Guides · 2026-10-03 · By VSNARY | Emmanuel Orta · 0 views

Best AI visibility tools compared: prices and what they track

Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.AI, Rankscale, Knowatoa, AthenaHQ, Scrunch, Ahrefs Brand Radar, Semrush and CrawlCheck side by side: published prices, engines covered, and the access question prompt trackers cannot answer.

"AI visibility tools" covers two different jobs that are sold under one name. Most of the products below track prompts: they ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and others a set of questions on a schedule and record whether your brand is mentioned or cited. A smaller set audits access: whether those AI systems can reach, read and quote your site in the first place. A brand that is never cited might be losing to competitors, or might be invisible because GPTBot gets a 403. Prompt tracking shows the first; only an access audit shows the second.

Disclosure: CrawlCheck publishes this comparison and is one of the products in it. Every figure about another company comes from that company’s own pricing or documentation page, linked where it appears, read on 3 October 2026. Where CrawlCheck does less than a competitor, the tables say so.

The short answer: which AI visibility tool to pick #

Prices and coverage, side by side #

Sources: Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.AI, Rankscale, Knowatoa, AthenaHQ, Scrunch, Ahrefs Brand Radar, Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit, CrawlCheck. Prices change; the linked pages are the source of truth.

What prompt tracking can and cannot tell you #

A prompt tracker is a sample. It asks a fixed list of questions on a schedule and records what came back. That is useful for trend lines and share of voice against named competitors. Three limits apply to every tool in the table, CrawlCheck’s own answer check included.

• Answers vary between runs. The same prompt asked twice can cite different sources, so a single day’s result is a reading, not a ranking.
• Branded and unbranded prompts measure different things. A prompt that names your business tests whether the engine can find you; one that does not (“best tree service in Denver”) tests whether it chooses you. Blending the two inflates the score. CrawlCheck reports them separately for that reason.
• An API answer is not the consumer product. Most trackers query engines through an API or a scripted session; the answer a person sees in the app can differ. We wrote up the measured gap in AI visibility scores measure an API, not ChatGPT.

The question prompt trackers skip: can AI crawlers read the site? #

Before an engine can cite a page it has to fetch it. Across every site CrawlCheck has scanned, the shares below are read live each time this page renders.

When one of these is true, a prompt tracker reports “not cited” and cannot say why. That is the gap CrawlCheck was built for: one free scan fetches the site as a browser and as each AI crawler identity, compares what each received, resolves robots.txt per crawler, and names the cause. Method: how to check if AI crawlers can read your site.

Where CrawlCheck is weaker #

Held to the same standard as everyone else: CrawlCheck’s answer-engine check is narrower than a dedicated prompt tracker. It runs a small daily prompt set per monitored site on Gemini with Google Search, not a custom list of hundreds across nine engines. It has no share-of-voice dashboard against named competitors and no sentiment scoring. If those are your main need, a prompt tracker from the table is the better buy, and running a free CrawlCheck scan first tells you whether the tracker’s results are limited by access.

How to choose in four questions #

• Can AI crawlers read your site today? Check first; it is free and decides whether tracking means anything.
• How many prompts matter? Fifteen well-chosen unbranded prompts often say more than 350 generic ones.
• Which engines do your customers use? Coverage ranges from two engines to eleven; pay for the ones that matter.
• Do you already pay for Ahrefs or Semrush? Their add-ons may be cheapest for you.

How this comparison was made #

Every price, prompt allowance and engine list was read from the company’s own page on 3 October 2026 and linked above. Where a page did not publish a figure, the table says so instead of estimating. CrawlCheck figures come from its live pricing page and scanner; share-of-sites figures are computed from CrawlCheck’s scans and update live. Related: what each AI visibility tool measures and how to measure AI visibility.

Questions this post answers

What is the best AI visibility tool?

It depends on the job. For prompt tracking across the most engines, Profound (custom pricing) and Rankscale (from $99 a month, nine engines) cover the widest range. On a small budget, Otterly.AI Lite is $29 a month for 15 prompts. Inside an existing SEO suite, Ahrefs Brand Radar and the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit ($99 a month) add AI tracking. To check whether AI crawlers can read your site at all, CrawlCheck scans are free.

What is the difference between AI visibility tracking and an AI crawler audit?

Tracking asks AI engines a list of prompts and records whether your brand is mentioned or cited. An audit checks whether the AI companies' crawlers can reach, read and quote your site. Tracking shows the outcome; an audit shows whether access is the cause when the outcome is poor.

How much do AI visibility tools cost?

Published entry prices on 3 October 2026: Rankscale Essentials $17 a month billed yearly, Otterly.AI $29, Knowatoa $59, Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit $99, Rankscale Pro $99, AthenaHQ Starter $295, Scrunch Starter $300, Ahrefs custom prompts from $50. Profound and Peec AI did not show a public monthly price. CrawlCheck scans are free and monitoring is $29 a month for up to three domains.

Does CrawlCheck track prompts like Profound or Peec AI?

Only narrowly. CrawlCheck's monitoring runs a small daily set of prompts per site on Gemini with Google Search and reports prompts that name the business separately from those that do not. It does not offer hundreds of custom prompts across many engines; its main job is checking whether AI crawlers can access and read the site.

Why is my site never cited by ChatGPT?

Either the engine prefers other sources, or it cannot read yours. Common access causes include the answer engine's crawler being refused while browsers are served, challenge pages served with status 200, and content that only appears after JavaScript runs. A free CrawlCheck scan shows which applies.

Are AI visibility scores accurate?

They are samples. Answers vary between runs, branded and unbranded prompts measure different things, and most tools query engines through an API whose answers can differ from the consumer app. Treat a score as a trend over many runs, not a fixed rank.

Related findings

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Writing about this? Facts, live figures and marks — every number on that page is dated and traceable to a scan.

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