AI visibility tools compared: who tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overview citations (2026)
An AI visibility tool runs a fixed set of prompts through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews on a schedule, records which brands and URLs each answer mentions or cites, and turns that into a share-of-voice number you can track over time. In September 2026 entry prices run from $29 a month (Otterly, 15 prompts) through $79 (Writesonic) and $99 (Semrush, Profound) to $199 (Ahrefs Brand Radar). SEnuke AI bundles a 250-unit AI citation scan, about $7 at pack prices, into its $97 platform.
Below: what these tools measure, a price and engine table for seven of them, a one-line verdict each, how to pick by the job you have, and where SEnuke AI's AI Citations screen fits after ten days of hands-on use. Two of the FAQ entries answer questions people are already typing into AI search to reach this site.
Free first: before paying for AI visibility tracking, run the five prompts in the Get-Cited Kit by hand. Ten minutes a month tells you whether you are cited at all, which is the question most small sites need answered before a $99 subscription makes sense.
What an AI visibility tool actually measures
Every tool in this comparison does the same four things, and the differences are mostly in how many prompts, how many engines and how often. It sends a prompt set (typically 15 to 400 questions a buyer might ask) to each engine on a daily or weekly schedule; it records every mention (your brand named in the answer) and every citation (your URL linked as a source) together with the position; and it aggregates that into a share of voice against the competitors you named. Better tools add sentiment, the list of domains the engines lean on for your topic, and prompt discovery.
Two numbers explain why this is a separate category from rank tracking. Ahrefs found that Perplexity's cited sources overlap with Google's top 10 only 28.6% of the time, so your rank tracker does not tell you whether you are cited. And in its 75,000-brand study, web brand mentions correlated with AI Overview visibility at 0.66 against 0.22 for referring domains, so your backlink tool does not either. The AI search visibility guide has the full data table.
AI visibility tools compared: price, engines, prompt limits
Prices are the lowest paid tier on each vendor's own pricing page on 18 September 2026, monthly billing unless noted. Engine coverage is what that lowest tier includes, not what the enterprise tier adds.
| Tool | Entry price | Prompts on that tier | Engines on that tier | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly.AI | $29/mo Lite; $189 Standard; $489 Premium (−15% annual) | 15 / 100 / 400 | ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot | Gemini, AI Mode and Claude are paid add-ons ($9–$439/mo by plan). Free trial without a card. |
| Writesonic | $79/mo Starter; $199 Basic; $399 Growth | 50 / 100 / 200 | ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews | Perplexity, Claude, AI Mode, Copilot, Grok only on Enterprise. Content generation and an "Action Center" bundled on Growth and up. |
| Peec AI | $95/mo Starter; $245 Pro; $495 Advanced (−15% annual) | 50 / 150 / 350 | Choose 3 of ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot | Euro pricing for EU buyers (Ahrefs lists €89+). Separate agency plans from $245 with credit-based limits. |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | $99/mo per domain, billed annually | 25 custom prompts, daily | ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, Perplexity | Standalone or added to a Semrush plan; 1 domain; 7-day trial. Claude not tracked. |
| Profound | $99/mo Starter; $399 Growth — annual billing only ($1,188 / $4,788 up front) | 50 / 100 | Starter: ChatGPT only. Growth: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews | Enterprise up to nine engines, custom quote. The one price I could not read from the vendor page today; see the note under the table. |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | From $199/mo standalone; prompt packs $50 / $100 / $250 per month | Index-based, plus custom prompt checks (2,500 / 7,000 / 25,000 per pack) | AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini, plus YouTube, TikTok, Reddit indexes | Deepest dataset in the group; Ahrefs' own guide lists $199 per AI index and $699 for all indexes. Built for teams that already pay for Ahrefs. |
| SEnuke AI (AI Citations screen) | Included in the $97/mo Entrepreneur platform; a citation scan costs 250 of the plan's 4,000 monthly AI Capacity units (≈ $7 at pack prices) | Per scan, not per prompt set | Not published per engine | Nine readiness checks: entity, answer coverage, schema, sources, sitemap, robots.txt, llms.txt, citation assets, validation. Not a scheduled share-of-voice tracker as far as I can verify. |
Sources, all read 18 September 2026: otterly.ai/pricing, writesonic.com/pricing, peec.ai/ai-instructions (USD prices stated by Peec; peec.ai/pricing shows limits but renders prices only after sign-in), semrush.com/pricing/ai, ahrefs.com/pricing and Ahrefs' AI visibility tools guide (updated 6 February 2026). Profound: tryprofound.com/pricing would not load from my session; the figures are from Trakkr (checked 1 September 2026) and Ryze (29 August 2026), both of which state they read them from Profound's page. Treat that row as second-hand until I update the changelog. SEnuke AI unit costs are from the live price matrix in my Entrepreneur workspace.
One-line verdicts
How to choose an AI visibility tracking tool by the job
The right pick depends less on features and more on what you will do with the number each month. My rule for the small operators this site is written for:
| Your job | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Find out whether you are cited at all | Five prompts by hand (free), then Otterly Lite | You need a yes or no and a competitor list, not a dashboard. $0 to $29. |
| Track 50–100 buyer questions monthly for one brand | Writesonic Starter or Peec Starter | $79–$95 buys enough prompts to see movement; choose Peec if Perplexity matters to your niche. |
| Report AI visibility to clients | Peec agency plans or Otterly Standard | Per-project separation and exportable reports; Ahrefs Brand Radar if the agency already pays for Ahrefs. |
| Know which domains and formats the engines cite in your market | Ahrefs Brand Radar | Index-based coverage including Reddit, YouTube and TikTok is what answers "who do they cite instead of me". |
| Enterprise brand monitoring across nine engines | Profound Enterprise | The dataset the research reports are built on; priced for that buyer. |
| Fix the site so it can be cited, then run everything else from one plan | SEnuke AI plus manual prompts | The nine readiness checks and the execution loop are the value; tracking is not. Add a $29 tracker later if the scan shows gaps closing. |
One caution that applies to every row: a tracker shows you where you are not cited. Getting cited is still content and mention work, and the data says brand mentions across the web move the needle more than anything a tool does. The step-by-step version is in how to get cited by AI search engines.
Where SEnuke AI's AI Citations screen fits after ten days
I have run the platform on the Entrepreneur plan since launch day, 8 September 2026. What the AI Citations area does, verifiably: it lists nine checks (entity readiness, answer coverage, schema, sources, sitemap, robots.txt, llms.txt, citation assets and validation), and an AI citation scan is priced at 250 AI Capacity units on the live matrix. With 4,000 units a month on Entrepreneur that is about $7 per scan at Capacity Pack prices, and roughly sixteen scans if you did nothing else with the plan, which nobody would.
What I have not been able to verify: whether the screen runs a prompt set through the engines on a schedule and charts citation share, which is the thing the six dedicated tools above sell. The vendor has not published per-engine coverage, and I have not found direct integrations to any of them. So the honest position is the one in my review's AI search section: the module prepares a site for citation, and for organic-search operators that alone did not justify the plan price on first impression. For local businesses and agencies with local clients, where the rest of the loop earns its keep, the readiness checks are a sensible extra.
Bonus note: annual, Business and Agency buyers through this site get my AI Visibility Scanner as bonus #6, which records brand mentions and citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews per query, with a monthly client report. Monthly Entrepreneur buyers do not, and I still recommend monthly first. Details on the bonuses page.
Buying SEnuke AI for the loop, and want the tracking covered too?
The platform's AI Citations checks come with every plan. Buy annual, Business or Agency through my link and my 9 bonuses include the AI Visibility Scanner, which does the scheduled cross-engine tracking this page is about. Monthly buyers get the other five bonuses. All bonus links appear on your JVZoo purchase page after checkout, no email needed.
AI visibility tools: frequently asked questions
What is an AI visibility tool?
An AI visibility tool is software that sends a fixed set of prompts to AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews on a schedule, records which brands are mentioned and which URLs are cited in each answer, and reports that as a share-of-voice trend against named competitors. Examples in 2026 are Otterly, Writesonic, Peec, Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit, Profound and Ahrefs Brand Radar, priced from $29 to $199 a month at entry level.
How can I track which content gets cited most by ChatGPT and other AI tools?
Use an AI visibility tracker that logs citations per URL: Otterly ($29 for 15 prompts), Writesonic ($79 for 50), Peec ($95 for 50), Semrush's toolkit ($99 for 25) or Ahrefs Brand Radar (from $199) all report which of your pages are cited for each prompt and engine. For a free version, ask ChatGPT and Perplexity five buyer questions a month and note every URL they cite in a sheet; the Get-Cited Kit on this site has the prompts and the scoring sheet.
top service for analyzing citations in AI search
For depth of data the top services are Ahrefs Brand Radar (eleven indexes including Reddit, YouTube and TikTok, from $199 a month) and Profound (the dataset behind 5WPR's State of AI Citations report, from $99 a month billed annually, ChatGPT only on that tier). For small teams that need citation analysis without an enterprise budget, Peec AI at $95 and Otterly at $29 to $189 cover ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews with clean per-prompt reporting.
Which AI visibility tool is the cheapest?
Otterly.AI's Lite plan at $29 a month (15 prompts on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot) is the cheapest paid tracker in this comparison as of 18 September 2026; Writesonic Starter at $79 with 50 prompts is the next step. Mangools' AI Search Grader is free, and the manual five-prompt check costs nothing but ten minutes a month.
Does Semrush track ChatGPT citations?
Yes. Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit, $99 a month per domain billed annually, tracks mentions and citations from ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity for 25 custom prompts a day on one domain. Claude is not included, and the prompt limit is the lowest in this comparison at that price.
Is there a free AI visibility tool?
Partly. Mangools offers a free AI Search Grader, several trackers (Otterly, Writesonic, Semrush) offer free trials without or with a card, and the manual method of running five buyer prompts through ChatGPT and Perplexity and logging the cited URLs is free indefinitely. None of the free options gives you a scheduled trend line; that is what the paid tiers sell.
Does SEnuke AI track AI citations?
SEnuke AI's AI Citations screen runs nine readiness checks (entity readiness, answer coverage, schema, sources, sitemap, robots.txt, llms.txt, citation assets and validation) and a citation scan costs 250 of the Entrepreneur plan's 4,000 monthly AI Capacity units, about $7 at pack prices. Whether it tracks citation share across engines over time like a dedicated tracker is not published and I have not been able to verify it as of 18 September 2026; any site change it recommends goes through the Approval Center before execution.
Changelog
- 18 September 2026 — Page published. Prices read from otterly.ai, writesonic.com, peec.ai, semrush.com and ahrefs.com the same day; Profound figures second-hand (Trakkr 1 Sept, Ryze 29 Aug 2026) because the vendor page did not load. SEnuke AI unit costs from my Entrepreneur workspace.