Best Ahrefs Brand Radar Alternatives in 2026: 11 AI Visibility Tools Compared on Real Price

If you already pay for Ahrefs, Brand Radar is about as close to free as AI visibility tracking gets, and that's the honest headline most "Ahrefs Brand Radar alternatives" roundups skip on the way to a competitor pitch. Ahrefs' Lite plan and every tier above it bundles Custom Prompts in at no extra charge, from 5 tracked prompts on Lite up to 83-plus on Enterprise, checked daily. If you're already writing that Ahrefs check, walking away to pay for a separate tool is a hard case to make.

That case gets easier fast if you're not an Ahrefs customer, which is most of the traffic landing here. This guide prices both situations honestly, because they're different purchases: what Brand Radar costs an existing subscriber, what it costs someone starting from zero, and what 11 dedicated AI visibility tools charge for the same job. Every price below came from the vendor's own pricing page.

Key Facts

• Across a 1,885-page study, schema markup showed no meaningful lift in AI citations, because assistants read rendered HTML rather than hidden markup (Ahrefs, May 2026).
• 28% of domains publish an llms.txt file, and 97% of those get zero requests for it, measured across 137,000 domains (Ahrefs, May 2026).
• AI platforms drove an average of 770.7 million referral visits a month worldwide between June 2025 and May 2026, more than double the year before (Similarweb).
• Click rate runs 8% when a search result carries an AI summary versus 15% without one, and only 1% of people who saw a summary clicked through to one of its citations, from a survey of 900 US adults (Pew Research Center, July 2025).
• A widely repeated claim says most pages AI engines cite are third party, not brand-owned. Noble, a citation-placement vendor, puts that at 85% with no linked study or sample size; DerivateX, an SEO and GEO agency that sells "citation engineering," publishes a disclosed 88.4% from 233 ChatGPT recommendations across 40 B2B SaaS categories. Both have something to sell; we found no measurement of this from a party that doesn't.

What Ahrefs Brand Radar Actually Is, and Why This Is Two Articles in One

Brand Radar is Ahrefs' AI visibility layer, built around two products: Custom Prompts, which tracks prompts you choose across AI platforms and checks them daily, and the AI Visibility Index, a broader product pulling from a database Ahrefs puts at 447M organic prompts, with 83 prompts a day and 2,500-plus checks a month included. The good news: Custom Prompts ships free with every paid Ahrefs plan, 5 tracked prompts on Lite, 10 on Standard, 20 on Advanced, 83-plus on Enterprise, all checked daily, no incremental cost.

The catch is the allowance itself. Five prompts is a thin slice of what a real brand needs, and getting to a serious number means climbing Ahrefs' own plan ladder ($129/mo Lite to $1,499/mo Enterprise, annual), or paying separately for the AI Visibility Index at $199/mo, which happens to match the prompt depth Ahrefs' own top Enterprise tier bundles in. There's no cheap path past a handful of prompts that stays inside the free allowance.

One more wrinkle: the standalone Custom Prompts packages (Basic $50/mo for 2,500 checks, Growth $100/mo for 7,000, Scale $250/mo for 25,000) price in "checks," one prompt on one platform on one day, not a clean prompt count. That's a different unit than the per-prompt pricing most tools below use, which is itself a reason some buyers give up and pick a tool that just states the number.

There's a real credibility point worth making here, too. Ahrefs has published its own research finding that schema markup doesn't meaningfully lift AI citations and that llms.txt is largely ignored (both linked in Key Facts above), findings that run against its own commercial interest in selling an AEO product. That cuts in Ahrefs' favor: a vendor that publishes data undermining its own sales pitch is worth trusting on the data it does publish, even while it's still selling a tool in this exact category.

Why people actually leave Ahrefs Brand Radar

Price opacity isn't really Brand Radar's problem, the free bundled tier is refreshingly clear. The reasons people leave are structural:

• You don't want the whole SEO suite. The cheapest path to more than 5 prompts is a $129/mo Ahrefs subscription you may not otherwise need, and a dedicated AEO tool can cost less than that alone.
• Grok isn't named. Ahrefs' page names AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, and Claude (specific enough to state Claude consumes 8 checks per update), but not Grok. Confirm directly if xAI's assistant matters to your buyers.
• Multi-brand tracking doesn't fit the model. The allowance is tied to your Ahrefs project, not built for an agency running many client brands under one login the way Trakkr or Peec AI are.

Quick Comparison: Ahrefs Brand Radar and 11 Alternatives

What a Tracked Prompt Actually Costs

Five prompts on Ahrefs Lite is the number that sends most readers here. So instead of comparing headline prices, here's what each vendor charges per tracked prompt per month, at the entry tier that actually gives you a usable number. Only four vendors price cleanly enough in prompts to make this a fair apples-to-apples number; everyone else, Ahrefs included, disappears into credits or checks the moment you leave the free tier.

Trakkr's allowance is a daily prompt roster rather than a flat monthly count, HubSpot AEO's 25 prompts cover only 3 engines, and Peec AI's 50 prompts apply to a single project across the 3 models you pick, so treat the convergence on roughly $2 per prompt as directional, not identical units.

That convergence is worth sitting with: four vendors with completely different positioning (a budget point tool, an agency platform, a marketing-hub add-on, and an agency tool with unlimited users) land within ten cents of each other once you price a real prompt allowance. Ahrefs' own standalone package doesn't make this table, because its $50/mo Basic tier is metered in 2,500 checks, not a named prompt count, so there's no honest conversion without guessing. Rankscale, AthenaHQ, Scrunch, Goodie, Profound, Semrush, and Conductor all meter in credits, checks, or a flat seat price instead, or publish no base price at all: the moment you need more than a handful of tracked phrases, almost every vendor, Ahrefs included, stops speaking in numbers you can divide.

Pricing at a Real Workload: One Brand, 50 Prompts, Four Engines, Monthly

Headline prices rarely match what you'll pay for actual usage. Here's the monthly cost to track one brand, 50 prompts, across roughly four AI engines, at whichever tool makes that computable.

Engine sets included by default vary by vendor; this scenario uses whichever four engines each tool ships without a paid add-on.

The line worth circling: a reader who doesn't already own Ahrefs and just wants 50 prompts across 4 engines pays $199/mo for the Index, roughly the same bracket as Scrunch's Starter tier and cheaper than Goodie's Core tier, without touching the $129-449/mo SEO suite at all. The suite only becomes the better deal if you were going to buy Ahrefs for SEO anyway.

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

Otterly is the most transparent vendor on this list. Four tiers, published prices, no sales call required to see any of them. Lite runs $29/mo for 15 prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot. Standard, the tier most teams actually need, runs $189/mo for 100 prompts plus API access and agent analytics. Annual billing knocks roughly 15% off every tier.

The honest limitation is the engine list. Claude, Gemini, and Google AI Mode aren't included by default; each is a $9 to $29/mo add-on, which matters if your buyers live in Gemini or lean on Claude specifically.

2. Rankscale: The Lowest Floor Price, Every Engine Included

Rankscale's pitch is that every tier tracks every supported engine, so no engine is sold as a paid add-on. Essentials lists at $20/mo ($17/mo annual), but ships with zero included credits, so real usage means topping up immediately. Pro, at $99/mo with 1,200 credits covering up to 4,800 tracked answers, is where most single-brand teams land, and it includes unlimited seats and 10 brand dashboards. The REST API starts at Pro+ ($229) and white-label at Growth ($385). There is still an effective per-engine cost, because credits are weighted by engine: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and AI Mode cost 0.25 credits a check, DeepSeek 1, and Claude 2.

Rankscale is headquartered in Vienna, worth noting because its pricing page displays every figure in USD, not euros as some third-party lists claim.

3. Trakkr: Flat Pricing, No Credit Metering

Trakkr's pricing model is the simplest on this list by design. Growth, at $100/mo, tracks 1 brand, 50 prompts a day, all 8 AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Grok, DeepSeek, and Meta AI), nothing behind a credit wall, plus a 14-day free trial. Scale, at $500/mo, extends that to 10 brands and adds a REST API and white-label client portals, a realistic fit for an agency running several client accounts. Enterprise starts at $1,000/mo on annual billing for teams past that.

The trade-off is a daily ceiling on the base plan. 50 prompts per brand per day is the included allowance through Scale, though Trakkr sells extra prompts as packs (+50 for $39, +100 for $59, +200 for $99), and its agencies page lists extra brands at $50 a month each.

4. HubSpot AEO: The Genuinely Free First Look

HubSpot's AEO product is still labeled a beta and sells standalone for $50/mo ($45/mo billed annually), with no requirement to run any other HubSpot product. The free trial tracks 25 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini with no credit card required, and that same 25-prompt allowance carries into the paid tier. If your company already runs Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise, AEO tracking is bundled in at no extra charge.

The material gap, easy to miss because it never shows up in a price comparison: HubSpot AEO covers 3 engines and does not include Google AI Overviews, a real limitation for any reader whose traffic is mostly Google.

5. AthenaHQ: The Most Generous Free Tier

AthenaHQ's Essential plan is genuinely free, not a time-boxed trial: $25 of credit, 300 credits total, tracking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Copilot, with unlimited seats even for free. Starter moves to $295/mo (monthly billing; annual is 17% cheaper) for 3,600 credits and 11-plus models (including Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI), plus Oracle discrepancy detection, which flags when an AI answer describes your product or pricing incorrectly. AthenaHQ does disclose its credit conversion, "1 credit = 1 AI response," which puts Starter at about 8 cents a response. What it doesn't publish is a price for extra credits ("contact us"), so run the free tier a few weeks and watch how fast 300 credits burns down against your real prompt list before committing.

6. Peec AI: Agency Pricing, Rendered Client-Side

Peec AI publishes real self-serve pricing. Starter runs $95/mo (50 prompts, 3 models, 1 project), Pro $245/mo (150 prompts, 3 models, 2 projects), and Advanced $495/mo (350 prompts, 3 models, 5 projects, multi-country tracking, Looker Studio export); Enterprise is the only tier that's genuinely sales-gated, adding every model Peec AI supports, up to 13 LLMs, plus API access and SSO. Unlimited users ship on every tier, Starter included. The selectable models are ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini, and Naver AI, and you pick 3 on a self-serve plan, so Google AI Overviews is covered. Perplexity is a paid add-on and Claude is Enterprise-only on brand plans. A fourth model does not force an Enterprise upgrade: extra models are sold as add-ons at $35, $85, or $165 a month by tier. Peec AI also publishes separate agency pricing at $245, $495, and $795 a month (3, 10, and 25 projects) and markets itself hard to agencies managing several client brands under one login, the one job Brand Radar genuinely isn't built for.

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

Scrunch does something none of the other tools here do by default: alongside monitoring, its Agent Experience Platform serves a lightweight, machine-readable version of your site built for LLM parsing, without changing what human visitors see. Its old domain, scrunchai.com, now redirects to scrunch.com, and Scrunch is owned by Sitecore, which announced the acquisition on 3 June 2026 without disclosing terms (Bloomberg reported about $225M, which neither company has confirmed). As served from the US, Starter runs $300/mo ($250/mo annual) for 3 licenses, 350 custom prompts, and the broadest default engine list on this page, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and Overviews, and Meta. Growth roughly doubles that at $500/mo ($417/mo annual). The page differs by location: in some regions it shows a single Core plan at $250/mo (125 prompts, 4 engines, 5 seats, 7-day trial) plus a custom Enterprise tier, and we could not tell region from an A/B test, so check your own.

8. Goodie: Tracking Plus an Agent That Takes Action

Goodie is the priciest self-serve entry point on this list, and it's built to be. Every headline price below is an annual-billing rate. Core runs $399/mo billed annually ($478.80 billed monthly) for 120 prompts and 5 core models, built around a closed loop that goes past monitoring into content optimization, technical fixes, and outreach, plus revenue attribution tied to AI-driven traffic. Core is brand-level tracking only. Pro shows $999/mo billed annually ($1,198.80 monthly) and tracks 8 models, adding SKU-level agentic commerce visibility for ecommerce brands (SKU-level tracking is Pro and Enterprise only); its button reads "Get a demo," so it behaves like a sales-led tier despite the figure. Goodie also runs a separate agency track: Growth is a $275/mo base (billed annually; $330 billed quarterly) plus client workspaces from $399 each, and Enterprise is custom.

9. Profound: An AI Marketing Agent, No Base Price

Profound built its reputation on deep prompt-level tracking, but its homepage now leads with "Meet your AI Marketer: Research, write, report, and collaborate with a superintelligent teammate who knows your brand," and it dropped self-serve pricing entirely. There is no base price: what's left is a free 7-day trial (roughly 50 prompts a day across 3 platforms) and a custom-quoted Enterprise tier. Its "For agencies" toggle does publish add-ons, a client workspace at +$399/mo and +5 trial workspaces at $199/mo. If you've seen "~$99/mo" for Profound somewhere, that describes a product that no longer prices that way. Profound also states SOC 2 Type II compliance on its own pages.

10. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit: The Other "Already Pay for the Suite" Option

If Ahrefs isn't your SEO platform but Semrush is, the logic from the top of this article repeats almost exactly. Semrush is now an Adobe company (the acquisition completed on 28 April 2026) and still sells the toolkit under its own name. The AI Visibility Toolkit adds AI citation tracking for $99/mo per domain: 25 tracked prompts, mentions across ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, and Perplexity as listed on the pricing page, 1 domain for Brand Performance, and 300 reports a day. Semrush's knowledge base describes tracking on "platforms like Google AI Mode and ChatGPT," so treat Gemini and Perplexity as pricing-page-only claims. Unlike what some roundups say, you can add prompts: the knowledge base prices +50 prompts at $60/mo. Add-ons on the pricing page cover additional users (from $45/mo), Lead Generation ($90/mo), and two report tiers ($10 and $20/mo). Worth stating rather than guessing: Semrush's own pages disagree on three things. The pricing page advertises a seven-day free trial, but the knowledge base says the toolkit "does not currently offer a free trial." The pricing page prices extra users from $45, while the knowledge base says each extra teammate needs a $99 license. And the pricing page says $99 is billed annually, while the knowledge base says "$99 per month."

Our head-to-head, Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit vs Ahrefs Brand Radar, puts the two "already pay for the suite" options side by side and prices each by which platform you already use.

11. Conductor: An SEO Platform With AEO Added, the Closest Structural Match to Ahrefs

Conductor is the clearest parallel to Ahrefs' own model: an established SEO platform, Conductor Intelligence, with AEO reporting layered in and metered in "AI Search Credits," plus a separate content tool, Conductor Creator, that drafts AI-ready content. None of its three tiers, Essentials, Growth, or Enterprise, shows a price; every path leads to a trial, a demo, or a sales contact. It does offer one genuinely useful free entry point: an AI Visibility Analysis that checks how your brand shows up across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini without creating an account.

A Different Purchase Entirely: Paid Citation Placement

Everything above is software you buy to measure your own AI visibility. A separate category pays a service to get your brand mentioned on third-party pages AI engines already cite, rather than tracking where you stand today. Noble and Anchorial both work this way, and neither belongs ranked next to the tools above; you're buying placements on pages you don't own, not a dashboard you log into. If that's actually what you're shopping for, our AI citation placement services roundup and the dedicated Noble vs Anchorial comparison cover that purchase on its own terms.

How to Choose: Decision Framework

What to Do Next

Don't shortlist on the headline number, for Ahrefs or anything else here, because the real question is which bucket you're in. If you already pay for Ahrefs, you likely don't need to switch; the free bundled tier is genuinely competitive, and the $199/mo Index is there if 5 to 20 prompts feels thin. If you're not on Ahrefs and have no reason to be, Rankscale and Trakkr both give you a real, computable number today for a 50-prompt workload, without asking you to buy an SEO suite you didn't come here for.

For the wider category, our best AEO tools roundup, best AI brand monitoring tools, and best LLM citation tracking tools cover overlapping ground from different angles. If Peec AI's pick-3-models limit or Profound's pivot away from self-serve plans sent you looking elsewhere, see our Peec AI alternatives and Profound alternatives comparisons, which overlap with this list but start from a different vendor's problem. For why schema markup and llms.txt don't move the needle the way older advice assumes, see Schema Markup for AI Search and llms.txt Explained, and for the framing underneath all of this, AEO vs SEO. Our older AI visibility tools roundup covers adjacent ground in the same stack.