AI Visibility Software: The 14 Best Tools for 2026
Fourteen AI visibility software platforms compared on engine coverage, sample size, reproducibility, and export — the four things that decide whether the visibility numbers you get are trustworthy.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the best AI visibility tool?
There's no single best AI visibility tool; it depends on your needs. Profound leads at the enterprise end. Peec AI, Otterly, and Scrunch are strong self-serve options. Elmo is the best fit if you want an open-source tool you fully control. If you already pay for an SEO suite, Ahrefs Brand Radar or Semrush's AI Toolkit add tracking to it. Match the tool to your platform coverage and budget.
Is there a free AI visibility tracker?
Yes. Elmo is free and open source when self-hosted, and AirOps offers a free tier that tracks ChatGPT only. HubSpot's AEO Grader is also free, though it is a one-off audit rather than a continuous tracker. Most other tools are paid, though several offer free trials.
What is an open-source AI visibility tool?
An open-source AI visibility tool publishes its source code so you can self-host it, audit how it collects and computes metrics, and avoid vendor lock-in. Elmo is an example, released under the MIT license.
How is AI visibility different from SEO rank tracking?
SEO rank tracking records where your pages rank in a list of search results. AI visibility tracking records whether AI answer engines mention or cite your brand in the answers they generate, where there's often no ranked list at all. Some tools, like Nightwatch, now do both.
How does Elmo compare to Profound, Ahrefs Brand Radar, and Semrush?
They target different buyers. Elmo is open-source and self-hosted, so you own the data and track every major engine for the cost of your own API keys. Profound is an enterprise platform with content and agent tooling on top of monitoring. Ahrefs Brand Radar and Semrush's AI Toolkit both add answer engine visibility to an established SEO suite, so they fit teams already paying for Ahrefs or Semrush. HubSpot's AEO Grader, by contrast, is a free one-off audit rather than a continuous tracker. Choose Elmo for control and full engine coverage, a suite add-on when you already use that suite, and a grader for a quick check.
These are the fourteen AI visibility tools worth considering in 2026, judged on four things: which engines each one actually queries, how many runs sit behind each number, whether two identical runs agree, and whether you can export the raw data. Feature grids are easy to write and hard to verify. Those four criteria separate a number you can take into a budget conversation from one that just looks precise.
An AI visibility tool tracks how often, and how accurately, your brand shows up in answers from AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews, and Gemini. The category is young but already crowded. The leaders include Elmo, Semrush, and Profound, alongside self-serve trackers like Peec AI and other SEO suites such as Ahrefs that have added AI tracking. This guide compares fourteen of them against the criteria above, from open-source trackers to enterprise answer engine monitoring platforms.
Every tool below gets a verdict and the tier it applies to, so this doubles as the evaluation guide if you are defending a choice to someone else. If your question is specifically about answer engines rather than AI search generally, see the best AEO tools. For the content-optimization side, see the best GEO tools. For the full field, browse the AI visibility tool directory. The measurement standards behind these criteria come from the IAB's guidance, covered in what metrics matter for AI search visibility.
Key takeaways
AI visibility tools monitor brand mentions, citations, and share of voice across AI answer engines.
They differ most on platform coverage, prompt volume, competitor benchmarking, and price.
Elmo is open-source and self-hosted; Profound targets enterprise; Peec AI, Otterly, and Scrunch are self-serve.
Some "AI visibility" features are bolted onto SEO or marketing suites (Ahrefs, Nightwatch, Semrush) or content tools (Frase), which is handy if you already use them.
Pricing ranges from free/open-source to enterprise demo-gated. AI products and prices change fast, so verify current details with each vendor.
Engine coverage on the tier you would actually buy, not the full list a vendor supports.
Sample size. How many prompts are run, and how often. A visibility score built on one sample a week is noise; answer engines return different responses to the same question.
Reproducibility. Whether the methodology is documented well enough that two people could get the same number, and whether raw responses are retained.
Export. Whether you can get the underlying data out, or only look at it in a dashboard.
Elmo is our own tool and appears in the list. It is open source, so the third criterion is one we can be held to directly — the sampling and citation-parsing code is public and you can check it rather than take our word for it.
ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Copilot
Self-serve subscription, no free tier
The sections below go deeper on each tool. Pricing notes reflect public information as of mid-2026, so always confirm current pricing on the vendor's site.
Elmo is an open-source, self-hosted AI visibility platform. It tracks how your brand shows up across AI models, monitoring mentions, analyzing which sources get cited, and benchmarking competitors, with every metric computed by code you can read. It covers an unusually wide set of engines, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, Copilot, DeepSeek, Mistral, and Google's AI Mode and AI Overviews, pulling responses via the models' own APIs or OpenRouter.
It suits teams that want to own their AI-visibility data outright and avoid vendor lock-in. The self-hosted core is free under the MIT license, with unlimited prompts and all models. The trade-off: you run the infrastructure (Docker, PostgreSQL) and supply your own LLM API keys, which carry their own usage costs. Elmo Cloud is the no-ops path if you want one, from $29/month.
Semrush folds AI visibility tracking into one of the largest established SEO platforms, used by millions of marketers. Its AI Visibility Toolkit tracks brand mentions, sentiment, and share of voice against named competitors, drawing on Semrush's large database of real search prompts rather than synthetic queries alone. It covers ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, Gemini, and Perplexity, and sits alongside the keyword, backlink, and site-audit tools Semrush users already rely on.
It's a natural fit for teams already invested in Semrush who want AI share of voice next to traditional search data, with GA4 and Adobe Analytics integration to tie visibility back to revenue, and an AI site audit that checks whether AI crawlers (and your llms.txt) can read your site. The trade-offs: there's no free tier, the full AI-visibility feature set unlocks only on higher tiers, and the breadth of the suite can feel like a lot if all you want is AI tracking. See our Elmo vs Semrush comparison for a closer look.
Profound is an enterprise answer engine optimization platform that helps brands understand, analyze, build for, and measure their presence in AI-generated answers. It monitors how AI represents a brand and analyzes the consumer AI-search queries behind that presence, with broad platform coverage spanning Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Copilot, Meta AI, DeepSeek, and Google AI Overviews.
It is aimed at marketing organizations and agencies at the mid-market-to-enterprise end, and positions itself as the creator of the AEO category. The feature set reaches beyond monitoring into content and agent building, making it a fuller "AEO platform" than a pure tracker. The main considerations for smaller teams: pricing isn't public (the site routes to a demo), and the enterprise framing suggests it sits at the higher end of the market. See our Elmo vs Profound comparison for a closer look.
SE Visible tracks AI visibility as one layer of a wider SEO and GEO platform rather than as a standalone monitor. It measures how often a brand is mentioned and its site is linked in AI answers — overall and in the top three positions — stores the actual AI responses so you can see how engines frame the brand over time, and identifies the sources those answers cite. It works in two directions: tracking for the prompts you set up, and profiling any domain's AI presence without an active project. Coverage spans ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and AI Mode.
It fits agencies and mid-market teams that want AI share of voice sitting next to organic rankings, traffic (via GA4), and competitor data rather than in a separate dashboard, with the same suite handling keyword research, site audits, and reporting. Two things to weigh: prompt and Competitive Research domain caps scale with the plan, and the deeper LLM layer (sentiment plus cross-country, cross-engine benchmarking) sits behind the AI Search add-on. AI tracking, API, and MCP access are included in every plan.
Peec AI is a self-serve AI search analytics platform focused on share of voice. It measures how often your brand appears when AI systems answer buyer questions, tracks brand mentions and source citations, and benchmarks you against competitors across LLMs. It lists coverage of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, and Google's AI Mode and AI Overviews, and offers a dedicated product for agencies tracking multiple brands.
Peec's appeal is transparent, relatively affordable self-serve pricing with unlimited users, purpose-built for AI search rather than bolted onto another tool. Cost scales with the number of tracked prompts and the AI answers they generate, and several reviews report that some engines beyond the core set carry per-model add-on fees, so the real cost can climb above the headline tier. Confirm exactly which engines your plan includes. Our Elmo vs Peec AI page compares the two directly.
Rankshift is a dedicated AI visibility tracker built around a flexible credit system: you spend credits on the prompts, AI models, and refresh frequency you need rather than paying a flat per-seat rate. It captures responses from the AI web interfaces rather than the APIs, and covers ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Mistral, and Meta AI. Its standout feature is a set of BI connectors that push the data straight into Looker Studio, BigQuery, and Power BI.
It fits data-led teams that already live in a BI stack and want answer engine visibility reported alongside everything else, not walled off in a separate dashboard. The main consideration is the credit model: cost scales with how much you track and how often you refresh, and there is no free tier, so it pays to model your expected credit burn before committing. See the Elmo vs Rankshift comparison for a side-by-side view.
AirOps pairs AI search visibility tracking with a content-operations engine, so it is as much a "fix it" tool as a "measure it" one. On the tracking side it offers citation tracking, competitor intelligence, and share of voice across AI engines; on the execution side, its Quill agent produces and refreshes content at scale, and the platform unifies SEO, AI search, and GA4 data.
It fits content and SEO teams that want to act on visibility data by shipping or updating content, not just watch a dashboard. The key limitation for visibility-only buyers: multi-engine tracking is gated to the Pro tier, while the free and Solo tiers track ChatGPT only, and reviewers note a sizeable jump to reach multi-engine coverage. There is a genuinely free Insights tier ($0) if you only need ChatGPT tracking to start. See Elmo vs AirOps for a feature-by-feature view.
Ahrefs Brand Radar is an AI-visibility module inside the well-established Ahrefs SEO suite. What sets it apart is that it draws on Ahrefs' database of real, search-backed prompts rather than synthetic queries, and it sits alongside the keyword, backlink, and site-audit tools Ahrefs users already rely on. It tracks AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini, and Grok, with YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit tracking free during beta.
It's the natural choice for existing Ahrefs customers extending their work into AEO and wanting AI share of voice next to search demand. Several independent reviews report accuracy issues on ChatGPT and Perplexity (reviewer opinion, not vendor-confirmed), and because Brand Radar is priced on top of a base Ahrefs subscription, full AI coverage gets expensive. Compare it with our tool on the Elmo vs Ahrefs Brand Radar page.
Scrunch AI is a generative-engine-optimization and brand-monitoring platform that goes beyond "did we appear" to explain why. It tracks mentions, citations, competitors, sentiment, and prompt performance, surfaces which sources influenced an answer, supports persona-based prompting, and audits whether AI agents can actually read your site. A GA integration attributes AI-referral traffic and monitors AI-crawler behavior. Coverage includes ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, and Meta.
It suits brands and agencies running a serious GEO program who want source-level insight and site-readiness audits rather than a bare mention count. The main considerations: entry pricing is higher than several self-serve trackers, making it less suited to very small budgets, and prompt volumes are capped per tier. A short free trial is available. The Elmo vs Scrunch comparison breaks down the differences.
Otterly is an AI search monitoring tool built around per-engine Brand Reports: brand mentions, brand coverage, domain citations, link-position changes over time, and competitive share of voice. It adds a GEO audit tool and a prompt-research tool, and it's notable for a low, transparent entry price with unlimited team members and daily tracking. Its core tiers cover ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Copilot.
Otterly is a good fit for smaller businesses and lean marketing teams that want affordable, no-friction AI-visibility tracking. The limitations follow from the price: Gemini and Google AI Mode are paid add-ons rather than included, and prompt counts are modest on lower tiers, with extra prompt blocks billed separately. If your priority is breadth of engine coverage out of the box, check the per-tier details. See Elmo vs Otterly for a direct comparison.
Nightwatch is, first and foremost, a mature SEO rank tracker. It has monitored keyword rankings across Google, Bing, YouTube, and other engines for over a decade, and has since added AI visibility tracking. Its AI layer covers ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, with "Citation Intelligence" connecting AI mentions to resulting traffic, and AI tracking is bundled into every plan rather than sold as an add-on.
It's a strong pick for SEO professionals and agencies that want traditional rank tracking and AI visibility in one place, especially given unlimited seats and white-label reporting on every tier. The honest caveat is that AEO is secondary to its core rank-tracking purpose, so AI-specific depth (sentiment, source-level reasoning, persona prompting) is narrower than in dedicated GEO tools, and AI engine coverage is limited to four LLMs. Our Elmo vs Nightwatch page compares the AI features side by side.
Frase began as an AI content-optimization and SERP-research tool, pulling headings, questions, and sources from top-ranking pages into writer-ready briefs, and has since added GEO optimization and AI-visibility tracking. That makes it a tool that can both create content and lightly monitor how it performs in AI answers. Every plan includes its AI agent, content optimization, visibility tracking, and site audits; only volume changes by tier.
Frase fits content marketers and agencies who want one tool to produce search-optimized content and keep an eye on AI citations. The caveats are about depth: AI-visibility tracking is a newer, lighter feature, prompt allowances are small at entry tiers, and the pricing page quantifies coverage by number of platforms per tier without naming the specific engines tracked, so it's not a dedicated AEO monitor. The Elmo vs Frase comparison shows where each tool focuses.
HubSpot's AEO Grader is a free, one-off grader from HubSpot's marketing suite. You give it a page and it scores content structure, schema markup, and AI readability, then hands back recommendations for making that content easier for AI answer engines to parse and cite. It's free to use and doesn't require a HubSpot subscription, which makes it an easy first step.
Be clear on what it is, though: a grader is a point-in-time audit, not answer engine monitoring. It won't track your share of voice across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini over time, surface the sources behind an answer, or benchmark you against named competitors. Use it as a quick content-readiness check alongside a continuous tracker, not as a substitute for one. The Elmo vs HubSpot AEO Grader page lays out where each fits.
xSeek is an AI visibility platform built around a three-step loop: measure how AI engines currently describe your brand, rank the gaps worth closing, then draft the content to close them. Engine coverage is the same on every tier — ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok, and Copilot — so platforms aren't unlocked one plan at a time. A free domain scan returns a first read on your visibility without a signup, alongside free Agent-Ready, robots.txt, and llms.txt checkers.
It's aimed at marketing teams and founders who want a prioritized to-do list rather than a dashboard to interpret, and every plan bundles onboarding and a named account contact. The trade-offs are volume and price: tracked prompts and sites are capped per tier (50 prompts and one site on the $249.99/month entry plan), there's no free or trial tier for the product itself, and the guided workflow surfaces less raw analysis than the source-level trackers above. Billing is monthly with no annual lock-in. See Elmo vs xSeek for a side-by-side view.
The right tool depends less on a feature checklist than on how you plan to use it. A few things to weigh:
Platform coverage. Check that the tool tracks the engines your audience actually uses, and whether engines like Gemini or Google AI Mode are included or billed as add-ons. Coverage varies more than vendors' homepages suggest.
Citation tracking. Mentions tell you that you appeared; citations tell you the AI sent someone to your site. If earning traffic matters, prioritize tools that track AI citations and the sources behind each answer.
Prompt volume. Tools meter usage by the number of prompts tracked, so estimate how many questions you need to monitor and check the per-tier limits before committing.
Competitor benchmarking. Share of voice against named competitors is one of the most actionable metrics in AEO, so make sure it's included and not reserved for higher tiers.
Price and model. Decide whether you want a free or open-source tool you self-host, an affordable self-serve subscription, or an enterprise platform, and remember that several "AI visibility" features are add-ons to SEO or content suites you may already pay for.