer you used to own, a ranking or AI Overview you lost, a competitor’s pricing or changelog change. Alerts go to Slack, Discord, Telegram or email in real time.
The part the matrix can’t show: the join. AI citations and answer position sit next to your organic rank and SERP feature ownership for the same query, next to competitor moves. Your agents can query that joined picture over MCP instead of stitching three exports together.
Honest concession: if AI visibility is your entire job and you need nine engines and citation forensics at enterprise scale, Profound goes deeper. If you just want the cheapest daily prompt tracking, SE Ranking’s add-on or Otterly beats everyone on unit cost. RunAgents is for teams whose problem is noticing changes across SEO, AI search and competitors, not running one more report.
Profound: the enterprise leader, now enterprise-only
Profound raised a $180M Series D at a $1.8B valuation on 15 Sep 2026, less than seven months after its $96M Series C, and says it serves over 1,000 enterprise brands. It’s the deepest product in the category.
The pricing news matters more for small teams. Around the raise, Profound removed its self-serve $99 Starter and $399 Growth brand plans (per a review site that is itself a competitor, checked 17 Sep 2026). Profound’s own pricing page now shows a free trial (50 prompts run daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews) and a custom Enterprise plan tracking up to 9 answer engines, plus a separate agency plan. Any listicle still quoting “$99 Starter” is out of date. We covered what to use instead in Profound alternatives.
Best for: enterprises with an AEO budget line and a sales cycle to match.
Peec AI: the best self-serve value
Starter is $95/mo for 50 prompts on 3 models of your choice, tracked daily, with unlimited users. Pro is $245 for 150 prompts, Advanced $495 for 350. Extra models cost $30/mo per model on Starter. The standout: MCP on every paid plan, at no extra cost.
Best for: startups that want real depth, self-serve, today.
Otterly.AI: the cheapest serious entry
Lite is $29/mo for 15 prompts, checked daily across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode are add-ons. Standard at $189 gets you 100 prompts plus API and MCP (2,000 requests/month each).
Best for: answering “do we even show up?” before spending real money. Fifteen prompts is a probe, not a program.
Semrush: if you’re already a customer
Two routes. The standalone AI Visibility toolkit is $99/mo per domain, billed annually, for 25 custom prompts with mentions from ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity. Or Semrush One Starter at $199/mo bundles 50 daily-tracked prompts with the SEO suite, which is also where MCP lives. Adobe closed its $1.9B Semrush acquisition this year, so expect the roadmap to lean toward Adobe’s enterprise stack.
Best for: existing Semrush teams. Not a reason to switch suites.
Ahrefs Brand Radar: best if you want market-wide data
Two products hide under one name. The AI Visibility Index starts at $199/mo and lets you look up any brand across Ahrefs’ database of 449M prompts with no setup, which is great for competitor research. Custom prompt packages start at $50/mo (for example, 80 prompts daily on one platform), with overage at $0.020 per check. Every paid Ahrefs plan also includes a small daily custom-prompt quota: 5 on Lite, 10 on Standard, 20 on Advanced.
Best for: teams already on Ahrefs, and anyone who wants to size a whole market rather than just their own prompts.
SE Ranking: lowest unit cost, if you want the SEO suite
Core is $129/mo and already includes 100 daily prompts plus 2,000 tracked keywords, 25K API credits and MCP. The AI Results Tracker add-on ($89 for 200 prompts across AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity and ChatGPT) is the cheapest per-engine tracking I found. Our Ahrefs alternatives comparison covers the SEO side.
Best for: small teams replacing an SEO tool and adding AI tracking in the same move.
Frase: tracking next to the content workflow
Starter is $49/mo, or $39 billed yearly, with 50 AI visibility prompts on ChatGPT and Google AI. Professional ($129) adds Perplexity and 200 prompts; Scale ($299) adds Claude and Gemini and 500 prompts. MCP and CLI on every plan.
Best for: content teams who want the “we dropped, rewrite this page” loop in one tool. Engine coverage on Starter is thin.
ZipTie: build-your-own pricing
No tiers. You pick engines, prompt count and cadence in a configurator; the Starter preset is from $42.75/mo on three engines. Google AI Overview checks also capture the top-10 organic results at no extra cost, a nice SEO-plus-GEO touch. API and MCP are a $10/mo add-on.
Best for: people who know exactly what they want to track and hate paying for bundles.
Scrunch: capable, now inside Sitecore
Sitecore acquired Scrunch in June 2026. Core is $250/mo for 125 prompts on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot, with a 7-day trial. API and MCP are Enterprise-only.
Best for: Sitecore shops.
Brand24: often listed, different job
Brand24 is social and web listening: what humans write about you. Its AI Visibility module sits on the Enterprise plan, from $1,499/mo. Buy it for mentions monitoring, not for AI answer tracking.
5 questions to ask any vendor before you buy
Screenshot this for your next demo:
- How many times do you run each prompt per refresh, and do you average across runs? If the answer is “once,” every daily wiggle on your chart may be noise.
- Which engines are included at my price, and which are add-ons? Peec and Otterly both bill extra models separately. “Tracks 9 engines” often means “on Enterprise.”
- Do you show the cited sources, not just the mention? A mention without the URLs the engine pulled from gives you nothing to fix.
- Is MCP or API on my plan, and how is it metered? Otterly caps requests, Semrush meters units, ZipTie charges an add-on.
- Can I see AI visibility next to my organic rank for the same query? Most tools stop at share of voice. If AI mentions fall while your Google rank holds, that’s a different fix than if both fall.
Free options first
“AI visibility tools free” is a real search, and you should start there:
- Ahrefs’ free AI Visibility Checker: no signup, shows how a brand appears across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and AI Overviews.
- Trials: Profound (50 prompts for 7 days), ZipTie (25 daily prompts for 7 days), SE Ranking (14 days, 20 prompts/day), Frase (7 days, no card), Scrunch (7 days) and Semrush (7 days) all let you test before paying. Peec and Otterly also advertise free trials. Links in the matrix.
- The manual 10×5 test above. Free and more honest than a single-run dashboard.
- Check that AI crawlers can reach you at all. If your robots.txt blocks GPTBot or PerplexityBot, no tool will fix your visibility. Our robots.txt checker shows which AI bots you allow.
- Connect your first-party data. Google Analytics has an official MCP server. Search Console doesn’t have an official one, only community servers built on its free API. Either way, that’s your ground truth for clicks and AI referral traffic.
Once you can see the data, the work of getting cited is in how to rank in ChatGPT.
Questions people actually ask
What’s the best AI visibility tool in 2026? For most small teams, Peec AI Starter: daily tracking, 3 engines, unlimited users and MCP for $95. If you’re on SE Ranking or Semrush already, their add-on is the better buy. For enterprise, Profound.
How do I monitor my brand’s visibility in AI search? Pick 10 to 50 prompts your buyers would ask, track them daily across the engines your buyers use, and judge trends over weeks, not single days. Watch which sources get cited when a competitor wins, because those are the pages to earn a place on.
What is an AI visibility score? Usually the share of tracked AI answers that mention your brand, sometimes weighted by position or sentiment. Every vendor calculates it differently, so compare scores within one tool over time, never across tools.
Are these tools accurate? Directionally. AI answers are probabilistic, and Ahrefs says the same prompt run three times will likely return three different answers. Trends over many runs are useful. One day’s number is not.
Where RunAgents fits
If you just need to know whether ChatGPT mentions you, the matrix will find you the cheapest honest tool. If you keep finding out a week late that you lost an AI citation, slipped out of an AI Overview, or that a competitor took your spot in the answer after changing their pricing page, a sixth dashboard won’t fix that. Set up RunAgents to get real-time alerts on your AI share of voice, rankings and competitor moves, joined in one place your agents can query over MCP.