Best AEO Tools in 2026: 12 AI Visibility Platforms Ranked and Priced

Your buyers are asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews for recommendations before they ever open a search results page, and most companies have no systematic way to know whether they get mentioned. AEO tools (also called AI visibility or GEO platforms) close that gap: they run your brand's likely buyer questions against the major AI engines on a schedule and show you whether you're cited, how often, and who's winning the mention instead.

This guide ranks 12 real monitoring and optimization platforms: Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.ai, Scrunch, Rankscale, Trakkr, AthenaHQ, Goodie, Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit, Ahrefs Brand Radar, HubSpot's AEO product, and Conductor.

Key Facts

Analyzing 1.4 million real ChatGPT prompts, Ahrefs found the model cites only about half the URLs it retrieves (49.98%), and 88.46% of what it cites traces back to organic search results, not the model's own training data (Ahrefs).
Only about 12% of the links ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot cite also appear in Google's own top 10 for the same question, meaning strong SEO rankings don't reliably predict AI citation (Ahrefs).
Wikipedia and Reddit alone account for more than 25% of all US ChatGPT citations, per a 5W Public Relations audit of roughly 600,000 citation events in early 2026 (PR Newswire).
Google searchers click an actual website just 8% of the time when an AI summary appears in results, versus 15% when it doesn't (Pew Research Center).
AI search referral traffic rose 527% year over year, from roughly 17,000 to 107,000 tracked sessions, though it's still a small slice of total web traffic for most sites (Semrush).
The average AI-referred visitor converts at 4.4 times the value of a typical organic visitor, and almost 70% of businesses using AI inside their SEO workflow report higher ROI (Semrush).

Quick Comparison Table

Tool	Best For	Starting Price	Key Strength	Key Limitation
Profound	Enterprises wanting an AI agent, not a dashboard	Free trial; Enterprise custom	"AI Marketer" that researches, writes, and reports	No self-serve paid tier at any price
AthenaHQ	Mid-market teams wanting credit flexibility	Free (trial credit); Starter $295/mo (monthly rate)	3,600 monthly credits, 11+ platforms, discrepancy detection	Free tier's credits are a one-time grant, not ongoing
Scrunch (owned by Sitecore)	Teams wanting monitoring plus an AI-readable site layer	$300/mo ($250/mo annual), US-served page	Agent Experience Platform serves LLM-readable pages	Nothing under $250/mo, and the pricing layout differs by region
Trakkr	Small teams wanting a playbook, not a dashboard	$100/mo	All 8 AI models included, no per-engine upsell	Entry tier covers 1 brand only
Rankscale	Budget buyers wanting the widest engine coverage	$20/mo (Essentials, annual)	17+ AI engines, no per-engine add-on fees (credits are weighted per engine)	Essentials credit allotment isn't published
Otterly.ai	Cheapest self-serve plan with all 4 core engines	$29/mo (Lite)	Transparent per-engine add-on pricing	Only 15 prompts on Lite; most need Standard at $189/mo
Peec AI	Agencies managing several brand accounts	$95 / $245 / $495	Dedicated trackers per engine plus AI Mode	Prompt-metered: 50 / 150 / 350 prompts by tier
Goodie	Brands and agencies wanting AI-drafted content tied to monitoring	Core $399/mo, Pro $999/mo, agency Growth $275/mo (all annual billing)	AEO Writer drafts content from the gaps it finds	Pro and Enterprise are demo-gated; Core's limits are tight for the price
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit (an Adobe company)	Teams already on Semrush	$99/mo per domain (annual)	4-engine tracking in a platform you likely pay for	25 prompts included; extra prompts +50 for $60/mo
Ahrefs Brand Radar	Teams already on Ahrefs	From $50/mo (Custom Prompts)	Prompt allowances scale with an Ahrefs plan	Bundled into SEO tiers, not a clean standalone unit
HubSpot AEO	A genuinely free first look	Free grader; $50/mo ($45/mo annual)	Free 25-prompt trial, no card, no HubSpot needed	Tracks only 3 engines by default in what we found
Conductor	A free AI check before a platform decision	Not published (free checker available)	Free AI Visibility Analysis tool, no account	Every paid tier routes to a trial, demo, or call

What a Real Scenario Actually Costs

Headline prices hide the real question: what does it cost to track one brand, 50 prompts, across four AI engines, every month? We ran that scenario against all 12 vendors. Two can't be priced at all because they publish no base price; two more can only be partially computed because the vendor doesn't sell by prompt count or doesn't publish a rate for extra prompts.

Vendor	Can this scenario be priced?	Monthly cost	Why
Otterly.ai	Yes	$189 (monthly) / $160 (annual)	Standard tier covers 100 prompts across exactly the 4 core engines
Rankscale	Yes	$99	Pro's 1,200 credits track up to 4,800 engine checks at the lowest 0.25-credit engine weight (Claude costs 2 credits a check); Essentials ($20) may also cover it, but its credit count isn't published
Trakkr	Yes	$100	Growth tier includes 50 prompts tracked daily across 8 available engines
Scrunch	Yes	$300 (monthly) / $250 (annual), US-served page	Starter's 350 custom prompts and 7 tracked platforms clear it with room left
AthenaHQ	Yes, on the paid tier	$295 (monthly rate)	Starter's 3,600 credits cover it at 1 credit per AI response, but 50 prompts across 4 engines is 200 responses a run, so that funds about 18 runs a month: weekly checks fit, daily ones don't
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit	Yes, with a prompt pack	$159 ($99 plus a $60 pack of 50 extra prompts)	Covers the prompt count with the +50 pack from Semrush's knowledge base; the pricing page names 4 engines, though the knowledge base's engine list is less specific
Ahrefs Brand Radar	Partially	~$199 (AI Visibility Index)	Prompt allowances are bundled into Ahrefs's SEO tiers (5 to 83+); the Index is the cleanest fit above 50, but assumes the wider Ahrefs platform
HubSpot AEO	Partially	$50 ($45 annual)	Covers only 3 of 4 engines by default; extra prompts beyond 25 have no published rate
Profound	No	No base price	No self-serve tier at any volume; only a custom Enterprise quote past the trial
Peec AI	Yes	$130 ($95 Starter plus a $35 add-on model)	Starter's 50 prompts clear the volume and its 3 selectable models plus one paid add-on model make 4 engines; extra models are $35 / $85 / $165 a month by tier
Goodie	Yes	$399 (annual billing)	Core's 120 prompts and 5 tracked models cover the scenario with room left
Conductor	No	Not published	No price published on any of its three tiers

Scenario: 1 brand, 50 tracked prompts, 4 AI engines, billed monthly.

One caveat on Ahrefs: the Brand Radar page served us figures in euros (47 and 179 a month) on a fresh fetch, while the vendor has separately quoted USD figures (50 and 199) elsewhere. That reads like currency geo-detection rather than two prices (a later check on October 5 served pounds), so confirm what your own region sees before budgeting. Ahrefs also publishes an Enterprise price of $1,499 a month with an annual commitment.

For a reader on a small budget, "no base price" on Profound and Conductor isn't neutral: demo-gated pricing in this category usually lands well above a self-serve point tool's rate, and you won't learn the real number until you're already in a sales call. Peec AI is the exception here, not an addition to that list: its self-serve tiers are posted at $95, $245, and $495.

Two Different Shopping Carts: Point Tools vs SEO Platforms With AEO Bolted On

The single most useful thing to understand before shortlisting anything here is that you're choosing between two kinds of company. Eight of these twelve were built from day one to track brand mentions across AI engines, sometimes with action features layered on top. The other four are established SEO platforms (Semrush, which Adobe completed acquiring on 28 April 2026, plus Ahrefs and Conductor) or a marketing suite (HubSpot) that added AI tracking as a module.

Neither type is automatically better. A point tool is usually cheaper to start and needs no other subscription. A platform add-on is usually cheaper in total if you already pay for the parent product, since it sits next to data you're already using instead of becoming a fifth login. The honest downside: Conductor publishes no price at all, and Semrush and Ahrefs both price in units (a domain with +50 prompt packs, or a bundle of checks) that don't line up neatly with a per-prompt point tool.

The 8 Point Tools: Dedicated AI Visibility Platforms

1. Profound: The Repositioned Category Leader

Profound used to be reviewed as a visibility dashboard. Not anymore: its homepage leads with "Meet your AI Marketer," and it dropped self-serve pricing entirely. What's left is a 7-day free trial (50 prompts a day across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews) and a custom-quoted Enterprise tier covering up to 9 answer engines with SSO and SAML. There is no base price, though its agency view does list client workspaces at +$399/mo and five trial workspaces at $199/mo. Figures like "$99/mo" still circulating for Profound describe a product that no longer exists.

Best for: enterprise teams wanting an agent that researches and drafts, not just a dashboard, and ready for a sales process. Not ideal for: anyone who wants to see a price and sign up today.

Strength	Limitation
Deepest prompt-level tracking plus agentic research and writing	Zero self-serve pricing; every real deployment starts with a sales call
Up to 9 answer engines on Enterprise	Trial caps at 7 days and 3 engines, too short to establish a real baseline

2. AthenaHQ: Credit-Based Flexibility at the Mid-Market

AthenaHQ's free Essential tier gives new signups a one-time $25 credit (300 credits), enough to explore but not for sustained tracking. Starter runs $295 a month on the monthly toggle (annual billing takes 17% off) for 3,600 credits across 11+ platforms, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, and more. AthenaHQ states the conversion: 1 credit = 1 AI response. Its standout feature is Oracle discrepancy detection, which flags when AI answers describe your product or pricing incorrectly.

AthenaHQ's homepage also repeats a Gartner forecast that half of search volume shifts to generative AI by 2028, a vendor-cited forecast rather than a measured figure.

Best for: growth teams wanting wide engine coverage and credit flexibility without an enterprise contract. Not ideal for: teams that want a flat monthly number; credits can run out mid-month on a heavy load.

Strength	Limitation
3,600 monthly credits across 11+ platforms on Starter	Credit system takes time to learn and can deplete faster than expected
Oracle discrepancy detection catches wrong AI-stated facts about your product	Free tier isn't sized for ongoing monthly tracking, only a first look

3. Scrunch: Monitoring Plus a Machine-Readable Site Layer

Scrunch, which Sitecore announced it would acquire on 3 June 2026 (Sitecore didn't disclose terms; Bloomberg reported about $225 million), does something none of the other eleven do by default: alongside monitoring, its Agent Experience Platform serves a lightweight, machine-readable version of your site built for LLM parsing. Its old domain, scrunchai.com, now redirects to scrunch.com. On the pricing page as served to US visitors, Starter runs $300 a month ($250 annual) for 3 user licenses, 350 custom prompts, and tracking across 7 engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, and Meta), and Growth runs $500 a month ($417 annual) for 5 seats and 700 prompts. A page fetched from Vietnam showed a different layout, a single Core plan at $250 a month with 4 engines, so check your own region. Scrunch claims 500-plus companies and agencies, naming Lenovo, Skims, Crunchbase, and Penn State.

Best for: teams that want both measurement and a technical fix for how LLMs actually parse their site, in one product. Not ideal for: budgets under $250 a month, or anyone who needs a pricing layout that doesn't vary by region.

Strength	Limitation
Agent Experience Platform addresses AI crawlability, not just measurement	Nothing under $250/mo, and the published layout differs by region
Named enterprise customer base (Lenovo, Skims, Crunchbase)	Starter tier caps at 350 custom prompts and 5 page audits

4. Trakkr: The Budget Playbook Tool

Trakkr's whole pitch is one line on its homepage: "Other tools give you a dashboard. Trakkr gives you a playbook." Growth, its entry tier at $100 a month, tracks 1 brand across 50 prompts with all 8 AI models included (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI), no per-model upcharge. Scale jumps to $500 a month for 10 brands and a REST API; Enterprise starts at $1,000 a month for unlimited brands.

Best for: small teams wanting every major AI model at a flat price and action-ready recommendations. Not ideal for: agencies with more than one brand, or teams needing API access before Scale.

Strength	Limitation
All 8 AI models included on every tier, no per-engine fees	Entry tier covers only 1 brand; multi-brand needs Scale at $500/mo
Prioritized action playbooks instead of raw metrics	Smaller company, thinner enterprise feature set than Profound or Scrunch

5. Rankscale: The Widest Engine Coverage Per Dollar

Rankscale's Essentials tier publishes the lowest headline price in this category at $20 a month on annual billing. Its differentiator is breadth: 17-plus AI engines claimed, "no per-engine upsell tiers," and 240-plus regions and languages. One note worth flagging: third-party roundups frequently list Rankscale's pricing in euros. We fetched the vendor's own page twice and both times it showed USD, running $20 on Essentials up to $780 on Enterprise. Credits are weighted per engine, though (0.25 for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Mode, 1 for DeepSeek, 2 for Claude), so "no per-engine upsell" still carries an effective per-engine cost.

Best for: budget-conscious teams and agencies that want the broadest engine list without paying per engine. Not ideal for: teams that need Essentials-tier specifics in writing before buying; its exact credit allotment isn't published anywhere we could find.

Strength	Limitation
17+ engines tracked with no per-engine add-on pricing	Credit-based system means heavy prompt volume drains the budget fast
Lowest published entry price in the category ($20/mo)	Essentials tier's exact credit count isn't published

6. Otterly.ai: The Cheapest Real Self-Serve Plan

Otterly.ai is the most transparently priced tool on this list. Lite starts at $29 a month (15 prompts, 4 core engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot). Standard is $189 a month for 100 prompts plus API and Agent Analytics; Premium is $489 a month for 400 prompts. Annual billing cuts 15% off each tier. Extra engines are sold a la carte with published rates: Google AI Mode and Gemini run $9 to $149 a month by tier, Claude runs $29 to $439.

Best for: budget-conscious teams who want every price visible before committing, adding engines as needed. Not ideal for: anyone who needs more than 15 prompts on day one; most real deployments land on Standard or higher.

Strength	Limitation
Every tier and every add-on priced publicly, no demo required	Lite's 15-prompt cap is thin for a real monthly tracking program
Published per-engine add-on pricing (rare in this category)	Claude add-on pricing climbs steeply on higher tiers ($439/mo on Premium)

7. Peec AI: Built for Agencies, Priced Per Engine

Peec AI tracks engines through dedicated per-engine trackers, with selectable models of ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI (Perplexity is a paid add-on), and claims it's "trusted by 3,000-plus brands and agencies." Its pricing page lists three self-serve tiers and a custom Enterprise plan: Starter at $95/mo (50 prompts, 3 models, 1 project), Pro at $245/mo (150 prompts, 3 models, 2 projects), and Advanced at $495/mo (350 prompts, 3 models, 5 projects, multi-country tracking, Looker Studio export), with Enterprise adding every model it supports, up to 13 LLMs, plus API and SSO. Unlimited users ship on every tier, Starter included, which is genuinely unusual in this category. Those numbers render through JavaScript rather than a static page, which is likely why some older roundups called it quote-only. Self-serve tiers let you pick 3 models, Claude is Enterprise-only on brand plans, and extra models are sold as add-ons at $35, $85 or $165 a month by tier. Separate agency plans at peec.ai/pricing-agencies run $245, $495 and $795 a month.

Best for: agencies wanting per-brand, per-engine granularity with transparent self-serve pricing. Not ideal for: teams that need Claude, or more than 3 tracked models without paying for add-ons.

Strength	Limitation
Dedicated trackers per AI engine, unlimited users on every tier including Starter	Self-serve tiers include 3 models; a 4th is a paid add-on ($35 / $85 / $165 a month by tier), and Claude is Enterprise-only
Transparent self-serve pricing with CSV, Looker Studio, and API export on higher tiers	Only 3 models per tier; Perplexity is a paid add-on

8. Goodie: Content Generation Tied to Monitoring

Goodie doesn't stop at telling you what's wrong. Its AEO Writer generates AI-optimized content from the visibility gaps it finds, and tracks product visibility inside AI shopping experiences, tying it to revenue. Core checks out self-serve at $399/mo on annual billing ($478.80 billed monthly; 5 models, 120 prompts, 5 seats, 7-day trial, brand-level tracking only), listed price still posted. Pro at $999/mo on annual billing ($1,198.80 monthly; 8 models, 250 prompts, unlimited seats, SKU-level tracking) now routes to "Get a Demo" instead of checkout, and Enterprise is demo-gated as always (higoodie.com/pricing).

Best for: brand and agency teams wanting AI-drafted content tied to its visibility gaps, with a real self-serve entry point at Core. Not ideal for: anyone assuming the whole lineup checks out self-serve; only Core does now, with Pro and Enterprise both behind a demo request.

Strength	Limitation
AEO Writer closes the loop from gap to published content	Pro and Enterprise, where the deeper models and revenue attribution live, both require a demo call
Real self-serve pricing on Core, unlike most enterprise-leaning AEO tools	Core's 120 prompts and 5 models are thin next to AthenaHQ or Rankscale at a similar price

The 4 SEO Platforms With AEO Bolted On

9. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit: AI Data Next to Your Existing SEO Dashboard

Semrush, which became an Adobe company when the acquisition closed on April 28, 2026, sells an AI Visibility Toolkit at $99 a month per domain, billed annually, for 25 tracked custom prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, and Perplexity (per its pricing page), plus 1 domain for Brand Performance analysis. Its knowledge base prices extra prompts at +50 for $60 a month. Worth stating plainly: Semrush's own pages disagree on three things. The pricing page advertises a seven-day free trial, but the knowledge base says the toolkit offers none; the pricing page says extra users start "from $45" while the knowledge base says each needs a $99 license; and the pricing page says billed annually while the knowledge base says "$99 per month." Confirm directly with Semrush before you buy.

Best for: teams already paying for Semrush who want AI-citation data next to their keyword and backlink data. Not ideal for: anyone evaluating it standalone; at $99/mo for 25 prompts, with extra prompts sold in +50 packs at $60/mo, it's priced as an add-on, not a primary tool.

Strength	Limitation
4-engine coverage in the same dashboard as your existing SEO data	Only 25 prompts included; extra prompts come in +50 packs at $60/mo per the knowledge base
Backed by a 126-million-prompt AI Visibility Index at the platform level	Trial terms, seat price and billing term are all contradictory between Semrush's own pages

10. Ahrefs Brand Radar: Prompt Tracking Tied to Ahrefs's Own Plan Tiers

Ahrefs folds AI prompt tracking into its existing SEO plan structure: Lite includes 5 prompts tracked daily, Standard 10, Advanced 20, Enterprise 83-plus. A standalone Custom Prompts add-on starts around $50 a month, and a separate AI Visibility Index runs roughly $199 a month for 83 prompts a day and 2,500-plus monthly checks, plus beta tracking on YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit. Ahrefs also publishes an Enterprise price of $1,499 a month with an annual commitment, covers Claude (a Claude prompt uses 8 checks per update) but doesn't name Grok, and serves its prices in USD, EUR or GBP depending on region.

Best for: teams already running Ahrefs for SEO who want AI citation data tied to the same backlink and keyword database. Not ideal for: anyone wanting one clean standalone price; prompt volume is split across multiple Ahrefs products and plan tiers.

Strength	Limitation
Prompt allowances scale with an Ahrefs plan you may already pay for	No single clean price; volume is split across plan tiers and add-on products
AI Visibility Index covers 83+ prompts/day plus beta social platform tracking	Full capability requires an active Ahrefs subscription underneath it

11. HubSpot AEO: The Genuinely Free First Look

HubSpot's AEO product is still labeled a beta, priced at $50 a month ($45 annual), sold standalone with no HubSpot subscription required. What stands out is the free tier: a no-card, 25-prompt trial tracking ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Extra prompts beyond the base 25 can be purchased with no stated cap, though HubSpot doesn't publish the rate. It's also bundled free into Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise.

Best for: anyone wanting a free, no-commitment first check, and HubSpot customers already on Marketing Hub Pro or Enterprise who get it free. Not ideal for: teams that need Google AI Overviews coverage; HubSpot tracks only ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini by default in what we found.

Strength	Limitation
Genuinely free 25-prompt trial, no card, no sales call	Tracks only 3 engines by default, missing Google AI Overviews
Works standalone without requiring a HubSpot subscription	No published rate for prompts beyond the included 25

12. Conductor: The Free Checker From an SEO Platform That Added AEO

Conductor is the clearest example of an SEO platform extending into AEO rather than a tool built for this job alone. Its three tiers publish no prices; every path routes to a trial, demo, or sales call. Free, no account needed, is an AI Visibility Analysis checker for ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Paid, Conductor Intelligence combines AEO with SEO reporting metered in AI Search Credits.

Best for: SEO teams evaluating AEO as part of a broader platform, and anyone wanting a free, instant AI visibility check. Not ideal for: anyone trying to compare Conductor's cost against the other 11 tools; there's no public number to compare.

Strength	Limitation
Free AI Visibility Analysis checker with zero signup friction	Zero published pricing on any tier, including the nominally self-serve Essentials
AEO folded into a broader SEO performance and content platform	Full feature set (Creator, Intelligence) requires buying into Conductor as a whole, not a point purchase

Why Noble and Anchorial Aren't Ranked Here

You'll sometimes see paid citation placement services compared against the tools above, and that comparison doesn't hold up. The 12 platforms here are software you run yourself. Noble and Anchorial are services: you pay them to secure your brand a mention or link on a third-party page AI engines already cite, an entirely different kind of purchase.

Dimension	Monitoring and Optimization Platforms (this article)	Paid Citation Placement Services
What you buy	Software that measures your own AI visibility	Mentions and links placed on pages AI engines already cite
Example vendors	Otterly.ai, Profound, AthenaHQ, and the other 9 above	Noble, Anchorial
Typical cost	$20 to $780/mo self-serve, or a custom quote	Noble: $2,000/mo minimum, ~$400 average per mention. Anchorial: from $600/citation link, from $450/listicle placement
Who does the work	Your team, acting on the tool's data	The vendor, who secures the placement for you
Best fit	Teams that want to see and act on their own visibility	Teams that want citations without running outreach themselves

If citation placement is what you're shopping for, we cover Noble, Anchorial, and the rest in a separate guide to AI citation placement services; ranking a $29/mo tracking tool against a $2,000/mo placement service isn't fair to either one. Whether placement is worth buying at all is argued on both sides in Should You Pay for AI Citations?.

Is This Category Worth Paying For Yet?

Here's the honest answer no vendor here will give you: for most companies under a few hundred employees, you can learn almost everything you need to know for free, at least to start.

Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude and ask each your 10 to 20 most important buyer questions, the kind a prospect asks while comparing you to competitors. Log who's mentioned, weekly, for a month. It costs nothing but time, and for smaller teams it answers the only question that matters: are we even in the conversation. Our roundup of free AI visibility tools includes a starter prompt set and recording template, and how to measure AI visibility compares this manual method with server logs, Search Console and paid tools.

Several vendors above offer a free first look without the manual work: HubSpot's grader (25 prompts, no card), Conductor's instant checker, and AthenaHQ's one-time $25 credit. None replace ongoing tracking, but they're a fair way to test the category before paying.

A paid tool earns its price on volume and consistency: daily or weekly checks across dozens of prompts, trend lines, and competitor benchmarking you can't do by hand. If you're already deep into SEO for SaaS products or content marketing, adding AEO tracking is a natural next step; if you've never checked your AI visibility, start with the free methods above.

If a vendor's pitch leans on optimization tactics rather than measurement, check the evidence first. AI crawlers almost never fetch an llms.txt file, and a 1,885-page study found no citation lift from schema markup. How to get cited in AI answers covers the levers that do have evidence behind them.

What Changed in 2026

Profound repositioned entirely, dropping self-serve pricing for an "AI Marketer" agent framing. Reviewing it on tracking features alone now means reviewing a product that no longer exists.
Rankscale's pricing is one of the most frequently miscited numbers here. Third-party roundups routinely list it in euros; the vendor's own page shows USD.
Two of the twelve changed hands. Adobe completed its acquisition of Semrush on April 28, 2026, and Sitecore announced its acquisition of Scrunch on June 3, 2026. Both products keep shipping, but neither is an independent vendor anymore.
Scrunch moved domains (scrunchai.com now redirects to scrunch.com) and moved pricing onto a dedicated page.
Conductor remains fully demo-gated into Q4 2026, while Peec AI publishes three self-serve tiers (its pricing renders in the browser, which is why some older coverage missed it) and Goodie now gates Pro as well as Enterprise, leaving Core as its only self-serve checkout, so the demo-gating pattern keeps shifting rather than settling.
HubSpot's AEO product is still in beta at its launch price, but is now bundled free into Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise.

If you're still deciding which AI engines matter most, our Claude vs ChatGPT vs Gemini breakdown, Perplexity vs ChatGPT Search vs Gemini comparison, and AI search engines roundup are good starting points.

How to Choose: Decision Framework

Four other guides in this collection cover largely the same vendors from a different angle, so pick by your question rather than reading all of them. Best GEO Tools in 2026 covers the same practice under its other name (GEO vs AEO vs SEO explains why the two labels are interchangeable) and sorts the vendors by whether the software only watches, also diagnoses, or acts. Best LLM Citation Tracking Tools in 2026 asks a narrower question: which tools verify a linked citation and which only count your brand name. Best ChatGPT Rank Tracking Tools in 2026 is for teams that only care about ChatGPT and want to know how each tool samples it. Best AI Brand Monitoring Tools in 2026 adds legacy listening platforms like Meltwater, Brand24 and Talkwalker and checks whether what AI says about you is accurate.

If you need...	Pick...
A free first look before spending anything	HubSpot's AEO grader or Conductor's checker
The cheapest real ongoing tracking	Otterly.ai or Rankscale
AI tracking folded into a platform you already pay for	Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit or Ahrefs Brand Radar
To manage several client brands	Peec AI (from $95/mo) or Rankscale
Recommendations, not just a dashboard	Trakkr or Scrunch
An AI agent doing research and drafting	Profound
A machine-readable site layer for LLM crawlers	Scrunch
AI-generated content tied to visibility gaps	Goodie, from $399/mo on annual billing

Sizing and Persona Table

Tool	Ideal Team Size	Primary Buyer
Profound	200 to 5,000+	VP Marketing, GEO lead
AthenaHQ	20 to 500	Head of Growth, SEO Director
Scrunch	100 to 5,000+	Enterprise Marketing Director
Trakkr	1 to 50	Marketing Manager, founder
Rankscale	1 to 100	Solo marketer, small agency
Otterly.ai	1 to 100	Solo SEO, small agency
Peec AI	5 to 200 (agency-heavy)	Agency owner, multi-brand manager
Goodie	20 to 5,000+	Brand marketing lead, agency owner, enterprise CMO
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit	20 to 500	SEO manager already on Semrush
Ahrefs Brand Radar	20 to 500	SEO manager already on Ahrefs
HubSpot AEO	1 to 500	Marketing manager, founder
Conductor	200 to 5,000+	Enterprise SEO director

Frequently Asked Questions about AEO Tools

What's the difference between an AEO tool and an SEO tool?

An SEO tool tracks and improves where your pages rank in search results. An AEO tool tracks whether AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews mention or cite your brand on a buying question, a different problem since there's no ranking position, only whether you show up at all.

Do I actually need a dedicated AEO tool, or can I just ask ChatGPT myself?

For a first gut check, ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude your 10 to 20 most important buyer questions by hand and log the results. That costs nothing and tells you roughly where you stand. A dedicated tool earns its price once you need that check run daily or weekly, with trend data you can't track by hand.

What's the difference between a monitoring tool like Otterly.ai and a service like Noble?

A monitoring tool is software you run yourself to measure whether AI engines mention your brand. Noble and Anchorial are services: the vendor secures a mention or citation on third-party pages AI engines already cite, a different purchase covered in our separate guide to AI citation placement services.

Which AEO tool is cheapest?

Rankscale's Essentials tier publishes the lowest headline price at $20 a month billed annually, and Otterly.ai's Lite tier at $29 a month is the cheapest plan with all four core engines by default. Both scale up fast once prompt volume grows past the entry tier.

Is Profound still just a tracking dashboard?

No. Profound repositioned itself in 2026 around an "AI Marketer" agent that researches, drafts, and reports, dropping its self-serve tiers in the process. Judge it on that agent framing, not against the dashboard-only competitors here.

Does showing up in AI answers actually drive revenue?

The visitors you do get convert well: the average AI-referred visitor converts at 4.4 times the value of a typical organic visitor, per Semrush. The catch is volume: AI referral traffic is still a small share of total traffic industry-wide, even after a 527% year-over-year jump, so treat AI visibility as a forward bet, not a replacement for existing SEO traffic.

What to Do Next

Before you pay for anything, spend one week on the free check: ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude your top 10 to 20 buyer questions and write down who gets mentioned. If you show up rarely, run HubSpot's free AEO grader or Conductor's checker for a second data point at zero cost. Only then pick one paid tool matched to your budget and the engines your buyers use, and give it a full month before judging whether it earned its line item. If you're still mapping out AI tooling more broadly, our guide to choosing AI marketing tools and the AI SEO content brief agent are useful next stops.