AI Visibility Tools (2026): Which AEO Tracker Earns Its Price
Peec AI, Otterly, Scrunch and Profound compared on real 2026 pricing. Which AI visibility tracker is worth paying for, by company size and budget.
AEO tracking tools run from $29 a month to enterprise contracts you have to book a demo for, and the price tells you almost nothing about which one fits your company. Four tools own this category in 2026: Peec AI, Otterly, Scrunch, and Profound. Here is who each is for, and where the money stops making sense.
If a buyer asks ChatGPT for the best tool in your category and you are not in the answer, you lose the sale before your site ever loads. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) tracking tools exist to tell you whether that is happening: how often ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, and the rest cite your brand versus your competitors, on the exact questions your customers ask. The work of getting cited is a separate job (the 14-day GEO playbook covers that). These four tools are the scoreboard.
The fastest way to read this market: Otterly is the cheapest real entry at $29, Peec AI is the best value for an in-house team because every plan has unlimited users, Scrunch wants to fix your pages and not just grade them, and Profound is the enterprise standard you call sales for. The right pick turns almost entirely on two numbers, how many prompts you need to track and how many people need a login, and the table below sorts it.
The four tools that actually own AEO tracking in 2026
Prices are the current published tiers as of June 2026. Two things separate these from the dozen lookalike tools in the same search results. First, all four track the engines that actually move revenue right now (ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews at minimum), not just one. Second, each has a real point of view about who it serves, which is what lets you rule three of them out fast.
A quick word on what "prompt" means here, because it is the unit you pay for. A prompt is one tracked question, for example "best project management software for agencies" or "top dentist in Austin." The tool runs that question through the AI engines on a schedule and records whether you got named, where, and against whom. More prompts means more of your money queries watched. That is why a 15-prompt plan and a 400-prompt plan are priced an order of magnitude apart.
What an AI visibility tool actually does (and what it does not)
It answers one question on repeat: when AI engines respond to the questions your buyers ask, do they mention you, and how do you stack up against rivals? Concretely, a tracker logs in to (or simulates) ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and others, fires your tracked prompts daily or weekly, and reports three things: whether you were cited, your "share of voice" (the percentage of answers in your set that name you versus competitors), and which sources the AI pulled from to build its answer.
That last part is the useful one. If Perplexity keeps citing a Reddit thread and two competitor blog posts to answer "best CRM for solar installers," you now know exactly which pages to go earn a mention on. A B2B SaaS growth lead can point a dozen prompts at their category's buying questions and watch, week over week, whether a new comparison page actually moved them into the answer.
Here is the honest limit, and it is the line the listicles skip: a tracker measures, it does not fix. None of these tools writes the content, earns the Reddit mention, or restructures your page so an AI can quote it. They tell you the score and where the gaps are. The fixing is GEO work you or your team still has to do. Buying a $489 plan and changing nothing is how people conclude "AEO tools don't work."
List your real money questions
Write the 10 to 15 questions a buyer actually types before choosing someone like you: "best [category] for [your customer type]," "[competitor] alternatives," "is [your product] worth it." These, not your brand name, are the prompts that matter.
Add two or three competitors
Every tool here lets you track rivals on the same prompts. Add the two you lose deals to most. Share of voice is meaningless without them.
Pick only the engines your buyers use
For most US businesses that is ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. Adding Claude or Gemini coverage often costs more (Peec charges $35 a month per extra model), so do not pay for engines your customers do not ask.
Wait two weeks before judging
AI answers shift daily. A single snapshot tells you nothing. The trend over two to four weeks is the signal you bought.
Peec AI: the best value for an in-house marketing team
Peec AI is the one to start with if more than one person on your team needs to see the data, because every plan includes unlimited users. That single fact reshapes the math: most tools in this space charge per seat, so a five-person team can quietly cost more than the headline price suggests. Peec does not, which is why it is the default for a growth team rather than a solo operator.
Plans run $95 a month (Starter, 50 prompts, 1 project), $245 a month (Pro, 150 prompts, 2 projects), and $495 a month (Advanced, 350 prompts, 5 projects), each tracking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews. Every tier covers three models by default; adding a fourth or fifth engine is $35 a month each. "Projects" are separate brands or sites, so the jump from Pro to Advanced is really about how many brands you watch, not how many prompts. Peec says it is used by more than 2,500 marketing teams, and there is separate agency pricing for shops tracking many clients at once.
The sweet spot is Pro at $245. A B2B SaaS growth lead tracking 150 prompts across their category's buying questions, with the whole marketing team logged in and no per-seat tax, gets the clearest picture per dollar of any tool here. At $245 for 150 prompts that is about $1.63 per tracked prompt, and the unlimited seats make it cheaper still once three or more people need access.
- Unlimited users on every plan, no per-seat cost
- Tracks all five major engines including Gemini and Claude
- Clean per-prompt pricing, easy to scale brands via projects
- No sub-$95 tier, so it is too much tool for a true solo
- Extra models cost $35 a month each, which adds up
- Doing the optimization work is still on you
Skip it if you are one person tracking one brand on a tight budget. The unlimited-users advantage is wasted on you, and Otterly's $29 plan does the core job for a fraction of the cost.
Otterly: the cheapest real entry point
Otterly is the tool to pick when budget is the deciding factor, because its Lite plan is $29 a month and still tracks the engines that matter. Most "cheap" AEO tools are free spot-checkers that show you one snapshot and stop. Otterly Lite gives you ongoing tracking of 15 prompts across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot, which is genuinely enough for a small operator watching a handful of money queries.
The ladder is $29 a month (Lite, 15 prompts), $189 a month (Standard, 100 prompts), and $489 a month (Premium, 400 prompts), with 15 percent off if you pay annually (which drops Lite to $25 and Standard to $160 a month). You can bolt on 100 extra prompts for $99. The catch worth knowing: the plan tiers track Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copilot, but Gemini and Claude coverage is thinner than Peec's, so if your buyers lean on those engines, check the fit before you commit.
For a local-services owner, say a dental clinic or a realtor, 15 prompts on Otterly Lite covers "best dentist in [city]," a few procedure questions, and two competitors for $29 a month, which is the right amount of tool for the job. A DTC ecommerce brand doing 50 orders a day can sit on Standard at $189 and watch 100 product and category prompts without overbuying.
Skip it if your team needs several logins or you want deep Gemini and Claude coverage. Otterly is built around the single operator and the core engines, not a multi-seat marketing department.
Scrunch: the optimize-not-just-track play (now a Sitecore company)
Scrunch is the pick when you want the tool to tell you what to fix, not only that you are losing. Where the others stop at measurement, Scrunch Core bundles in site audits and page optimizations, so the $250 a month buys you a path to action and not just a dashboard. As of this year Scrunch is a Sitecore company, folded into the enterprise content and experience platform, which is a signal about where it is heading: upmarket, toward larger content operations.
Core is $250 a month and includes 125 unique prompts, 5 site audits a month, 5 user licenses, and 1 page optimization a month, with a 7-day free trial. Above that sits Enterprise, which is custom-quoted and adds unlimited prompts and seats, product-level observability (useful if you sell many SKUs and want to see AI search at the product level), and full site audits. The five included user licenses are generous for a team without paying Peec's "everyone gets in" model, and the audit-plus-optimization loop is what you are really paying the premium for.
The fit is a content team that already knows it is behind in AI answers and wants a worklist. A 12-person content shop at a mid-market SaaS company can run 125 prompts, get monthly audits that flag which pages an AI cannot cleanly quote, and work the optimization queue. If all you want is a score, you are overpaying; the audit and optimization features are the reason to choose Scrunch over a cheaper tracker.
Skip it if you only want tracking, or you are a solo or small team. At $250 to start, with its center of gravity now inside Sitecore's enterprise stack, Scrunch is aimed at content operations, not a founder checking a few prompts.
Profound: the enterprise heavyweight
Profound is the answer when AEO is a company-wide priority with a budget to match, and it is the name you will see cited most often inside Google's own AI Overviews about this category. It is the most enterprise-built tool of the four, with deep integrations, an AEO research report, agent templates, and reporting aimed at marketing, PR, and brand teams that need to defend their visibility across every answer engine at once.
Profound runs three tiers, Starter, Growth, and Enterprise. Pricing is not posted as a flat number on the page: Starter and Growth are self-serve with a free trial (Starter is built around 9,000 responses analyzed and 400 credits a month), while Enterprise is custom and gated behind a sales call. Annual billing comes with two months free. The honest read is that Profound is positioned for buyers who will talk to sales, so if you want a price on the page before you commit, that friction tells you something about who it is for.
You choose Profound when a large brand needs governance, integrations into an existing martech stack, and reporting a CMO will actually look at, across a wide set of engines and a high volume of tracked responses. For a solo agency owner or a single founder, it is more platform than the job requires, and the demo-gated pricing is a poor fit for a fast, self-serve decision.
Who should pick what: the decision rule
The choice comes down to two thresholds: how many prompts you need to track, and how many people need a login. Run your situation through this table.
The rule that flips most decisions is per-seat cost. The moment three or more people need access, Peec's unlimited users beats Otterly and Scrunch on total cost even though its sticker price is higher, because the others cap or charge for seats. The second rule is prompts: under 15 tracked questions, Otterly Lite is plenty; 50 to 350, Peec is the value play; once you need the tool to hand you a fix-it list, you are paying Scrunch or Profound for the action layer, not the tracking.
On pure price per tracked prompt, the math lands close at the top: Peec Advanced is about $1.41 a prompt, Otterly Premium about $1.22, and Scrunch Core about $2.00, though Scrunch's number includes audits and optimizations the others do not. Cheap entry goes to Otterly; cheapest at scale goes to Otterly Premium and Peec Advanced; best value once a team is involved goes to Peec on the strength of unlimited seats.
Are there free AI visibility or AEO tools?
For spot checks, yes. Free AI Overview checkers and the free tools several vendors publish will tell you, once, whether an engine cites you for a given question. For ongoing tracking, no: the paid plans exist because the value is in watching change over weeks, comparing against competitors, and seeing which sources the AI pulls from. Use free tools to confirm you have a gap, then pay to close and monitor it.
What is an AI visibility score or AEO score?
It is a vendor's composite of how often AI answers cite you and how prominently, usually expressed as a share of voice against the competitors you track. Treat it as a trend line, not an absolute grade: a score of 40 means little on its own, but a score climbing from 20 to 40 over a month is real evidence your content work is landing. Each tool calculates it differently, so do not compare scores across tools.
Do I need a dedicated AEO tool if I already pay for Semrush or Ahrefs?
The big SEO suites are adding AI-visibility features, and if you already pay for one, start there to see if it covers your engines and prompt volume. Dedicated tools like Peec and Otterly typically track more answer engines and give you more tracked prompts for the money, plus the source analysis that tells you where to earn citations. Decide by depth: light monitoring, use what you have; serious AEO program, buy the dedicated tool.
Is AEO different from GEO and SEO?
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) are near-synonyms for the same goal: getting cited in AI-generated answers. Classic SEO is about ranking in the ten blue links. The content work overlaps heavily, but the scoreboard is different, which is exactly why these tracking tools exist. The GEO versus SEO breakdown walks through where they diverge.
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Jun 22, 2026
