Quick verdict: after comparing pricing, engine coverage, and depth across the leading platforms, the best AI visibility tools in 2026 are Otterly.AI for solo marketers and small teams (from ~$29/mo), Peec AI for mid-market teams that need serious share-of-voice analytics, and Profound for enterprises (from ~$99/mo for ChatGPT-only, ~$399/mo multi-engine). If you already pay for Semrush, SE Ranking, or Ahrefs, their AI visibility add-ons are the pragmatic choice. And if you just want a free baseline before spending anything, run our free AI Visibility Checker first.

How we compared these tools (and why this list is different)

Almost every “best AI visibility tools” list you’ll find is published by a company that sells one of the tools on it — and their own product is reliably ranked first. We don’t sell a paid visibility tracker; we build free checkers. So this comparison is organized around the questions a buyer actually has: what does it really cost at the tier you’d actually need, which AI engines does it genuinely track, how many prompts can you monitor, and does it help you act on the data or just stare at it. Pricing below is what vendors published as of August 2026 — this market reprices constantly, so treat these as the right ballpark and confirm before you buy.

AI visibility tools compared

Tool	Entry price (Aug 2026)	Engines tracked	Best for
Otterly.AI	~$29/mo	ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, AI Overviews	Solo marketers, SMBs
Rankscale	~€20/mo	17+ incl. Grok, DeepSeek, Mistral	Budget + broadest coverage
Peec AI	~€75–90/mo	ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, AI Overviews	Mid-market teams
Profound	~$99/mo (ChatGPT only); ~$399/mo multi-engine	3+ on Growth	Enterprise, regulated industries
Scrunch AI	~$250/mo	4–9 by tier	Enterprise with dev resources
Evertune	~$800/mo	All major engines	Statistical rigor at scale
AthenaHQ	Free tier; ~$295/mo	5–9 by tier	Automation and attribution
Semrush AI Toolkit	~$99/mo per domain	5 incl. AI Mode	Existing Semrush users
SE Ranking (SE Visible)	~$99/mo	ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews	Existing SE Ranking users
Ahrefs Brand Radar	from ~$199/mo plans	Major engines	Existing Ahrefs users

The best AI visibility tools in detail

1. Otterly.AI — best entry point for small teams

Otterly is the most accessible way to start monitoring AI search: around $29/month gets you brand-mention tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, and Google AI Overviews, with change alerts and simple competitive comparison. The trade-off is analytical depth — sentiment and share-of-voice live on higher tiers or not at all, and there’s no “action layer” telling you what to fix. For a first paid step after you’ve run a free baseline, it’s hard to argue with the price.

2. Rankscale — broadest engine coverage per dollar

Rankscale’s credit-based plans start around €20/month and reach an unusually wide set of engines — 17+, including Grok, DeepSeek, and Mistral that most competitors skip. Its AI Readiness Score audits your pages against 200+ checkpoints and tells you what to remediate, which most monitoring-only tools don’t attempt. It’s a smaller company with a still-maturing feature set, but for coverage per dollar nothing else comes close.

3. Peec AI — best for mid-market teams

Peec has been the fastest-growing challenger in this category, with prompt-centered analytics, sentiment tracking, and source attribution across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and AI Overviews. Entry pricing has hovered around €75–90/month but has been repricing rapidly as the product moves upmarket. Its weakness is the same as most of the category: strong measurement, limited built-in guidance on what to do about it.

4. Profound — the enterprise benchmark

Profound is the market leader with Fortune 500 clients, SOC 2 and HIPAA compliance, and the deepest research layer — conversation exploration, agent analytics, and industry prompt libraries. Know what you’re buying at each tier: the ~$99/month starter tracks ChatGPT only, and multi-engine tracking starts around $399/month billed yearly. If you’re in a regulated industry, it’s effectively the default choice; if you’re an SMB, you’re paying for depth you may not use.

5. Scrunch AI — for teams optimizing for AI agents, not just answers

Scrunch (acquired by Sitecore) goes beyond monitoring with an agent-experience layer that serves optimized content to AI crawlers and bots. Core plans run about $250/month for 125 prompts across four engines. It’s genuinely differentiated, but you need engineering capacity to get value from the delivery features — this is an enterprise tool, not a dashboard subscription.

6. Evertune — statistical rigor for high-stakes categories

Evertune runs over a million prompts monthly and separates what models “know” from training data versus what they retrieve from live search — a distinction that matters enormously for diagnosing why you’re invisible. At roughly $800/month it’s priced for brands in high-consideration categories (finance, healthcare, B2B software) where a single AI recommendation is worth real money.

7. AthenaHQ — best for automation and attribution

AthenaHQ pairs monitoring with an action center, automated content generation, and Shopify/GA4 integrations for revenue attribution — the closest any tool comes to closing the loop between “we’re not cited” and “here’s the fix, and here’s what it earned.” A free essential tier lets you evaluate before committing to the ~$295/month starter.

8–10. Semrush, SE Ranking, and Ahrefs — the add-on route

All three legacy SEO platforms now ship AI visibility modules: Semrush’s AI Toolkit (~$99/month per domain, including Google AI Mode tracking), SE Ranking’s SE Visible (~$99/month for 200 prompts, with AI data blended into its rank tracker), and Ahrefs Brand Radar (bundled into plans from ~$199/month). None match the dedicated tools for engine breadth or prompt depth — but if your team already lives in one of these platforms, an add-on you’ll actually check daily beats a standalone tool you won’t. Start there, and graduate to a dedicated platform when you outgrow it.

Free ways to check your AI visibility

Before paying for anything, establish a baseline. Our AI Visibility Checker reports how often assistants mention your brand versus competitors, the AI Overview Checker shows which of your keywords trigger Google AI Overviews and who gets cited, and the ChatGPT Rank Tracker monitors citations over time. HubSpot’s free AEO Grader is also a reasonable one-time audit, though it covers a single engine and doesn’t track changes.

How to choose

Match the tool to your situation rather than the feature list. Solo or small team: baseline free, then Otterly or Rankscale. Mid-market with competitors to beat: Peec or AthenaHQ. Enterprise or regulated: Profound, with Evertune where statistical confidence matters. Already paying for an SEO suite: switch on its AI module first. Whatever you pick, the tool only measures — moving the numbers is optimization work, and our LLM SEO guide covers exactly what to do once you can see where you stand. For the fundamentals of the metric itself, see what AI visibility is and how it’s measured.

Frequently asked questions

What is an AI visibility tool?

Software that systematically queries AI engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews — with prompts relevant to your business, then reports how often your brand is mentioned or cited, how you compare to competitors, and how that changes over time.

Do I actually need a paid tool?

Not on day one. Start with a free baseline; pay for tracking when you’re actively working to improve visibility and need to measure whether it’s working. Monitoring without an optimization effort behind it is a dashboard, not a strategy.

How much do AI visibility tools cost?

As of August 2026 the market spans roughly €20/month (Rankscale) to $800+/month (Evertune), with the practical sweet spot for most teams between $29 and $99/month. Watch for two pricing gotchas: engine coverage that shrinks at lower tiers, and prompt limits that force upgrades faster than you’d expect.

Which AI engines matter most to track?

Google AI Overviews (they sit on top of your existing search demand), ChatGPT (largest assistant audience), and Perplexity (high-intent researchers). Broader coverage — Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Grok — matters more as your audience skews technical or enterprise.