Last reviewed: March 2026
AI visibility tools track how your brand appears in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and other AI search engines. The category has exploded over the past year, with dozens of tools competing for attention. Most pitch similar features. The differences are in pricing structure, platform coverage, depth of analysis, and who each tool is actually built for.
This guide compares eight tools side by side. The goal is not to pick a winner. It is to help you match the right tool to your team size, budget, and primary use case.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Starting price | AI platforms | Primary strength | Key limitation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profound | Sales required | 10+ | Deepest data (prompt volumes, 130M+ conversations) | No public pricing, no self-serve |
| Otterly AI | $29/mo | 6 | Lowest entry price, agency-friendly | Prompt-based pricing scales steeply |
| AthenaHQ | $295/mo | 8 | Wide platform coverage, Shopify revenue attribution | Credit-based billing, best features enterprise-only |
| Peec AI | $89/mo | 3 base, 10 with add-ons | Clean UI, daily monitoring, unlimited seats | Monitoring only, no optimization guidance |
| Writesonic | $249/mo for GEO | 10+ | Content creation + visibility in one platform | GEO locked behind $249/mo tier |
| Searchable | $50/mo | 3-7 | Full-stack (monitoring + content + audit), GA4/GSC integration | DTC/Shopify focused, limited platform coverage on lower tiers |
| AirOps | Sales required | Varies by tier | Content workflows at scale, Page360 analytics | Content ops tool first, visibility second |
| friction AI | $99/mo | 3 (Google AI, Perplexity, Claude Search) | Brand disambiguation, experimentation, weekly 360 audit | Newer entrant, narrower platform coverage |
Profound
Profound is the largest company in this space. They raised $96M at a $1B valuation in February 2026 and count over 10% of the Fortune 500 as customers, including Target, Walmart, and Figma.
Their standout feature is prompt volumes. Profound claims a dataset of 130M+ real user conversations from double-opt-in, GDPR-compliant panels. This lets you see what people actually ask AI engines, not just how your brand appears in responses. No other tool offers this at scale.
Profound covers 10+ AI platforms including ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, and Meta AI. They also offer AI crawler analytics showing how AI bots interact with your website, and "Profound Actions" that turn visibility gaps into content recommendations.
The tradeoff is access. Profound does not publish pricing on its website, and all plans require a sales conversation. Third-party reviews report tiers ranging from roughly $99/mo for ChatGPT-only access to $499/mo for broader coverage, with enterprise plans reportedly starting around $2,000/mo (Rankability, ColdIQ). These figures are unverified as Profound does not confirm them publicly. There is no free trial and no self-serve signup. Multiple G2 reviewers describe the lower-tier experience as limited, with key features reserved for enterprise plans.
Fits: Enterprise brands with dedicated analytics teams and budget for a premium platform.
Otterly AI
Otterly is the most affordable entry point in this category at $29/mo for 15 search prompts. It tracks six AI platforms: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, and Gemini and Claude as add-ons. The tool is designed with agencies in mind, offering unlimited brands, unlimited team members, and a Google Looker Studio connector for client reporting.
Otterly's GEO Audit analyzes 25+ on-page factors to identify what blocks your site from earning AI citations. Their Prompt Research tool helps discover what your audience is actually asking AI engines. Both features are useful for teams new to AI search optimization. Otterly holds a 4.9/5 rating on G2.
The main tension is pricing as you scale. The jump from Lite (15 prompts, $29/mo) to Standard (100 prompts, $189/mo) is significant. Adding Gemini costs $9 to $149/mo extra depending on your plan. There is no public API, so the only data export option is Looker Studio. Reviewers note that Otterly tracks the final AI output but not the underlying web searches AI systems use to build that output.
Fits: Agencies and small teams that want affordable entry-level monitoring without heavy analytics needs.
AthenaHQ
AthenaHQ covers eight AI platforms out of the box: ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and Grok. Founded by ex-Google Search and DeepMind engineers, the company raised $2.2M in seed funding and is backed by Y Combinator.
Their most distinctive feature is revenue attribution. AthenaHQ integrates with Shopify and Google Analytics 4 to connect AI visibility directly to revenue. For DTC brands, this closes the loop between "AI mentions your brand" and "that mention drove a sale." The self-serve plan starts at $295/mo with 3,600 credits.
The credit system is the main friction point. One credit equals one AI query. G2 reviewers report difficulty predicting how credits are consumed, with usage spikes across engines and regions causing unexpected overages. Advanced features like the Recommendation Engine, Citation Engine, and optimization agents require the enterprise tier, which is custom-priced. The self-serve plan's first month is discounted to $95, but renews at $295/mo.
Fits: DTC and ecommerce brands that need Shopify revenue attribution and wide platform coverage.
Peec AI
Peec AI is a monitoring-focused tool that tracks visibility, position, and sentiment across AI platforms. Their base plans include ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, with Gemini, Claude, Copilot, DeepSeek, Grok, and others available as paid add-ons at roughly 20-30 EUR/month each.
Peec runs daily monitoring (not weekly like some competitors) and offers unlimited user seats on every plan. Their citation source classification distinguishes between editorial, UGC, competitor, and reference citations, which is useful for understanding not just whether you are cited but what kind of source is doing the citing. Pricing starts at $89/mo for 25 prompts, $199/mo for 100 prompts, and $499/mo for 300+ prompts, based on third-party review sources.
The limitation is scope. Peec is a monitoring tool, not an optimization tool. It tells you where you stand but does not provide recommendations on what to change. Reviewers note there is no AI traffic estimation, no retroactive data, and no public API on lower tiers. The base plan covering only three platforms means full multi-LLM monitoring requires add-on spend.
Fits: Marketing teams and agencies that want clean, daily monitoring data without needing built-in optimization tools.
Writesonic
Writesonic started as an AI writing assistant in 2020 and has since expanded into GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). The platform now tracks AI visibility across 10+ platforms including ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and Grok. They also offer Cloudflare-based AI crawler analytics that show which AI bots visit your site and which pages they access.
The all-in-one pitch is real. You can identify a visibility gap, create optimized content to fill it, and track the results without switching platforms. Their "Prompts without you" feature shows queries where competitors appear in AI responses but you do not. Citation gap analysis includes auto-generated outreach emails.
The catch is the pricing wall. AI visibility features start at the $249/mo Professional tier. The Lite ($49) and Standard ($99) tiers are content-writing tools only, with no GEO monitoring. Credits do not roll over between months, and different features consume credits at different rates. Multiple reviewers cite the credit system as the platform's biggest friction point.
Fits: Teams already using Writesonic for content creation that want to add AI visibility monitoring in the same platform.
Searchable
Searchable takes a full-stack approach: monitoring, content creation, and technical auditing in one tool. Their Agent module tracks brand mentions across AI engines. Their Content module produces AI-optimized articles. Their Audit module scans for schema markup opportunities and crawlability issues.
Pricing runs from $50/mo to $400/mo across four tiers, with a 14-day free trial. They are one of the few tools under $100/mo that integrate with GA4, Google Search Console, and HubSpot. The company raised 3.4M EUR in December 2025 and reports 12,000+ users.
The platform is purpose-built for DTC and Shopify brands. Their 6-week AI Search Accelerator is a hands-on consulting program, not just software. The tradeoff is platform coverage. Lower tiers cover ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity. Claude, Grok, and Copilot require custom pricing. Teams outside the ecommerce vertical may find the DTC-specific features less relevant.
Fits: Shopify and DTC brands at growth stage that want monitoring, content, and technical audit in one tool.
AirOps
AirOps is a content operations platform that raised $40M in Series B funding at a $225M valuation. The platform is built around visual, no-code workflows that chain research, content generation, review, and CMS publishing into automated pipelines. Customers include Webflow, Ramp, and Carta.
Their Page360 feature unifies SEO metrics, web analytics, and AI citation signals into a single page-level view. Their Offsite module tracks third-party publisher influence on AI visibility, with their research showing that 85% of brand discovery in AI search comes from third-party content. In February 2026, they launched a native Claude/MCP integration letting marketers query AirOps data directly from Claude.
The free tier includes 1,000 tasks/mo but no AI visibility features. AI search monitoring requires the Pro or Pages tier, both custom-priced through sales. Reviewers report a 2-4 week learning curve to reach basic proficiency. Platform coverage for AI visibility is narrower than dedicated monitoring tools. AirOps' published tier descriptions list ChatGPT, Google, and Perplexity, with Claude, Meta AI, and Grok absent from standard plans.
Fits: Large content teams with proven SEO strategies that are bottlenecked by manual execution and want workflow automation alongside visibility tracking.
friction AI
friction AI tracks how brands appear in AI search engines with three scored metrics: visibility, sentiment, and purchase intent. Each metric is scored and combined into a weekly 360 brand audit that shows not just whether AI mentions your brand, but how it describes you and whether it recommends you in purchase contexts.
The platform's core differentiator is brand disambiguation. Brands with common names or names that overlap with everyday words face a specific problem in AI monitoring: generic tools cannot reliably distinguish between mentions of the brand and mentions of the word. friction AI's detection system handles this at the pattern level, so monitoring data reflects actual brand mentions rather than noise.
friction AI also offers an experimentation feature that lets teams test how content changes affect AI search presence before committing to publication. This closes the gap between "here is how AI sees you" and "here is what to do about it" without requiring a separate content tool.
The platform currently monitors three AI search platforms: Google AI Search, Perplexity, and Claude Search. That is narrower than Profound (10+), Otterly (6), or AthenaHQ (8). The tradeoff is intentional: friction AI focuses on depth of analysis per platform rather than breadth of coverage. Teams that need to monitor every major LLM may find Profound or AthenaHQ a better fit for that specific requirement.
Pricing starts at $99/mo with self-serve signup. The platform is newer than Profound or Otterly, with a smaller customer base.
Fits: SMB and mid-market teams, especially brands with common names that need reliable disambiguation and want structured, scored insights rather than raw data dashboards.
How to choose
The right tool depends on three things: your budget, your team, and your primary need.
If budget is your main constraint. Otterly at $29/mo or Searchable at $50/mo are the cheapest starting points. friction AI at $99/mo offers deeper analysis at a moderate price. Be aware that Otterly's pricing scales steeply once you need more than 15 prompts.
If you are an enterprise brand with a dedicated analytics team. Profound is the category leader in data depth. Their prompt volumes dataset and 10+ platform coverage are unmatched. AthenaHQ offers similar breadth at a lower entry point ($295/mo) with Shopify revenue attribution.
If you run a DTC or Shopify brand. AthenaHQ's revenue attribution and Searchable's ecommerce focus are built for you. Both connect AI visibility to business outcomes in ways generic monitoring tools do not.
If your brand has a common name or gets confused with other entities in AI responses. friction AI's brand disambiguation solves this specific problem. No other tool in this comparison offers pattern-level disambiguation.
If you already produce content at scale and want to add monitoring. Writesonic (if you use it for writing) or AirOps (if you need workflow automation) let you combine content operations with visibility tracking. The tradeoff is that monitoring is secondary to content in both platforms.
If you are an agency managing multiple clients. Otterly's unlimited brands, unlimited seats, and Looker Studio connector are designed for this. Peec AI's unlimited seats and agency pitch workspaces are also worth evaluating.
If you want to test content changes before publishing. friction AI's experimentation feature is unique in this comparison. Most tools monitor the current state but do not help you model the impact of changes before you make them.
No tool does everything well. The choice is about matching your primary need to the tool that handles it with the least compromise.