Best AEO Tools for B2B SaaS in 2026: 12 Platforms Scored on Competitor Tracking

For a B2B SaaS company, the best AEO tool is the one that tracks competitor and category prompts well and still fits your budget at around 80 prompts. On that test Peec AI is the strongest fit, Trakkr is the cheapest way to run a realistic prompt set, and Otterly.ai is the easiest to buy without a sales call. If you already pay for Ahrefs, Semrush or HubSpot, check their add-ons first, but know exactly where each one stops.

We compared 12 platforms on what B2B discovery looks like inside an AI answer: "best X software", "X alternatives", "X vs Y". We read each vendor's own pricing and feature pages rather than running hands-on trials, so the fit ratings are our judgment of what's published, not a lab test.

Key Facts

• G2, which sells software reviews and buyer intent data, surveyed 1,076 B2B software buyers in March 2026: 51% start research with an AI chatbot more often than Google, and 69% chose a different vendor than planned because a chatbot recommended it (G2).
• DerivateX, an agency that sells "citation engineering", found ChatGPT cited the recommended tool's own website 11.6% of the time across 233 recommendations in 40 B2B SaaS categories. The other 88.4% credited a third party (DerivateX).
• Goodie, which sells an AEO platform, found Reddit and G2 the most-cited B2B SaaS domains in its 2025 data. DerivateX's sample gave G2 and Capterra zero citations, so published studies disagree on which third-party sources matter (Goodie).
• Ahrefs, which sells Brand Radar, found only 12% of links cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot appear in Google's top 10 for the same query, against 28.6% for Perplexity (Ahrefs).
• Pew Research Center, a nonprofit with nothing to sell here, found Google users clicked a result in 8% of visits with an AI summary versus 15% without (Pew Research Center).

Quick Comparison Table

Ordered by B2B SaaS fit, which is our judgment.

Why B2B SaaS Needs a Different Test

Most buyer guides assume the prompt is about your brand. In B2B software it rarely is, because a buyer who types your name has already shortlisted you. The prompts that decide the shortlist name a category or a rival.

G2 reports that buyers run head-to-head vendor comparisons in chat and that chatbots are the top source influencing shortlists. G2 sells review pages, so weigh that.

So the first question for any vendor is not "what's my visibility score". It's whether the tool tracks competitor and category prompts, and tells you who wins them.

Competitor and Category Tracking, Vendor by Vendor

We rated each tool on what it publishes about competitors, prompt discovery and intent, not on hands-on testing.

Which Sources Do the Assistants Pull From?

For a B2B SaaS company the most useful output isn't your score. It's the list of pages an assistant leaned on when it recommended a rival, because that list shows where to earn a mention. And here the public evidence is a mess.

Three parties with something to sell, three different pictures, and no measurement from anyone with nothing to sell. Different models, prompts and dates plausibly explain the spread. Ahrefs, which sells Brand Radar, also found that assistants cite very different pages (Perplexity overlaps Google's top 10 far more than ChatGPT does), which points the same way. The practical answer is to measure your own category, which is what a source report does.

Peec, Scrunch and HubSpot are the clearest about separating competitor pages from third-party and social sources. For more on that distinction see our guide to LLM citation tracking tools.

Prompt Volume Is the Binding Constraint

A real B2B category needs dozens of prompts across competitors and use cases, so Semrush's 25 and Otterly Lite's 15 run out fast. Here's how 80 build up.

That's our illustrative budget, not a vendor benchmark. A narrow product might need 40, a crowded category 150.

What 80 Prompts Across Four Engines Actually Costs

Scenario: one brand, 80 prompts, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Gemini, refreshed daily, billed monthly. That's 9,600 AI answers a month.

The headline price tells you almost nothing. Otterly's $29 becomes $248, Rankscale's $20 becomes $229, Semrush's $99 becomes $219, Peec's $95 becomes $330. Trakkr moves least. Goodie's $399 is its annual-billing rate; month to month it's $478.80. And "Not published" is a real cost if your budget is small, because you learn the number only after a sales call.

Cadence flips the credit tools completely.

AthenaHQ states its conversion plainly (one credit is one response), so Starter works out to about 8 cents a response. In our view weekly tracking is plenty for most B2B categories, because a shortlist shifts slowly. Daily helps when you're shipping content and want to see movement.

Engine Coverage on the Self-Serve Tier

Assistants cite different pages, so coverage is a real decision. "Add-on" means extra cost.

The 12 Tools, With an Honest Case for Each

1. Peec AI

The closest match to the B2B test: unlimited competitors and users on every tier, intent classification that separates commercial from informational prompts, a branded split and gap analysis of sources that name your rivals but not you. Prices render in JavaScript, which is why some older roundups call it quote-only. Its agency plans (peec.ai/pricing-agencies) run $245, $495 and $795 monthly for 3, 10 and 25 projects with unlimited team and client users, which suits a multi-brand SaaS group. Credits pool across projects; Perplexity appears only in the custom tier. See also our Peec AI alternatives.

Best for: teams that live in comparison prompts. Real limit: each self-serve tier tracks three models of ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Copilot, Gemini and Naver; Perplexity and other extras cost $35 to $165 a month each by tier, and Claude is Enterprise-only.

2. Trakkr

All 8 models on every plan, three seats on Growth, and the lowest bill at 80 prompts. Competitor tracking and citation sources are on both tiers. Scale ($500) multiplies brands, not depth: each brand keeps the 50-prompt base. More in Trakkr alternatives.

Best for: lean teams who want breadth without credit math. Real limit: a smaller vendor than Semrush or HubSpot, and every extra prompt is a paid pack.

3. Otterly.ai

Every tier and add-on is public. The base four engines are ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot, and Standard prices Gemini and AI Mode at $59 each and Claude at $109. See Otterly alternatives and the three-way comparison with Peec and Rankscale.

Best for: buyers who want every price before talking to anyone. Real limit: Lite's 15 prompts can't cover a B2B category, and Standard adds only 300 prompts before forcing Premium.

4. Scrunch

Sitecore announced its acquisition of Scrunch on 3 June 2026 without disclosing terms (Bloomberg reported about $225M), so Scrunch now sits inside Sitecore's stack. A US-routed fetch showed Starter ($300 monthly, $250 on annual billing; 350 prompts, 3 seats, seven engines) and Growth ($500, $417 annual; 700 prompts). Loaded from Vietnam, the page showed one Core tier at $250 with 125 prompts, 5,000 responses a month, four engines and five competitors. Both are real vendor pages, so check what your region sees.

Best for: teams that also want its Agent Experience Platform, which delivers an optimized version of your site to AI agents. Real limit: structure and price depend on region.

5. Ahrefs Brand Radar

Custom Prompts are free on paid Ahrefs plans (Lite 5, Standard 10, Advanced 20) and sold in check packages from £40 a month. The AI Visibility Index, £159, benchmarks any brand across 447M prompts with no setup, handy for sizing a rival before you write a prompt. Currency is region-served: we saw GBP on 5 October and EUR on 2 October.

Best for: teams already on Ahrefs. Real limit: every prompt costs one check per platform per refresh (Claude costs 8), so our scenario is 9,600 checks and the page doesn't price it.

6. AthenaHQ

A genuinely free Essential tier (300 credits) and a $295 Starter with 3,600 credits across 11 models. It lists unlimited competitor tracking, citation intelligence and GA4 plus Search Console integration.

Best for: teams that want to test free and track weekly. Real limit: credits are the unit, one per response (about 8 cents at Starter), so daily tracking drains the allowance in under two weeks and extra credits are "contact us".

7. Goodie

Core is the only self-serve tier: $478.80 billed monthly, or $399 on annual billing (two months free, and the page's default view), for 120 prompts, five models, five seats and a 7-day trial. Pro ($1,198.80 monthly, $999 annual; 250 prompts, eight models) and Enterprise route to a demo. It advertises "direct revenue attribution", a vendor claim.

Best for: teams that want monitoring plus optimization actions and a strategist. Real limit: Core tracks ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, AI Mode and Copilot, so Gemini needs Pro and Claude needs Enterprise.

8. Rankscale

Credit-based and priced in USD: Essentials $20 a month or $17 on yearly billing (the page marks it "Yearly only"), Pro $99, Pro+ $229, Growth $385, Enterprise $780. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Mode cost 0.25 credit per prompt per run, Claude 2, and AI Overviews and Copilot ("GUI engines") show no rate. Competitor benchmarking and citations analysis come on every plan, unlimited seats start at Pro, the REST API at Pro+ and white-label dashboards at Growth.

Best for: budget teams that can run weekly. Real limit: every engine is included, but not at the same cost, and you can't price AI Overviews from the page.

9. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

Semrush is now an Adobe company; Adobe completed the acquisition on 28 April 2026. The toolkit costs $99 per domain on annual billing (its knowledge base says $99 a month) and includes 25 custom prompts, one domain, competitor research that surfaces prompts where rivals are cited and you aren't, and prompt research with topic volume and intent. The pricing page lists ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity, but the knowledge base describes prompt tracking on "platforms like Google AI Mode and ChatGPT", so confirm engines for tracked prompts. Only the knowledge base shows 50-prompt packs at $60 a month, and Semrush One bundles 50, 100 or 200. On seats the vendor disagrees with itself: the pricing page says extra users start at $45, the knowledge base says each teammate needs a $99 license.

Best for: Semrush teams who want AI data beside keyword data. Real limit: Semrush's own pages disagree on seat cost and on a free trial (the pricing page says seven days, the knowledge base says none), so budget from the higher figures until sales confirms.

10. HubSpot AEO

Still labeled Beta: $50 a month ($45 annual) standalone for 25 prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, daily. Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise include it with a larger allowance. HubSpot's own page says it acquired XFunnel in 2026.

Best for: HubSpot customers who want a low-risk start. Real limit: no Google AI Overviews, and extra prompts ("AEO Answers Limit Increase") have no published rate.

11. Profound

Now an "AI Marketer" that researches, writes and reports, not just a dashboard. A free trial runs 50 prompts daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews; Enterprise is custom, up to nine engines. More in Profound alternatives.

Best for: enterprise teams that want an agent and a sales process. Real limit: no published price, and a tracker-only buyer pays for an agent they didn't want.

12. Conductor

An SEO platform that added AEO: Essentials, Growth, Enterprise, no prices. Tracked competitors run 5, 25 and 75+, and AI Search Credits appear only from Growth. It also offers a free AI Visibility Analysis for ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini.

Best for: enterprise SEO teams that want one platform. Real limit: AI tracking sits behind demo-gated tiers.

Attribution: What Nobody Can Tell You Yet

In a sales cycle that runs for months, we found no tool here that can trace one AI answer to one closed deal. Goodie advertises "direct revenue attribution" and Profound advertises attribution through Agent Analytics. Both are vendor claims, and we couldn't see the method on either pricing page. What any tool can observe is visits and conversions after a click, not the buyer who read your name in an answer and typed your URL a week later.

Ahrefs, which sells one of these tools, measured AI search at 0.5% of its own visitors but 12.1% of signups over 30 days in June 2025, and noted that assistants haven't always sent referral data (Ahrefs). One company, one month, a vendor's own funnel. Treat it as a reason to measure, not a benchmark. Our guide to measuring AI visibility covers the methods in more depth.

A Different Purchase: Citation Placement

Services that sell you mentions on third-party pages are a separate purchase from the software above, so we don't rank them here. See our guide to citation placement services. Whether placement is worth buying at all is argued on both sides in Should You Pay for AI Citations?.

What Changed Since Older Roundups

How to Choose

Your own comparison pages matter too: DerivateX, which sells this kind of work, found every cited page in its sample used list structure. Our guides to comparison and alternative pages and SEO for SaaS products cover the content side, and the overall AEO tools roundup widens the field beyond B2B.

What to Do Next

Write your 80 prompts from the budget table and run 20 by hand on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini this week. Then trial two tools on the same prompt set and compare which competitor pages and third-party sources each reports. Give it a month, and re-check the vendor's pricing page the day you buy. If you run this for clients rather than your own brand, Best AEO Tools for Agencies in 2026 prices largely the same tools at 5, 10 and 25 clients, and if you sell physical products rather than software, Best AEO Tools for Ecommerce in 2026 tracks products instead of competitor prompts. Several vendors here sell optimization on top of tracking, so check the evidence first: AI crawlers almost never fetch llms.txt, and a 1,885-page study found no citation lift from schema markup.