AEO Tools Compared: 13 AI Visibility Trackers and Checkers (2026)

What is the best AEO tool in 2026?

There is no single best AEO tool. The right one depends on whether you need a free one-time check or ongoing tracking, how many AI engines you monitor, and your budget. For a fast free read, use HubSpot's AI Search Grader or our free checker. For paid multi-engine tracking, Profound, Scrunch, Peec AI, and AthenaHQ lead.

Use the builder below to cherry-pick any two to four tools and line them up on the rows that matter: category, engines covered, free tier, pricing, and who each one is for. It loads with our free checker, Profound, and AirOps; swap any column to compare a different pairing, such as Profound vs AirOps or Scrunch vs Otterly.

How the categories differ

Checkers and graders give a one-time snapshot: paste a brand or URL, get a score and a list of gaps. Free, fast, no ongoing tracking. Best before you buy. (Stratezik AEO Checker, HubSpot AI Search Grader.)

Trackers and monitors run a set of prompts on a schedule and chart your mentions, citations, sentiment, and share of voice against competitors over time. This is what most "AEO tools" are. (Profound, Scrunch, Otterly, Peec AI, AthenaHQ, Meltwater GenAI Lens, LLM Pulse.)

SEO suites with an AI add-on bolt AI-visibility tracking onto a full traditional-SEO platform, so one login covers backlinks, keywords, and AI answers. (Conductor, Ahrefs Brand Radar, SE Ranking.)

Content platforms with AI insights add tracking to a content-production workflow, so you can act on gaps by publishing, not just watch them. (AirOps, and AthenaHQ's optimization layer.)

All 13 AEO tools at a glance

The table below carries every tool's verified specifics in one place: category, engines, free tier, starting price, and who it is for. It scrolls sideways on narrow screens.

Per-tool honest reviews

Each tool below gets its real strengths and one honest catch. Prices and engine lists were checked on the vendor's own site in August 2026.

Stratezik AEO Checker (free)

Our own free, no-signup checker fetches a page the way an AI crawler does and tests the things that actually decide citations: whether the page renders without JavaScript, whether OAI-SearchBot is allowed and the site is in Bing, and whether schema and answer-first structure are present. It returns the specific gaps, not just a number. Honest catch: it is a single-page diagnostic, not a tracker, so pair it with one of the monitors below if you need ongoing measurement.

HubSpot AI Search Grader (free)

Enter a brand name and get a composite score out of 100 across sentiment, presence quality, brand recognition, share of voice, and market competition, in about two minutes, no login. It covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Honest catch: no Google AI Overviews or Claude, and it is a one-time grade, not monitoring. Ongoing tracking is a separate paid HubSpot product whose price is not shown on the grader page.

Profound

The reference-grade tracker for larger brands. Starter ($99/mo billed yearly, 50 prompts) covers ChatGPT only; Growth ($399/mo, 100 prompts) adds Perplexity and Google AI Overviews; Enterprise reaches up to nine platforms including Claude, Gemini, Grok, Copilot, Meta AI, and DeepSeek. Strong on sentiment and prompt tracking, with exports, API, SSO, and SOC2 up-tier. Honest catch: single-engine at the entry price, and full multi-engine coverage is an enterprise spend.

Scrunch AI

A tracker that also audits your pages, so it tells you both where you stand and what to fix. Starter is $250/mo billed annually ($300 month-to-month): 3 seats, 350 custom prompts, 1,000 industry prompts, buyer personas, and 5 page audits; Growth is $417/mo annually. It covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, and Meta. Honest catch: per-tier Claude availability is ambiguous (the pricing page lists Claude among monitored engines; one third-party review says Enterprise-only), so confirm before buying on that basis.

AirOps

Less a tracker, more an agentic content platform with a visibility layer: track citations and share of voice, then research, refresh, and publish optimized content to WordPress, Webflow, or Shopify in the same workflow. It has a genuine perpetual free Insights tier ($0/mo, 1,000 tasks) and a 14-day full trial. Honest catch: the recommended Pro tier's price is not published, and its slider-driven pricing page shows fewer engines and no dollar figure on the entry tiers, so budget and exact engine coverage are hard to pin down without a sales conversation.

Otterly.ai

The cheapest credible on-ramp to real tracking. Lite is $29/mo (15 prompts); Standard is $189/mo (100 prompts, their most popular); Premium is $489/mo (400 prompts). All tiers include ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Copilot, with Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Claude as paid add-ons. Honest catch: the low entry price buys very few prompts, and headline engines like Claude cost extra on every tier.

Peec AI

Affordable daily tracking with unlimited seats on every plan and a native MCP server to pipe live data into Claude, Cursor, or n8n. Starter is roughly €89/mo. Honest catch: below Enterprise you can only track three engines at once out of the six offered, so multi-engine buyers hit a ceiling fast. And Peec's pricing page is JavaScript-gated: the tiers render but the prices do not, so that Starter figure comes from third-party listings (about €85 to €89), not a number we could read on the vendor's own page. Confirm it before you buy.

AthenaHQ

One of the few tools with a genuinely free tier that also gives you fixes, not just numbers. Essential is free (300 credits, unlimited members, prompt and response analysis, competitor insights, content recommendations, and the Athena agent); Starter is $295/mo ($245 billed annually, 3,600 credits, up to nine models). It adds hallucination ("Oracle") detection and content recommendations tied to extractable passages, with GA4, Shopify, and Webflow integrations. Honest catch: paid credits deplete with use, so heavy tracking can outrun the tier.

Meltwater GenAI Lens

An enterprise play: AI-visibility scoring unified with Meltwater's news monitoring and social listening, covering 10-plus models (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, DeepSeek, and more) with a composite Visibility Score refreshed roughly every day or two. Honest catch: no free tier, not self-serve, and pricing is genuinely not public. It makes sense mainly if you already buy Meltwater.

LLM Pulse

Prompt-level tracking at the lowest published entry point (€49/mo weekly-tracking Starter, 50 prompts). Growth (€99) adds sentiment; Scale (€299) adds competitor comparison, AI-traffic analytics, GEO testing, and MCP. Daily-tracking versions cost more, and there are higher Scale+ and Scale++ tiers (€599 and €1,199). It covers five core engines on every tier, with Claude available as a paid add-on. Honest catch: the cheapest plans track weekly, not daily, and any engine beyond the core five, Claude included, costs extra.

Conductor

An enterprise SEO platform that folds AI-answer visibility into content generation and 24/7 site monitoring, so AI share of voice sits next to traffic and conversions. Honest catch: there is no public rate card and no free tier; it is sold as custom annual contracts through sales. Conductor names these engines across several of its own pages rather than in one place, and third-party cost estimates vary enormously and should not be treated as vendor figures.

Ahrefs Brand Radar

If you already live in Ahrefs, this adds AI-visibility tracking grounded in real search-demand prompts rather than synthetic questions, across Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and Grok, plus YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok source tracking. A free AI Visibility Checker previews before you subscribe. Honest catch: Brand Radar is sold per engine (about $199/mo each, or $699/mo for all six) on top of an Ahrefs base plan (from $129/mo), and Ahrefs' own pages disagree on the finer numbers, so confirm on the pricing page before you budget.

SE Ranking AI Visibility Tracker

Affordable daily AI tracking bundled inside a full traditional-SEO toolkit, covering ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and AI Overviews, with source ranking, competitor research, cached AI responses, and a conventional-versus-AI side-by-side. A free checker allows five checks a day. Honest catch: the AI tracker's exact price is not on the product page; third-party reviews put the AI Search add-on around $89/mo on top of core plans, so verify before you commit.

Head-to-head comparisons

Profound vs AirOps

Different tools for different jobs. Profound is a pure, deep tracker: it tells you precisely where you stand across engines, with strong sentiment and enterprise controls, but you act on its findings elsewhere. AirOps is a content platform that happens to track: weaker as a standalone monitor at entry tiers, but it closes the loop by letting you research and publish fixes in the same place, and it has a free tier where Profound has none. Pick Profound to measure rigorously; pick AirOps to measure and act. Budget note: Profound's prices are public ($99 to $399/mo before enterprise); AirOps' Pro price is not.

Scrunch vs Otterly

Both are trackers, but they sit at opposite ends. Otterly is the budget on-ramp ($29/mo entry) with few prompts and Claude as a paid add-on. Scrunch starts far higher ($250/mo) but includes multi-persona prompts, competitor share of voice, and page-level audits, so it suits agencies managing several brands. If you are one small business testing the water, choose Otterly. If you are an agency that needs audits and personas, choose Scrunch.

Peec AI vs AthenaHQ

Close on price and daily tracking, but AthenaHQ has two edges: a genuinely free tier and content recommendations (fixes, not just numbers), plus up to nine models. Peec's catch is the three-engines-at-once cap below Enterprise and Claude being Enterprise-only. Peec's edge is unlimited seats on every plan and a native MCP server for piping data into Claude or n8n. Choose AthenaHQ if you want a free start and actionable fixes; choose Peec if you value seats and MCP workflows and can live within three engines.

Free checkers: Stratezik vs HubSpot

Both are free and need no signup. HubSpot grades a brand's reputation across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini and returns a 100-point score with sentiment weighting. Stratezik's checker instead audits a specific page's technical citability: no-JS render, OAI-SearchBot access, Bing presence, and schema, returning concrete gaps to fix. Use HubSpot to see how AI describes your brand; use Stratezik to see why a page is or is not getting cited. They answer different questions, so many teams run both.

SEO-suite add-ons: Ahrefs Brand Radar vs SE Ranking

If you want AI tracking inside a tool you already use for SEO, both fit. Ahrefs leans on real search-demand prompts and the widest engine list (six, plus social sources), sold per engine on top of a base Ahrefs plan, so the combined cost runs higher. SE Ranking is the more affordable daily tracker (AI add-on around $89/mo on top of core) covering five engines. Choose Ahrefs if you want prompt realism and breadth; choose SE Ranking if you want daily tracking on a smaller budget.

How to choose by situation

• You want a free read before spending anything: the Stratezik AEO Checker (page citability) or HubSpot AI Search Grader (brand score). AthenaHQ and AirOps also have real free tiers for ongoing use.
• You are a solo marketer or small business on a budget: Otterly.ai ($29/mo) or LLM Pulse (€49/mo) for the cheapest paid tracking; AthenaHQ's free Essential to start.
• You are an agency managing multiple brands: Scrunch (personas and audits) or Peec AI (unlimited seats).
• You want tracking and content production together: AirOps or AthenaHQ.
• You are an enterprise unifying AI and traditional SEO: Conductor, or Ahrefs Brand Radar and SE Ranking if you already use those suites.
• You are a PR or comms team already in Meltwater: GenAI Lens.
• You need the deepest multi-engine monitoring and can pay for it: Profound (Enterprise) or Meltwater GenAI Lens.

How we verified this

We checked each tool against its own pricing and product pages in August 2026, and corroborated with 2026 third-party reviews only where a vendor page was silent. Where a price or engine detail is third-party sourced or gated behind sales, we label it "not public" or note the source rather than presenting a guess as fact. Prices change and vendors reshuffle tiers often, so confirm the current number on the vendor's site before you buy. We do not accept payment from any tool listed here, and we include our own free checker with the same honest caveats we apply to everyone else: it is a single-page diagnostic, not a tracker.

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