10 Best AI Platforms for Answer Engine Optimization in 2026, Compared

Quick comparison

The best ai platforms for answer engine optimization

#1

Peec AI

Best for: Marketing teams at mid-size brands that want clean daily AI visibility, sentiment and citation data across 3 chosen engines

★★★★★★★★★★4.7/5 on G2 (21 reviews, checked Oct 2026)

Visit peec.ai

Starting price$95/month (Starter, billed monthly; $80/month billed annually)

Free planNo — 7-day free trial

Peec AI is the most complete dedicated tracker a mid-size team can buy without a sales call. The $95 Starter plan tracks 50 prompts daily across three engines you choose from ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI, with unlimited users on every plan — so the whole marketing team reads the same numbers. Sentiment, share of voice, citation sources and competitor tracking are all included from the entry plan.

The limits are honest ones. Three engines per plan means Claude, Perplexity and Grok sit behind Enterprise or paid add-ons, and the recommended-action features are still earning reviewers' trust. Peec also sells a separate agency track from $245 a month. For a brand that wants clean daily numbers and room to grow, it is the best-balanced pick in this list.

What we like

• 50 prompts tracked daily across 3 chosen models, with unlimited users on every plan
• Sentiment, share of voice, citation sources and competitor tracking included from the $95 Starter plan
• MCP and API access, plus source-level gap analysis showing which domains AI cites instead of you

Watch out for

• Only 3 of 6 models per plan — Claude, Perplexity and Grok need Enterprise or paid add-ons
• Some G2 reviewers say the recommended actions are not yet trusted to move results, and onboarding prompts can overlap
• No page-readiness audit on the entry plan, per G2 reviewers

#2

Profound

Best for: Enterprise brands that need the deepest AI visibility data plus AI agents that act on it

★★★★★★★★★★4.5/5 on G2 (1,133 reviews, checked Oct 2026)

Visit tryprofound.com

Starting priceCustom quote (Enterprise; free 7-day trial)

Free planNo — free 7-day trial

Profound is the platform the rest of the category is measured against. Its Enterprise plan tracks up to nine answer engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Exa Search — with an AI Marketer agent that drafts content fixes and reports from the data. Profound says it holds 1.5 billion answer-engine prompts and responses from real user conversations, the largest prompt dataset any vendor here names.

The catch is access. Profound removed its $99 Starter and $399 Growth plans for brands in September 2026, so the only route in is a free 7-day trial (50 prompts a day across three engines) and then a custom Enterprise quote. If you can afford the sales process, it is the deepest tool here; if you need a published price, start with Peec or Otterly.

What we like

• Up to 9 answer engines on Enterprise, the widest coverage in this list
• AI Marketer agent drafts content fixes and reports from the visibility data
• Profound cites a dataset of 1.5 billion answer-engine prompts and responses from real user conversations

Watch out for

• No published price for brands — Enterprise is a custom quote after a demo
• Self-serve Starter ($99) and Growth ($399) plans were removed in September 2026
• G2 reviewers say the price feels high and the reporting takes time to learn

#3

Otterly.AI

Best for: Solo marketers and small teams that want the cheapest credible start in AI visibility tracking

★★★★★★★★★★4.7/5 on G2 (54 reviews, checked Oct 2026)

Visit otterly.ai

Starting price$29/month (Lite, billed monthly; $25/month billed annually)

Free planNo — free trial

Otterly.AI is the cheapest serious way into AI visibility tracking. Lite costs $29 a month ($25 billed annually) for 15 prompts tracked daily across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, with unlimited team members, citation source tracking, sentiment analysis and a GEO audit of 1,000 URLs a month. It was named a Gartner Cool Vendor in 2025, which is unusual recognition at this price.

Fifteen prompts cover one brand's core questions and not much more, and the jump to Standard is steep at $189 a month. Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode are paid add-ons on every plan, from $9 a month each on Lite. Buy Lite to prove the channel matters to your brand, then budget for Standard once the prompt list grows past 15.

What we like

• Cheapest entry in this list: 15 prompts tracked daily across 4 engines for $29/month
• Unlimited team members on every plan, plus citation source tracking and sentiment analysis
• GEO audits included (1,000 URL audits a month on Lite); named a Gartner Cool Vendor in 2025

Watch out for

• 15 prompts cover one brand's core questions only; Standard jumps to $189/month
• Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode are paid add-ons on every plan (from $9/month each on Lite)
• Some G2 reviewers say the sentiment classifier tags neutral mentions as negative

#4

Scrunch AI

Best for: Mid-size brands that want AI visibility monitoring plus page audits and AI-agent traffic data

★★★★★★★★★★4.6/5 on G2 (74 reviews, checked Oct 2026)

Visit scrunch.com

Starting price$250/month (Core)

Free planNo — 7-day free trial

Scrunch pairs AI visibility monitoring with the tools to act on it. The Core plan costs $250 a month for 125 unique prompts, 5,000 responses a month, five site audits and five user licenses across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot. It also shows which AI agents visit your site and how they crawl it, and its hallucination detection flags answers that misstate facts about your brand.

Scrunch re-cut its plans in 2026: the old Starter tier (350 prompts, seven engines) is gone, and Core covers four engines with fewer prompts for the same $250. The Agent Experience Platform, which serves AI agents a machine-readable version of your site, and the API both sit on the custom Enterprise plan. Sitecore acquired Scrunch in June 2026, so buyers outside that ecosystem should ask about the standalone roadmap before signing.

What we like

• Combines prompt monitoring with page audits, hallucination detection and AI-agent traffic analytics
• Shows which AI agents visit your site and how they crawl it, with GA4 integration praised by G2 reviewers
• SOC 2 Type II audited, with a published $250 entry price and self-serve signup

Watch out for

• Core covers only 4 engines and 125 prompts — the old Starter tier (350 prompts, 7 engines) is gone
• New prompts run daily for 14 days, then every 72 hours by default
• Agent Experience Platform and API sit on the custom Enterprise plan; Sitecore acquired Scrunch in June 2026

#5

Goodie AI

Best for: Brands that want one platform to track, fix and attribute AI visibility to revenue

★★★★★★★★★★4.9/5 on G2 (10 reviews, checked Oct 2026)

Visit higoodie.com

Starting price$354/month (Core, billed monthly; $295/month billed annually)

Free planNo — 7-day free trial

Goodie is the only tool in this list built as a closed loop: it tracks where your brand appears in AI answers, then its agents write content, fix technical signals and run outreach to close the gaps. Core costs $295 a month billed annually for 110 prompts tracked daily across five engines, 50 optimization actions a month, revenue attribution and unlimited seats. Pro ($999 a month) adds agentic commerce visibility at the SKU level.

The price is the filter. Core is self-serve with a 7-day trial, but $354 a month is twelve times Otterly's entry price, and the full depth — 14 engines, custom revenue modeling, a dedicated strategist — sits on the custom Enterprise plan. Goodie is the right buy when AI search is already a revenue channel you report on, not when you are still proving it exists.

What we like

• Full closed loop: tracks visibility, then agents write content, fix technical signals and run outreach
• Revenue attribution connects AI visibility to traffic and sales, plus agentic commerce visibility
• Daily data collection, unlimited seats and MCP access on every plan

Watch out for

• $295 a month is ten times the cheapest entry here, and Pro is $999 a month
• Full depth (14 engines, custom revenue modeling, dedicated strategist) sits on custom Enterprise
• G2 review base is thin (10 reviews) and some features are still in beta, per reviewers

#6

SE Ranking AI Visibility

Best for: Small agencies and in-house SEO teams that want AI visibility bundled with rank tracking and research

★★★★★★★★★★4.7/5 on G2 (1,619 reviews, checked Oct 2026)

Visit seranking.com

Starting price$129/month (Core, billed monthly; $103.20/month billed annually)

Free planNo — 14-day free trial

SE Ranking is the cheapest way to get AI visibility inside a full SEO suite. The Core plan costs $129 a month ($103.20 billed annually) and bundles AI visibility tracking — 25 prompts a day across five engines — with 2,000 keywords tracked daily, site audits, keyword and backlink research and local marketing. A standalone AI visibility add-on starts at $71 a month for 75 prompts if you do not need the rest of the suite.

Twenty-five prompts a day is a modest allowance next to the dedicated tools, and the white-label Agency Pack costs $69 a month extra. But if your team already does SEO in SE Ranking, the AI tracking costs nothing on top of the subscription you already pay. That makes it the best value pick for in-house SEO teams and small agencies.

What we like

• AI visibility included in Core: 25 prompts a day across 5 engines, on top of a full SEO suite
• 2,000 keywords tracked daily, site audit, keyword and backlink research in the same subscription
• Standalone AI visibility add-on from $71/month (75 prompts) if you do not need the suite

Watch out for

• 25 prompts a day is a modest allowance next to the dedicated trackers
• White-label reporting needs the Agency Pack add-on from $69/month
• Some G2 reviewers report small accuracy differences against the larger suites

#7

Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

Best for: Teams that already pay for Semrush and want AI visibility scored against the largest keyword database

★★★★★★★★★★4.4/5 on G2 (4,304 reviews, checked Oct 2026)

Visit semrush.com

Starting price$99/month per domain (Base, billed annually; no monthly-billing price published)

Free planNo — no free trial on the standalone toolkit

The Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit is Semrush's AI tracking without the full suite. Base costs $99 a month per domain billed annually for 25 custom prompts tracked daily, one domain for Brand Performance analysis, mentions from ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity, and an AI site audit of 100 pages. The same features are bundled into the Semrush One plans from $199 a month with 50 prompts.

The pricing is per domain and per user, so the bill grows fast: an extra domain is another $99 a month and each extra user needs their own license. There is no free trial on the standalone toolkit, though Semrush One plans offer seven days. Buy it when your team already lives in Semrush; as a first AI visibility tool, the dedicated trackers give you more prompts for less.

What we like

• Standalone toolkit at $99 a month per domain, or bundled into Semrush One plans from $199 a month
• 25 custom prompts tracked daily plus Prompt Research against Semrush's prompt database
• Brand Performance tracks share of voice and sentiment against competitors

Watch out for

• Priced per domain and per user — an extra domain is another $99 a month and each extra user needs a license
• No free trial on the standalone toolkit, and no monthly-billing price is published
• 25 prompts is a small allowance; 50 more prompts cost $60 a month

#8

Ahrefs Brand Radar

Best for: SEO teams already paying for Ahrefs that want AI mention tracking next to backlink and keyword data

★★★★★★★★★★4.5/5 on G2 (723 reviews, checked Oct 2026)

Visit ahrefs.com

Starting price$50/month (Basic custom prompt package, +2,500 checks; requires an Ahrefs plan)

Free planYes — Ahrefs Free (Brand Radar needs a paid plan)

Ahrefs Brand Radar brings AI mention tracking into the SEO dashboard teams open daily. It searches Ahrefs' database of more than 519 million collected prompts to show where your brand appears in AI answers, and custom prompt packages start at $50 a month for 2,500 checks. Lite ($129 a month) includes five custom prompts and 150 checks a month, rising to 20 prompts and 600 checks on Advanced.

Brand Radar is an add-on, not a standalone product: the $50 package sits on top of an Ahrefs subscription, so the real entry cost is higher. Prompt tracking runs on checks — one prompt on one platform in one location is one check, and Claude uses eight — so heavy multi-engine tracking burns it fast. It is the easy yes for existing Ahrefs customers and a poor first buy for everyone else.

What we like

• Searches a database of 519 million-plus collected prompts to benchmark any brand instantly
• Custom prompt packages from $50 a month; Lite includes 5 custom prompts and 150 checks a month
• Sits inside the Ahrefs suite, next to Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer and Site Audit

Watch out for

• An add-on on top of a paid Ahrefs plan — the real entry cost is higher than $50 a month
• Check-based billing: one prompt on one platform in one location is one check, and Claude uses eight
• No free trial, and the pricing page publishes no update frequency for custom prompts

#9

Athena HQ

Best for: Teams that want to test real AI visibility tracking free before committing to a paid plan

★★★★★★★★★★4.9/5 on G2 (39 reviews, checked Oct 2026)

Visit athenahq.ai

Starting price$295/month (Starter; Essential plan is free)

Free planYes — free Essential plan (300 credits, 5 models)

AthenaHQ is the only platform in this list with a genuinely free plan. Essential costs nothing and includes 300 credits across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot, with unlimited members, competitor insights and content recommendations. Starter costs $295 a month for 3,600 credits and visibility across 11 models, including Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral.

Credits are the catch: one credit is one AI response, so tracking many prompts across many models spends the allowance fast, and the pricing page publishes no refresh cadence. API access and extra credits are paid add-ons on Starter, and there is nothing between free and $295 a month. Start on Essential to learn the tool, and model your real prompt volume before paying.

What we like

• Only genuinely free plan in this list: 300 credits across 5 models, with unlimited members
• Starter covers 11 models including Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral
• Pairs tracking with a recommendation engine that suggests on-page and off-page actions

Watch out for

• Credit billing is hard to compare: 1 credit is 1 AI response, and no refresh cadence is published
• Nothing between free and $295 a month, and API access plus extra credits are paid add-ons
• G2 reviewers say the interface can feel overwhelming and the documentation is thin

#10

Evertune

Best for: Large advertisers and brand teams that want statistically sampled AI visibility plus AI-driven ads

Visit evertune.ai

Starting price$60/month (Starter; first 7 days free)

Free planNo — first 7 days free

Evertune is built for advertisers and brand teams that need AI visibility numbers to stand up in a boardroom. Starter costs $60 a month for 5,000 prompt credits, tracking on up to five models with daily monitoring, and it publishes margins of error for its sampling — one ask carries about 44 points of error, 100 asks about 10. Pro adds statistical significance from day one, content generation and AI retargeting.

The jump from Starter to Pro is the steepest in this list: $60 to $800 a month billed annually, with 100,000 credits and 11 models. The Ads Agent also takes 10% of media spend on Starter. Evertune is the right pick when leadership wants defensible measurement and an ads layer in the same contract, and a poor fit for a small team that only needs prompt tracking.

What we like

• Publishes margins of error for its sampling and samples each prompt up to 100 times on Pro
• Daily monitoring on every plan, including the $60 Starter plan
• One contract covers tracking, AI-optimized content and AI advertising

Watch out for

• Pro jumps to $800 a month billed annually — over 13 times the Starter price
• No G2 reviews yet, so there is no independent user rating to check
• The Ads Agent takes 10% of media spend on Starter (8% on Pro)

What an AI platform for answer engine optimization actually does

The best AI platforms for answer engine optimization do one job: they show you when AI answers mention, cite or recommend your brand — and when they recommend a competitor instead. You give the tool the questions your buyers ask, it runs them across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and the other answer engines, and it records whether your brand appears, what the answer says about you, and which sources it cites. Over time that becomes a trend line you can report on, instead of a one-off manual check.

The shift behind these tools is already large. In McKinsey's August 2025 survey of 1,927 US consumers, half said they intentionally seek out AI-powered search, and most of those users called it their top source for buying decisions. Yet only 16% of brands systematically track how they appear in AI search, according to a small McKinsey survey of Fortune 500 CMOs — so most teams are still deciding blind. An AEO platform is the instrument that closes that gap: it turns "are we in the answers?" into a number with a history.

Free options first

If you only need to see whether your brand shows up at all, start free. AthenaHQ's Essential plan costs nothing and tracks real AI answers across five models with 300 credits, which is enough to run a first baseline. Every dedicated tool here except the Semrush standalone toolkit also offers a free trial of 7 days: Profound, Peec AI, Scrunch and Goodie all let you run your own prompts for a week, Otterly.AI offers a free trial with no length stated on its pricing page, and Evertune's Starter plan is free for the first 7 days.

Seven days is enough to see a baseline, not a trend. Use the trial to run your real buyer questions, check whether the answers match what customers actually see, and see if the reports make sense to someone who is not an SEO. If the tool cannot show you a citation you recognize in the first week, a longer subscription will not fix that.

Dedicated AEO platforms vs AI visibility inside SEO suites

The 10 tools in this list split into two camps. The dedicated platforms — Peec AI, Profound, Otterly.AI, Scrunch, Goodie, AthenaHQ and Evertune — were built for this one job. They run your prompts, report mentions, citations, sentiment and share of voice, and some of them act on the findings: Goodie writes the content and fixes the technical signals, Scrunch audits the pages, and Profound's AI Marketer drafts the work. They are usually cheaper per prompt and faster to learn.

The suites — SE Ranking, Semrush and Ahrefs — bundle AI visibility into a product you may already pay for. SE Ranking includes 25 prompts a day on its Core plan, Semrush sells a standalone toolkit at $99 a month per domain, and Ahrefs sells custom prompt packages from $50 a month on top of its subscription. The right camp depends on what you already pay for: if you own a suite, use its AI tracking first; if you only need AI answers, a dedicated platform costs less and goes deeper.

What AI visibility actually measures

Every tool in this list reports some version of the same four numbers: how often your brand is mentioned, which sources the AI cites, how it describes you (sentiment), and your share of voice against competitors. The differences sit underneath those numbers. Some tools run each prompt once a day; Evertune samples each prompt up to 100 times on Pro and publishes the margin of error; Scrunch runs new prompts daily for 14 days, then every 72 hours; AthenaHQ and Ahrefs publish no refresh cadence at all.

The billing unit matters as much as the metric. Peec AI, Otterly.AI, Scrunch and Semrush charge by prompts; AthenaHQ and Evertune charge by credits, where one credit is one AI response; Ahrefs charges by checks, where one prompt on one platform in one location is one check. A prompt tracked on three engines is three times the data of the same prompt on one engine, so compare plans by answers per month — prompts times engines times days — not by the headline prompt count. If you want to see how the citation side works for your own site, our guide to getting cited in ChatGPT explains what the AI engines actually quote, and what AEO is covers the basics behind the category.

Quick comparison: tool type by need

How to choose the best AI platforms for answer engine optimization: a short decision path

1. Write down your buyer questions first. List 15 to 50 questions buyers actually ask — branded, comparison and category questions. The size of that list decides the plan, not the other way round.
2. Check which engines the entry plan covers. ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity are usually included; Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode are often paid add-ons. If your buyers use Claude, a cheap plan without it is the wrong plan.
3. Count prompts times engines times days. A 50-prompt list on three engines is 150 answers a day. Credit and check-based tools bill the same way under different names, so convert every plan to answers per month before comparing prices.
4. Decide dedicated platform or suite add-on. If you already pay for SE Ranking, Semrush or Ahrefs, use its AI tracking first. If not, a dedicated tracker gives you more prompts per dollar. Our AI search optimization service runs this same decision for clients before recommending a tool.
5. Run the trial on your real questions. Seven days is enough to check whether the citations match reality. If the numbers look nothing like what you see when you ask the AI yourself, try another tool before paying.

Before you publish new pages for the questions you track, check whether AI crawlers can actually read them with the free AI crawler robots.txt generator — a page the crawlers cannot fetch will never be cited.

Mistakes to avoid

• Comparing headline prices without checking engines. A $29 plan that excludes Claude and Gemini costs more than a $95 plan that includes the engines your buyers use, once the add-ons are counted.
• Counting prompts without counting engines. One prompt on three engines is three answers a day; on credit and check-based plans it is three credits or three checks. Multiply before you budget.
• Buying enterprise depth before proving the channel. A 7-day trial on Otterly.AI or AthenaHQ's free plan tells you whether AI answers matter to your brand. A custom Enterprise quote does not.
• Trusting a single visibility score. Every vendor scores visibility differently, and AI answers change with wording, location and model version. Treat the score as a trend, not an exact number — Evertune is the only vendor here that publishes its margin of error.
• Ignoring the refresh cadence. Scrunch drops to every 72 hours after 14 days, and AthenaHQ and Ahrefs publish no cadence at all. If you report weekly to clients, daily updates are worth paying for; if you check monthly, they are not.

How we chose

We checked each vendor's own pricing page on October 31, 2026 and recorded the starting price exactly as shown, including the annual-billing figure where the page lists one. Ratings come from G2 pages opened the same day; Evertune has no G2 reviews yet, so it has no rating here. We ranked the tools by fit for the most common buyer — a marketing team that needs credible AI visibility data without an enterprise sales process — not by brand size. No vendor paid for a place in this list, and none of the links here are affiliate links.

What to do next

Start with the decision path above: write your buyer questions, check which engines the entry plan covers, and convert the price to answers per month. Then take the free plan or trial of your top pick — AthenaHQ's free Essential plan or Otterly.AI's $29 Lite are the cheapest ways to see your first real numbers — and run your real questions for a week. If the citations match what you see when you ask the AI yourself, you have your tool; if you want the full picture first, read how to rank in AI Overviews to see what the engines reward. If you'd rather have this set up and read for you, request a free SEO + AI visibility audit and get a ranked fix list in 2 business days.

Sources we checked (20)

• Peec AI pricing — peec.ai/pricing (checked October 31, 2026)
• Peec AI on G2 — 4.7/5, 21 reviews (checked October 31, 2026)
• Profound pricing — tryprofound.com/pricing (checked October 31, 2026)
• Profound on G2 — 4.5/5, 1,133 reviews (checked October 31, 2026)
• Otterly.AI pricing — otterly.ai/pricing (checked October 31, 2026)
• Otterly.AI on G2 — 4.7/5, 54 reviews (checked October 31, 2026)
• Scrunch AI pricing — scrunch.com/pricing (checked October 31, 2026)
• Scrunch AI on G2 — 4.6/5, 74 reviews (checked October 31, 2026)
• Goodie AI pricing — higoodie.com/pricing (checked October 31, 2026)
• Goodie AI on G2 — 4.9/5, 10 reviews (checked October 31, 2026)
• SE Ranking pricing — seranking.com/subscription.html (checked October 31, 2026)
• SE Ranking on G2 — 4.7/5, 1,619 reviews (checked October 31, 2026)
• Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit pricing — semrush.com/pricing/ai (checked October 31, 2026)
• Semrush on G2 — 4.4/5, 4,304 reviews (checked October 31, 2026)
• Ahrefs pricing — ahrefs.com/pricing (checked October 31, 2026)
• Ahrefs on G2 — 4.5/5, 723 reviews (checked October 31, 2026)
• AthenaHQ pricing — athenahq.ai/pricing (checked October 31, 2026)
• AthenaHQ on G2 — 4.9/5, 39 reviews (checked October 31, 2026)
• Evertune pricing — evertune.ai/pricing (checked October 31, 2026)
• McKinsey & Company — New front door to the internet: Winning in the age of AI search (October 2025)