Ahrefs Brand Radar vs Semrush AI Visibility (2026 cost math)

Ahrefs Brand Radar costs about $828 a month before you track a single non-branded prompt. Semrush quietly folded the same job into Semrush One for $199. The sticker price is the wrong number to argue about.

Based on the live pricing as of May 2026, here is the one-line verdict: if you already pay for Semrush, Semrush One Starter at $199/mo is the default AI-visibility tracker; if you run agency-scale prompt volume, Ahrefs Brand Radar's $699 all-index bundle is the only thing that scales; and a large share of operators reading this should buy neither yet and fix classic rank first.

I run an autonomous AI publishing pipeline that ships a post a day on Cloudflare. Model, image, and infrastructure spend on that pipeline is roughly $0.40 an article, so I price every tool against a real cost base, not a vendor deck. An AI-visibility tracker that costs $828/mo has to clear a very specific bar before it earns a line in that P&L. Most of the time, at the prompt counts a solo operator or a lean growth team actually tracks, it does not.

This is the cost-per-tracked-prompt comparison nobody in the "best AI visibility tools" listicles runs, because the answer embarrasses the most-linked tool.

What is an AI-visibility tracker?

An AI-visibility tracker monitors whether your brand or page gets cited in AI-generated answers across engines like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot, the way a rank tracker monitors blue-link positions. That is the entire category. Everything below is about what each one costs per prompt you actually track, and whether the citation it reports is worth paying to see.

Why this matters in May 2026, with real numbers

The reason this category exists at all is a measurable hole in your reporting. Google AI Mode passed 100 million users, and 93% of AI Mode sessions end without a single click to a source site, per Nobori's 2026 analysis. The first causal field study found AI Overviews cut organic clicks 38% on triggered queries, with zero-click search rising from 54% to 72%, reported by Search Engine Journal.

So a third to a half of the visibility you used to read off a rank tracker now happens inside an answer box you cannot see in Google Search Console. That is the gap these tools sell into. It is a real gap. The question is the price you pay to close it, and whether closing it changes any decision you make.

One number reframes the whole purchase. Google AI Mode draws its answers exclusively from Google's own search index. If a page does not rank in classic Google, it is not cited in AI Mode. For a meaningful slice of readers, the AI-visibility number is just a lagging echo of a ranking problem you can already see for free. Hold that thought for the "who should buy neither" section, because it is the most expensive sentence in this article.

How I evaluated these, and what to look for

I am not running a fabricated 90-day subscription test here. The honest method for a category this new is the math: take each vendor's published 2026 pricing, the engines it covers, the prompt cap on each tier, and divide. The decision is not "which has more features." Every one of these tools shows you a citation-share chart. The decision is dollars per tracked prompt per month at the prompt count you will realistically run, plus whether the engine coverage matches where your buyers actually ask.

Four criteria, in priority order:

1. Cost per tracked prompt at your volume. Sticker price hides a 10x swing depending on whether you track 15 prompts or 2,500.
2. Engine coverage vs your buyers. ChatGPT-only is fine for some, useless for others. Google AI Mode coverage is the scarce one.
3. Whether it lives inside a suite you already pay for. A bundled tool at marginal cost beats a standalone tool at full cost almost every time.
4. Attribution honesty. None of these proves the citation drove revenue. The ones that imply they do are the ones to distrust.

The comparison table

Read the fourth column against the fifth. That ratio is the entire decision.

1. Semrush AI Visibility – best for anyone already paying Semrush

Best for: teams already inside the Semrush ecosystem · Standout: folded into Semrush One at near-zero marginal cost · Pricing: $99/mo standalone per domain, or included in Semrush One from $199/mo · Free trial: 7-day

Semrush did the one thing that resets the category math: it stopped selling AI visibility as a separate line item and bundled it into Semrush One. The standalone AI Visibility Toolkit is $99/mo per domain and tracks 25 custom prompts with daily AI rankings across ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, and Perplexity, per Oreate AI's breakdown. Semrush One bundles that with classic SEO from $199/mo Starter (1 domain, 50 daily prompt checks), $299/mo Pro+ (100 daily checks), and $549/mo Advanced, per Demandsage's 2026 pricing teardown.

Here is the math that matters. AI Visibility standalone at $99 plus a classic SEO plan at about $139.95 lands near $239/mo. Semrush One Starter is $199 for the same scope, so the bundle is roughly $40/mo cheaper than buying the pieces, and the AI tracking is effectively free once you needed the SEO suite anyway. At Starter's ~50 prompt checks, you are paying on the order of $4 per tracked prompt per month, but only the incremental zero if you already hold a Semrush seat. That marginal-cost framing is why this is the default, not the feature list.

Pricing tiers, exact: standalone $99/mo per domain; Semrush One Starter $199/mo, Pro+ $299/mo, Advanced $549/mo. Rating: Semrush sits around G2 4.5/5 across thousands of reviews as a suite; the AI Visibility module is too new for a standalone score, and I will not invent one.

2. Ahrefs Brand Radar – best for agencies running high prompt volume

Best for: agencies and in-house teams tracking hundreds to thousands of prompts · Standout: 6-engine index including Google AI Mode, scanning ~370M prompts/mo · Pricing: ~$828/mo all-in at the bundle · Free trial: limited

Brand Radar is the most technically complete tracker here, and the most mispriced for the median reader. It is not a standalone product. You need an active Ahrefs subscription starting at $129/mo Lite, then Brand Radar is $199/mo per AI platform index or $699/mo for the bundle of all six (Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot), per EWR Digital's 2026 pricing review. Proactively tracking a custom list of non-branded prompts is a further $50/mo for 2,500 prompts. Full coverage is a $129 + $699 + $50 stack, about $878/mo.

Now run the ratio both ways, because this is where every listicle stops thinking. At 2,500 tracked prompts, $878/mo is roughly $0.35 per prompt, the cheapest per-unit price in this entire comparison. At the 25 prompts a solo operator actually tracks, the same $878 is $35 per prompt, the most expensive by a factor of ten. Brand Radar is not expensive or cheap. It is a volume instrument that is brutal below roughly 250 tracked prompts and excellent above it. The only honest verdict is conditional, and the condition is your prompt count, not your ambition.

Pricing tiers, exact: Ahrefs Lite base $129/mo; Brand Radar $199/mo per index or $699/mo all-six bundle; custom prompt tracking +$50/mo per 2,500 prompts. Rating: Ahrefs as a suite is around G2 4.5/5 at scale; Brand Radar specifically is praised on data depth and criticized on price-to-entry, including in Profound's own 2026 review of it.

3. Peec AI – best for mid-market teams that want fast setup

Best for: mid-market growth teams that value speed and a clean UI · Standout: transparent tiered pricing with per-engine add-ons · Pricing: from about €90/mo · Free trial: yes

Peec AI sits in the middle on purpose. Pricing is roughly €90/mo Starter (25 prompts), €199/mo Pro (100 prompts), and €499/mo Enterprise (300+ prompts), with extra engines like Claude, Gemini, and Grok billed at €20–30/mo each, per Discovered Labs' platform comparison. At €199 for 100 prompts, that is about €2 per tracked prompt, cleanly between Otterly's floor and Brand Radar's solo-tier penalty.

The honest read: Peec is the right answer when you are not already in Semrush, do not have agency prompt volume, and want a tool that is running in an afternoon. The per-engine add-on model is fair but it means the real monthly number drifts up the moment you want full coverage. Price the engines you actually need before you sign, not the Starter line.

Pricing tiers, exact: ~€90/mo Starter, ~€199/mo Pro, ~€499/mo Enterprise; engine add-ons €20–30/mo each. Rating: too new for a high-volume G2 score; positioned by independent reviewers as the mid-market pick, not the depth leader.

4. Otterly.ai – best for solo operators who need the lowest entry cost

Best for: solo operators and very small teams · Standout: the $29 price floor for real multi-engine tracking · Pricing: from $29/mo · Free trial: yes

Otterly is the floor, and the floor is useful. The Lite plan is $29/mo for 15 search prompts tracked across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, per Discovered Labs. That is roughly $1.93 per tracked prompt, the cheapest entry economics in the comparison, and for a solo operator who wants to know if they show up at all, 15 prompts is enough to answer the question.

The blunt verdict: Otterly is the right first purchase for anyone testing whether AI visibility is even a problem for their site before committing real budget. It is not the tool you run a 500-prompt enterprise program on, and it does not pretend to be. Buy it to answer one question cheaply, then graduate or cancel.

Pricing tiers, exact: $29/mo Lite (15 prompts); higher tiers scale prompt count and engines. Rating: positioned consistently by independent reviewers as the budget pick; review volume is still thin, so I am not quoting a precise star count.

5. Profound – best for enterprise AEO programs with a budget owner

Best for: enterprise answer-engine-optimization programs · Standout: deepest answer-engine analytics in the category · Pricing: from $499/mo Lite · Free trial: no, sales-led

Profound is the enterprise option, and it prices like one. Lite is $499/mo for ChatGPT only, Growth runs about $399/mo for three engines, and full coverage sits behind a $2,000–$5,000+ enterprise contract with sales-led onboarding, per Discovered Labs. A $499 plan that covers one engine is the worst dollars-per-engine entry point here, by design: Profound is not trying to win the solo buyer.

The verdict is short. If you have a named budget owner, an AEO program with executive reporting, and the prompt volume to justify it, Profound is the depth leader and the price is rational. If you are reading this to decide between two tools for your own site, Profound is not in the running, and any listicle ranking it #1 for a solo operator is not pricing it honestly.

Pricing tiers, exact: $499/mo Lite (ChatGPT), ~$399/mo Growth (3 engines), $2,000–$5,000+ Enterprise. Rating: regarded by independent reviewers as the enterprise depth leader; not scored as a self-serve product because it is not sold as one.

The cost-per-prompt math, in one table

This is the section the listicles will not run, because it inverts their rankings.

The same tool, Brand Radar, is both the most expensive option in this comparison and the cheapest, separated only by how many prompts you track. That is the whole insight. Decide on the ratio at your real volume. Never decide on the headline.

The ones to avoid, and when each is the wrong buy

Not a single one of these is bad software. Each is the wrong buy in a specific, nameable situation:

• Avoid Ahrefs Brand Radar if you track under ~250 prompts. At solo volume the all-in $828–878/mo works out near $35 per prompt. Correlated with nothing you can act on at that scale. The data depth is real; the price per decision is not.
• Avoid standalone Semrush AI Visibility if you do not already use Semrush. Buying a $99 module that pulls you toward a $199+ suite is the bundle tail wagging the dog. Either commit to Semrush One for the whole stack or pick a true standalone.
• Avoid Profound Lite as a comparison shortlist entry. $499/mo for ChatGPT-only is an enterprise anchor price, not a tool you A/B against Otterly. It belongs on a different shortlist with a different buyer.
• Avoid Otterly for an ongoing program. Fifteen prompts answers "do I show up," not "is my AI visibility trending." It is a diagnostic, and treating a diagnostic as a monitoring system is the common mistake here.

Who should buy neither, yet

Here is the most expensive sentence in this article, and no vendor will print it. Google AI Mode draws its answers exclusively from Google's search index, and if a page does not rank in classic Google it is not cited in AI Mode, as documented in Google's own AI-search guidance coverage.

For a large group of readers, the AI-visibility number is a lagging echo of a ranking problem you can already see for free in Search Console. If your target pages do not rank on page one for the queries that trigger AI answers, an $828/mo tracker will produce a beautiful chart of you not being cited, for reasons you already know. Spend that budget on the ranking gap first. Buy the tracker when classic rank is solved and the only remaining unknown is the answer box.

And the attribution limit applies to every tool above. None of them proves a citation drove revenue. Can't fully attribute it; an AI citation correlates with branded search and assisted conversions, it does not close them in a way any of these dashboards can prove. Treat the number as a visibility signal, never as a revenue claim. The vendor that implies otherwise has told you which vendor to trust less.

Which should you choose

Routed by who you actually are:

• You already pay for Semrush: Semrush One Starter at $199/mo. The AI tracking is effectively free against spend you already have. Stop comparing; this is the answer.
• You are an agency tracking 250+ prompts: Ahrefs Brand Radar's $699 bundle. Below ~$0.40 per prompt at volume, and the only true Google AI Mode index. Nothing else scales like it.
• You are mid-market, not in Semrush, want it running today: Peec AI Pro at ~€199/100 prompts. Price the engine add-ons before you sign.
• You are solo and testing whether this is even a problem: Otterly Lite at $29 for 30 days. Answer the question, then graduate or cancel.
• You are an enterprise with an AEO budget owner: Profound. It is the depth leader at a price that only makes sense with a named budget line.
• Your target pages do not rank on page one yet: none of them. Fix rank first; the tracker measures a problem you have not created yet.

FAQ

Is Semrush AI Visibility better than Ahrefs Brand Radar?

For most buyers, Semrush AI Visibility is the better purchase because it is bundled into Semrush One at near-zero marginal cost, while Ahrefs Brand Radar runs about $828/mo all-in. Brand Radar is only the better choice at agency prompt volume (250+), where its per-prompt cost drops near $0.35 and its Google AI Mode index has no equal.

How much does Ahrefs Brand Radar actually cost?

About $828–878 a month for full coverage: a $129/mo Ahrefs base plan, plus the $699/mo six-index Brand Radar bundle, plus $50/mo for 2,500 custom prompts. The headline $199 per-index price is never the real all-in number.

Is Semrush AI Visibility included in Semrush plans?

Yes. As of 2026 it is bundled into Semrush One from $199/mo Starter, alongside the classic SEO suite. It is also sold standalone at $99/mo per domain, but standalone plus a classic SEO plan costs more than the bundle.

Do these tools track Google AI Mode?

Only Ahrefs Brand Radar offers a true Google AI Mode index among the tools here. Most others cover Google AI Overviews, which is related but not the same surface. AI Mode coverage is the scarcest and most defensible feature in the category right now.

What is the cheapest AI visibility tracker?

Otterly.ai at $29/mo for 15 prompts is the lowest credible entry price, roughly $1.93 per tracked prompt. It is a diagnostic, not an ongoing monitoring program, and it does not include a Google AI Mode index.

Can an AI visibility tool prove it increased revenue?

No. Every tool in this category reports citation share or visibility, not attributed revenue. An AI citation correlates with branded search and assisted conversions; it does not prove causation in any of these dashboards. Treat the number as a visibility signal only.

Should a small business buy an AI visibility tracker?

Often not yet. Google AI Mode cites only pages that already rank in classic Google, so if your pages are not on page one, the tracker will document a problem you can already see for free. Fix ranking first, then buy a tracker to monitor the answer box.

If you want the one-page checklist I use to decide whether a site even needs an AI-visibility tracker yet, and which prompt count flips the buy decision, it is in the AI search visibility checklist on the newsletter. One email, no tool pitch.