TL;DR: Peec AI is the usual mid-market answer at around $95 a month, Otterly.ai is the cheapest credible entry at about $29, and Scrunch AI gives the most prompts per pound at around $250. Profound withdrew its self-serve tiers in September 2026 and is now demo-led at a reported $499 and up. Compare on cost per tracked prompt rather than headline price, because allowances vary far more than fees do.
Key Takeaways
Cost per prompt reorders every shortlist. At published entry tiers it ranges from under $1 to nearly $4 per tracked prompt, and the cheapest headline is rarely the cheapest per prompt.
Profound changed its model. The $99 and $399 self-serve plans were withdrawn in September 2026, which is why the comparison landscape shifted this year.
Below about 50 prompts you may not need one. Manual checking takes twenty minutes a month and gives you the full answers, read by someone who knows the product.
Ask for full answer text and every cited URL. A mention flag tells you that you lost. The answer text tells you why.
Run a twenty-prompt accuracy check during the trial. No vendor does this for you, and a tool that undercounts produces a confident wrong picture for as long as you keep it.
If you already pay for Semrush or Ahrefs, their bundled modules are the cheapest route, with the caveat that Semrush prices per domain.
All pricing checked October 2026. This category reprices frequently. Verify on each vendor's own page before deciding.
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Related reading: AI Search Tracking: Guide to AI Visibility
Do you need one?
Worth settling before the list, because a meaningful share of readers do not, and finding that out here is cheaper than finding out at renewal.
The test
You | Verdict |
|---|---|
Track under 50 prompts, one brand | Probably not yet. Manual checking works and is free |
Have not checked manually at all | Not yet. Twenty minutes tells you whether there is a problem |
Have not verified AI crawlers can reach your site | Not yet. If they are blocked, that is the finding, and logs are free |
Nobody will act on the findings | No. A dashboard nobody uses costs more than it saves |
Track 50-plus prompts, or several brands | Yes. Manual stops being sustainable |
Agency with multiple clients | Yes, and look for workspace support |
Need an audit trail for stakeholders | Yes. Spreadsheets lose credibility at scale |
The manual alternative, stated fairly
Twenty prompts, five runs each, across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, logged in a spreadsheet. About two hours monthly.
You get the full answers read by someone who understands your product, which is an advantage no classifier matches. You give up automation, trend charts and consistency when someone is away.
For a single brand under fifty prompts, that trade is usually favourable. The honest threshold is where manual checking starts slipping, and if it has slipped two months running, that is your signal.
The cost nobody quotes
Acting on what any of these tools surfaces runs 25 to 70 hours a month depending on volume. At a loaded rate that exceeds every subscription in this article several times over.
So before comparing products, confirm who will do that work. A tool bought without that answer produces a chart and a renewal question.
If you are past the gate
The rest of this article assumes you have checked manually, confirmed crawler access, and have someone who will act. If any of those is missing, fix it first and come back. The purchase will be smaller and better targeted.
What to compare on
Four things decide this. Everything else is a tiebreaker.
1. Accuracy, tested by you
Take twenty prompts, check them manually against the tool's data during the trial, and record the match rate.
No vendor runs this for you. It is an hour, and a tool that undercounts produces a confident, consistent and wrong picture for as long as you keep the subscription, with nothing in the dashboard revealing it.
2. Depth of record
Ask to see one prompt you lose, end to end: the full answer text, every cited URL including competitors', and what the product recommends next.
A tool that answers with a dashboard has told you something. A mention flag lets you know you lost; the answer text and citations tell you why, which is the difference between a number and a work queue.
3. Cost per tracked prompt
Divide the all-in monthly fee by the prompts you will actually track, with the engines you need enabled. Allowances vary far more than headline prices, and this calculation reorders most shortlists. It has its own section below.
4. Export rights
Your measurement history is the one thing you cannot rebuild. Ask in writing what export looks like, in what format, and how long you retain access after cancelling.
This category demonstrated in 2026 that vendors change terms with little warning, which makes portability a feature worth valuing rather than an afterthought.
What matters less than you would think
Factor | Why to weight it lower |
|---|---|
Engine count | Nine engines is worse value than four if your buyers use two. Check your own referral data |
Interface quality | Matters for adoption, not for whether the measurement is right |
Sentiment scoring | Useful as a flag; treat any score you cannot trace to retrievable text as decoration |
Integrations | Nice, and rarely decisive |
For the full evaluation method, including how to run a structured trial, see our guide to comparing AI search optimization tools.
The tools
Pricing checked October 2026 and compiled from published pages and independent comparisons. Verify directly before deciding.
Peec AI
From about €85 to $95 a month. Around 50 prompts at entry, three engines, unlimited seats on most plans, month to month with an annual discount, and published agency pricing.
Suits: mid-market teams and agencies. The most commonly recommended option when people leave enterprise tools, largely because the motion is transparent and self-serve.
Watch for: engine coverage at the entry tier, and whether the listed prices are annual-billed.
Otterly.ai
From about $29 a month. The cheapest credible entry point, with four engines included. Standard is around $189 for roughly 100 prompts, Premium about $489, Enterprise from around $1,000.
Suits: small teams and solo marketers wanting to start properly without a real budget decision.
Watch for: the $29 tier includes roughly 15 prompts, which is trial-sized. Most buyers land on Standard, so compare at that level rather than the headline.
Scrunch AI
From about $250 to $300 a month. Around 350 prompts at entry with broad engine coverage, plus site audits and AI bot traffic tracking.
Suits: mid-market teams who want coverage and prompt volume, and who value the audit features alongside tracking.
Watch for: the entry price is the highest of the self-serve options, and it is also the cheapest per prompt. See the next section.
Profound
Reported from around $499, demo-led. The $99 Starter and $399 Growth self-serve tiers were withdrawn in September 2026. Differentiators include prompt volume data derived from consumer panels, agent analytics and a shopping module.
Suits: enterprise teams with budget and governance requirements. Widely treated as the category leader on depth.
Watch for: no self-serve route, annual commitment, and pricing not published. The prompt volume intelligence is genuinely hard to replicate, which is the main reason to pay enterprise rates.
Athena HQ
Free tier, then around $295 a month. Worth knowing purely for the free tier, which gives you something to start with at no cost.
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit
About $99 per domain a month, around 25 prompts, separate from core Semrush plans.
Suits: teams already paying for Semrush who want AI visibility without a new vendor.
Watch for: per-domain pricing, which becomes punishing for agencies and multi-brand groups, and the lowest prompt allowance of the main options.
Ahrefs Brand Radar
From about $398. Same logic as Semrush: cheapest route if the parent subscription already exists.
Smaller and newer options
AIClicks from around $59, LLMrefs at around $79 flat for a large prompt allowance, Rank Prompt from around $49, and Evertune from around $800 at the enterprise end. Less established, and worth a look if prompt volume per pound is your main constraint.
Comparison table
Tool | Entry price | Prompts at entry | Engines | Billing | Trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Otterly.ai | ~$29 | ~15 | 4 | Monthly | Yes |
Rank Prompt | ~$49 | Varies | 6 | Monthly | Varies |
AIClicks | ~$59 | Varies | Varies | Monthly | Varies |
LLMrefs | ~$79 flat | ~500 | Varies | Monthly | Varies |
Peec AI | ~€85 to $95 | ~50 | 3 of 6 | Monthly, annual discount | Yes |
Semrush AI Visibility | ~$99 per domain | ~25 | 5 | Annual | No |
Scrunch AI | ~$250 to $300 | ~350 | 4 to 7 | Monthly option | Yes |
Athena HQ | Free, then ~$295 | Varies | Varies | Monthly | Free tier |
Ahrefs Brand Radar | ~$398 | Varies | 6 | On top of Ahrefs | No |
Profound | ~$499 reported, demo-led | Custom | Broad | Annual, enterprise | Demo only |
Evertune | ~$800 | Custom | Varies | Enterprise | Demo |
Reading this
The order by headline price is not the order by value. Otterly at the top of the table offers 15 prompts; Scrunch at $250 offers around 350. That is the comparison the next section makes properly.
What the table does not capture
Missing | Why it matters |
|---|---|
Accuracy | Not published by anyone, and only testable by you |
Whether full answer text is stored | The difference between diagnosing and observing |
Runs per prompt per period | Your sample size, and therefore your variance |
Seat limits | Changes team economics |
Export terms | Your switching cost |
Those five decide whether a tool is any good, and none of them appears on a pricing page. Ask for each in writing during the trial.
A note on engine counts
Treat the engines column as informational rather than a ranking. More engines is better only if your buyers use them. Check your own analytics for AI referrers and ask your sales team which assistants customers mention before paying for breadth.
Cost per tracked prompt
The single most useful calculation in this comparison, and the one almost nobody runs.
Cost per tracked prompt =
all-in monthly fee / prompts included
(with every engine you need enabled)At published entry tiers
Tool | Entry price | Prompts | Cost per prompt |
|---|---|---|---|
Scrunch AI | ~$300 | ~350 | ~$0.86 |
Peec AI | ~$95 | ~50 | ~$1.90 |
Otterly.ai | ~$29 | ~15 | ~$1.93 |
Profound (former Starter) | ~$99 | ~50 | ~$1.98 |
Semrush AI Visibility | ~$99 | ~25 | ~$3.96 |
Scrunch has the highest entry price and the lowest cost per prompt, by a factor of more than four against Semrush. Otterly has the lowest entry price and sits mid-range per prompt.
That inversion is why the headline price is close to useless as a comparison.
At a realistic volume
Most teams tracking seriously want 100 or more prompts. Here is what that costs.
Tool | Tier for ~100 prompts | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|---|
Otterly.ai | Standard | ~$189 | ~$2,268 |
Semrush | $99 plus add-ons | ~$189 | ~$2,268 |
Peec AI | Second tier | ~$245 | ~$2,940 |
Scrunch AI | Core covers ~350 | ~$250 to $300 | ~$3,000 to $3,600 |
Profound | Enterprise | ~$499 and up | $6,000 and up |
At a hundred prompts the self-serve options cluster between roughly $2,300 and $3,600 annually. That is a much narrower spread than the entry prices suggest, which means accuracy and answer depth should decide it rather than price.
The rule
If two tools are within about $1,500 a year of each other, pick on accuracy and actionability. If one is substantially cheaper and matches your manual spot checks, take the saving.
Run it with your own numbers
Your prompt count and engine requirements are the inputs. Do the division before any demo, and bring the result to the conversation. Vendors rarely present their pricing this way, and asking them to tends to produce a more useful discussion than a feature walkthrough.
Which to pick
Matched to situation rather than ranked, because the right answer differs more by circumstance than by product quality.
Your situation | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
Small team, first tool, tight budget | Otterly.ai Standard | Cheapest credible route at a usable prompt volume |
Mid-market, want self-serve and transparency | Peec AI | The common default. Published pricing, unlimited seats, month to month |
Want maximum prompts per pound | Scrunch AI | Lowest cost per prompt, plus site audits |
Already pay for Semrush | Semrush AI Visibility | No new vendor, unless you are multi-domain |
Already pay for Ahrefs | Brand Radar | Same logic |
Agency, several clients | Peec AI | Published agency pricing and workspace support. Avoid per-domain models |
Enterprise, budget and governance | Profound | Prompt volume intelligence is genuinely hard to match |
Multiple brands and markets | Scrunch or Profound | Prompt volume economics dominate at this scale |
Want to start at zero cost | Athena HQ free tier | Something rather than nothing |
Under 50 prompts, one brand | None yet | Manual checking is sufficient and free |
The two most common situations
A mid-market B2B team buying their first tool. Peec AI or Otterly Standard. Both are self-serve, both publish pricing, and the difference between them at your volume is likely smaller than the difference accuracy testing will reveal. Trial both.
An agency. Peec AI, specifically because of published agency pricing and seat terms. Avoid anything priced per domain, which becomes unworkable across a client portfolio.
Before you commit
Whichever you favour, run the twenty-prompt accuracy check during the trial and ask to see one lost prompt end to end. Those two steps take about ninety minutes and they are the only inputs in this whole comparison that come from your own brand rather than from a vendor's marketing.
If the shortlist is close
Take the one with better export terms. In a category this young, the ability to leave with your measurement history intact is worth more than a modest feature advantage, and this year demonstrated why.
The free alternatives
These belong in every stack permanently, whether or not you buy anything.
Tool | What it covers | Cost |
|---|---|---|
Google Search Console | Query data, impressions and clicks, plus the generative AI performance report covering AI Overviews and AI Mode | Free |
Manual prompt checking | Full answers across any assistant, read by a person | Free, ~2 hours monthly |
Your server logs | Which AI crawlers reached you and what status they got | Free, already yours |
Google Analytics | Sessions and conversions, including AI referrers where they pass one | Free |
Athena HQ free tier | Basic tracked visibility | Free |
Google Business Profile insights | Calls, views and direction requests by location | Free |
The Search Console point
Its generative AI performance report is first-party data about your own site on Google's AI surfaces. No paid tool can give you a better version of that, because they are estimating what Search Console measures.
If you take one thing from this article, connect Search Console before buying anything.
The manual method, properly
Twenty prompts, five runs each, three assistants, spread across a day, logged with the date and the prompt set version. Record whether you were named, whether you were cited, and which competitors appeared.
At around two hours a month this is genuinely sustainable up to roughly fifty prompts, and it gives you something no tool does: the full answers, read by someone who understands your product and notices when a competitor is described more warmly.
The logs point
If AI crawlers cannot reach your pages, every paid tool will faithfully report that you are not cited, and none will tell you why.
Filter your logs by user agent, check the status codes, and resolve any blocks before spending anything. This is the most common cause of invisibility and the cheapest to fix.
What free does not cover
Automated tracking at scale, trend charts across many prompts, competitor monitoring across a portfolio, and the audit trail that stakeholders want. Those are what you are buying when you buy, and they are worth paying for once manual checking stops being practical.
What none of them do
Worth stating, because claims to the contrary circulate widely in this category.
Not possible | Why |
|---|---|
Observe real user conversations | Nobody has that access. Every tool samples prompts you chose |
Edit or influence training data | Training corpora are assembled by model providers. No third party writes to them |
Measure your position in a model's vector space | Commercial embedding spaces are not externally accessible |
Guarantee you appear in an answer | No mechanism exists to place a brand in a generated response |
Submit a correction for a hallucination | There is no correction channel. You address the sources instead |
Remove the variance | Answers differ between runs. Good tools sample enough to give you a rate and a range |
What they also do not do
Write the pages, fix the crawler block, correct the directory listing, or ship the rendering change. Every finding becomes work for a person, running 25 to 70 hours a month depending on volume.
That is the largest cost in any AI visibility programme and no subscription reduces it. If nobody is assigned to that work, the tool will produce a chart and a renewal question.
The claim to watch for
Any vendor or agency saying they can inject your brand into training sets, retrain a model's understanding, or guarantee recommendations is describing something nobody can deliver.
It is worth treating as a signal about the rest of their claims rather than just an isolated overstatement.
What they genuinely do
Sample prompts consistently, detect your brand and competitors, store answers and citations, and show you trends over time. Done well, that converts into a weekly list of specific prompts you lost and why.
That is a real and useful job. It is simply narrower than the marketing in this category suggests.
Six mistakes when choosing
1. Comparing headline prices. Otterly at $29 and Scrunch at $250 look four hundred percent apart and are not, once you divide by prompts. Convert everything to cost per tracked prompt at your real volume before you shortlist.
2. Skipping the accuracy check. Vendor data is presented confidently and is occasionally wrong. Twenty manual prompts during the trial, recorded as a match rate, is the only input in your evaluation that comes from your own brand.
3. Buying on engine count. Nine engines sounds better than four and is worse value if your buyers use two. Check your referral data and ask sales before paying for breadth.
4. Buying before anyone is assigned to act. Execution runs 25 to 70 hours a month. If you cannot name who does it, you are buying a dashboard rather than a programme.
5. Ignoring export terms. Your measurement history is the one thing you cannot rebuild. Negotiate machine-readable export with a retention window at signature, when it costs the vendor nothing to agree.
6. Paying for what Google gives you. Search Console's generative AI report is first-party data about your own site. No paid tool improves on it, and several charge for estimates of it.
The pattern
Four of six come from evaluating the product rather than your own situation. The gate at the top of this article prevents most of them, and it costs nothing to run.
The one with lasting consequences
Mistake two. Every other item costs you money or convenience. A tool that undercounts biases every figure you report in a consistent direction, which is far harder to notice and far more likely to drive a wrong decision.
An hour of manual checking during a trial is the cheapest insurance available in this category.
FAQs
What are the best AI search visibility tools in 2026?
Peec AI from about $95 is the common mid-market choice, Otterly.ai from about $29 the cheapest credible entry, and Scrunch AI from about $250 the best value per prompt. Profound remains the enterprise option but withdrew its self-serve tiers in September 2026.
How much should I expect to pay?
At a realistic hundred-prompt volume, the self-serve options cluster between roughly $2,300 and $3,600 a year. Enterprise starts around $6,000. Compare on cost per tracked prompt rather than entry price, since allowances vary far more than fees.
What happened to Profound's cheaper plans?
The $99 Starter and $399 Growth self-serve tiers were reportedly withdrawn in September 2026, moving to a demo-led enterprise motion with entry pricing reported around $499. Verify directly with Profound, since this changed recently.
Do I need one if I already use Semrush or Ahrefs?
Their bundled modules are the cheapest route if you already pay for the parent product. Semrush AI Visibility runs about $99 per domain with around 25 prompts, which punishes agencies and multi-brand groups. Ahrefs Brand Radar starts around $398.
What is the most important thing to test in a trial?
Accuracy. Take twenty prompts, check them manually against the tool's data, and record the match rate. No vendor does this for you, and a tool that undercounts produces a confident wrong picture for as long as you keep it.
Can I do this without paying?
Up to about fifty prompts, yes. Twenty prompts, five runs each, across three assistants, logged in a spreadsheet, takes around two hours monthly. Connect Google Search Console too, since its generative AI report is first-party data no tool improves on.
What should I avoid?
Per-domain pricing if you manage several brands, buying on engine count rather than the engines your buyers use, and committing before you have negotiated machine-readable data export with a retention window after cancellation.
Will a tool improve my AI visibility?
No. It measures. Acting on what it surfaces costs 25 to 70 hours a month across content, engineering and marketing ops. Confirm who does that work before buying, or the subscription produces a chart and nothing else.
Choosing one
Run the gate first. Under fifty prompts with one brand, manual checking is free and sufficient, and finding that out costs twenty minutes rather than a year of subscription.
If you are past it, shortlist two, convert both to cost per tracked prompt at your real volume, and spend ninety minutes in the trials on the only tests that matter: twenty prompts checked manually against their data, and one lost prompt shown end to end.
The short answer by situation
First tool, small budget: Otterly.ai Standard
Mid-market, want transparency: Peec AI
Most prompts per pound: Scrunch AI
Already on Semrush or Ahrefs: their bundled module
Agency: Peec AI, and avoid per-domain pricing
Enterprise: Profound
Under 50 prompts: none of them yet
Before you sign
Negotiate machine-readable export of your full history with a stated retention window after cancellation. It costs the vendor nothing at signature and determines how trapped you feel in two years, which this category demonstrated is a live risk.
If the gap turns out to be production
Most teams who measure properly discover the same thing: they know which prompts they lose and cannot produce the pages to win them. That is a content constraint rather than a measurement one, and Blazly SEO covers research, planning, drafting and direct publishing from about $39 a month.
It does not track prompts, so it sits alongside whichever tool you pick rather than replacing it.
Summary
Peec AI from around $95 is the usual mid-market answer, Otterly.ai from around $29 the cheapest credible start, Scrunch AI from around $250 the best value per tracked prompt, and Profound the enterprise option now that its self-serve tiers have gone. Compare on cost per prompt rather than headline price, because at published entry tiers that ranges from under a dollar to nearly four and reverses the apparent order. Test accuracy yourself with twenty manual prompts during any trial, since no vendor publishes it and errors there bias everything downstream. Keep Search Console and your server logs underneath whatever you buy. And remember the subscription is the small number: acting on the findings is where the real cost sits.