The Best AEO Tools in 2026: Ten AI Visibility Trackers, Checked on How They Count

Which AEO tool is best?

Ask an AI assistant the same buying question a hundred times and you will almost never get the same list of brands back twice. In a study SparkToro published in January 2026, 600 volunteers put 12 prompts to ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI 2,961 times. For ChatGPT and Google's AI, the authors put the chance of the same list coming back twice in 100 runs at below 1 in 100; Claude did only slightly better. Every AEO tool sells a number built on answers that unsteady, so the best one is the one that tells you how unsteady its number is.

Judged that way, the choice depends on what you already pay for. Among self-serve trackers, Peec AI publishes the most about its method, SE Ranking's SE Visible buys the most answers per dollar, and Otterly.AI is the cheapest way in. Teams on Semrush or Ahrefs should start with the AI tracking their suite sells; Ahrefs Brand Radar is the one to open when you want a whole market without writing a prompt. Profound, Scrunch, AthenaHQ and Conductor are built for enterprise brand teams, and HubSpot AEO for marketers who live in HubSpot.

We put the same five questions to each tool, using only the vendors' own product, documentation and pricing pages: which assistants it watches, how it collects answers, what it does about answers that change between runs, what it charges for and what it leaves out. Prices are US list prices on 22 October 2026. AIO Copilot sells a tracker too, so its entry says who should not buy it.

What does an AEO tool actually measure?

Answer engine optimization is the work of getting a brand named and cited in the answers that AI assistants and Google's AI features write; our explainer on how AEO, GEO and SEO differ covers where it overlaps with the rest of search. Under the dashboards, each AEO tool gets its data in one of a few ways, and the method decides what the number means.

Most run a prompt panel. You write the questions buyers ask, and the tool puts them to each assistant on a schedule, recording whether you appear, which pages are cited and which rivals are named. Some type the questions into the same web page a person uses; Otterly.AI says it posts prompts "through the website of the AI search". Others call the models' APIs, as Conductor does. An API call is cheaper to repeat but may not match what the app shows a person.

Some vendors also run a fixed database of prompts generated from search keywords, which shows a whole market but may not ask what your buyers ask. A few sell panel estimates of what people ask assistants: useful for volume, but extrapolated rather than counted.

Only first-party data counts real events. Google's Search Console generative AI reports, added in June 2026 and rolled out to every site by 31 August, show how often a site's pages appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report counts how often Microsoft Copilot, Bing's AI summaries and some partner integrations cite your pages. Both are free, and each covers only its owner's surfaces.

Whatever the method, check what is counted. A mention is your brand named in the answer, a citation is your URL listed as a source, and a link is a clickable path to your site inside the answer. They come apart constantly: an assistant can cite your guide and recommend a rival, and a tool that folds them into one score hides that. Our guide to measuring share of model in AI answers sets out the five things to track separately: presence, citations, accuracy, sentiment and share against named rivals.

Why does an AI visibility score change when nothing changed?

Because the answers change. Language models write by sampling, picking each next word from a range of likely ones, and an assistant that searches the web can pull different pages on different runs. SparkToro's authors concluded that a brand's visibility percentage across many prompts, each run many times, is a reasonable metric and its position inside an answer is not, and they suggest asking a question "usually at least 60-100X" before trusting the average. The co-author, Patrick O'Donnell, works at Gumshoe, which sells AI tracking; the post says so.

Take Harbour & Finch, a Toronto employment law firm that exists only as our sample client. Its agency tracks 40 prompts, from "best employment lawyer Toronto" to "how is severance calculated in Ontario", once a week on one assistant. This week the firm is named in 12 of the 40 answers, 30%. The 95% margin of error on 40 answers is about 14 points either way, so the true rate sits somewhere between roughly 16% and 44%. Next week it is named in 15 of 40, 37.5%, and the dashboard shows a green arrow. Nothing in that move can be told apart from chance.

Run each prompt ten times and the same 30% rests on 400 answers, with a margin of about 4.5 points. Even that is a floor, because ten answers to one prompt are not ten independent opinions, but it is a figure you can put in front of a client.

Two vendors have published their own analysis, and both favour breadth over repetition. Profound's economist ran 753 prompts on seven platforms at one and ten runs a day for two weeks and concluded that "running 10× or 100× wouldn't meaningfully change what the numbers tell you", though ten runs cut the daily wobble in citation share by about 40%. A research post on Peec AI's blog recommends adding prompts before adding runs. For a brand-wide average across hundreds of prompts, they are right. For whether assistants recommend a client on one particular search, one run a day is a thin sample.

AEO tools compared side by side

All ten third-party tools cover ChatGPT. The coverage column gives each vendor's own list, with add-ons marked. Prices are the cheapest published way in, checked 22 October 2026, billed monthly unless noted.

The best AEO tools for agencies and in-house teams

Peec AI

Peec AI's documentation says it uses "UI scraping technology", running prompts daily through each assistant's web interface as a logged-out user sees it. Self-serve plans track three you choose from ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI, with Perplexity among the paid extra models; Claude, Grok, DeepSeek and other API models are for Enterprise and the larger agency plans. Each prompt runs once per assistant per day, and the blog post above puts a day's figure for 50 prompts at about 10.5 points either way, 6.1 over a month. Peec does not say whether the dashboard shows those intervals. Starter is $95 a month, or $80 billed annually, for 50 prompts and 4,500 answers; agency plans start at $245 for 10,000 credits (checked 22 October 2026). It suits agencies that want a method they can explain.

Otterly.AI

Otterly.AI's help center says every prompt runs daily through each assistant's public website, with an API used only for Claude. Every plan covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews and Copilot; AI Mode, Gemini and Claude are paid add-ons. It states no repeat runs or intervals, but its own study of 252,407 answers found that moving from 10 to 100 prompts cut the variation in its Brand Coverage metric by about 73%, and that with 10 prompts, 90% of results fell between 39% and 71%. Lite costs $29 a month, or $25 billed annually, for 15 prompts; Standard is $189 for 100 (checked 22 October 2026). It suits small teams testing the category. On its own numbers, a 15-prompt set swings too widely to report from.

Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

Semrush, which Adobe finished buying on 28 April 2026, sells AI tracking as a toolkit, inside Semrush One and as Enterprise AIO. Its market reports draw on a database of more than 317 million prompts sourced "from AI search clickstream data and Google's keyword dataset", with responses "captured from real requests and not via any APIs of LLMs"; Prompt Tracking runs your own questions daily. Its pages name ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews and AI Mode, though the lists differ by report. It states no repeat runs or margins and calls its metrics "reliable directional signals". The toolkit costs $99 a month per domain, billed annually, with 25 prompts, and each 50 more cost $60 a month; Semrush One starts at $199 (checked 22 October 2026). It suits teams already in Semrush, and is a costly way to track many prompts.

SE Ranking AI Search Toolkit

SE Ranking puts the AI Search Toolkit inside its main plans and sells it standalone as SE Visible, both capturing answers daily through the web interface as a user would see them. The toolkit's FAQ names four engines, ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini; the pricing page counts five, and the SE Visible homepage adds Perplexity. Each prompt runs once per engine per day, and the FAQ's advice on variance is blunt: "Read a trend, not a single date." Core costs $129 a month, or $103.20 billed annually, with 100 daily prompts; SE Visible starts at $99 for 200 prompts and, by SE Ranking's count, about 30,000 answers a month (checked 22 October 2026). It suits SE Ranking agencies, and in-house teams after volume. It shows no margin of error, and the SE Visible FAQ says white labelling there is "Not yet" available.

Ahrefs Brand Radar

Brand Radar shows a market before you write a prompt. Its index holds what Ahrefs calls more than 495 million prompts "modeled from real user searches" in its keyword database, and its help page says they are asked "in the web version of all AI platforms that we support", on six assistants: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, AI Overviews and AI Mode. The help page gives smaller totals. Chatbot answers refresh monthly and AI Overviews every few days; custom prompts run daily, weekly or monthly, with Claude through its API. One check is one run, and the methodology calls the metrics "directional indicators, not exact traffic counts". An index costs from $199 a month per platform, all platforms $699, and custom checks from $50 a month for 2,500 (checked 22 October 2026). It suits agencies researching rivals and pitching prospects. Sentiment is not among its listed metrics.

Profound

Profound says it queries "the front-end experiences that normal users see" on nine assistants, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Grok and DeepSeek, once a day. Its Prompt Volumes estimate what people ask from conversations licensed from "double-opt-in consumer panels". It also reports average position, the measure the SparkToro data trusts least. On its pricing page, brands get a free seven-day trial of 50 prompts on ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews, then custom Enterprise pricing; agencies pay $99 a month plus $399 for each client workspace of 100 daily prompts (checked 22 October 2026). It suits enterprise brand teams and the agencies serving them. It publishes no brand price, and we found no error bars on its product pages.

Scrunch

Scrunch, now a Sitecore company that says it will keep running standalone, collects answers through "browser automation and official platform APIs", according to its methods FAQ, on nine assistants: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Copilot, Grok and Meta AI. New prompts run daily for 14 days, then every 72 hours. Results roll up over 90 days, and its Signals API flags each "statistically-tested movement" with a confidence tier, the nearest thing here to a significance test offered to customers. Core costs $250 a month for one brand, with 125 prompts, 5,000 responses and four assistants, ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews and Copilot; Enterprise is custom (checked 22 October 2026). It suits brand teams that want monitoring plus optimisation tools. Core leaves out Gemini and Claude.

AthenaHQ

AthenaHQ covers the most assistants on a published plan: Starter, at $295 a month, tracks 11: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral. The catch is in the credits. One credit is one response and Starter includes 3,600, but the changelog says Grok, Claude, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral responses cost five credits each, which the plans page does not mention. Prompts run on weekly or monthly schedules, with no daily option documented, and the collection method is stated only for Meta AI and Mistral, both reached by API. Its volume model claims a "95%+ accuracy rate" in an article that describes no validation method; for visibility it states no repeat runs or margin. A free tier gives 300 credits on ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot (checked 22 October 2026). It suits enterprise teams that need breadth.

Conductor

Conductor folds AI Search Performance into its enterprise SEO platform, with nine engine settings: ChatGPT in Auto and Search modes, Claude Sonnet, Gemini, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Grok, Copilot and Perplexity. Two lines in its FAQ matter more than the engine list: it "collects each prompt once and shares that collection across all Conductor accounts that track the same prompt", through official APIs, and "for each prompt, Conductor reports the latest response collected within the selected period". Choose a month and you see one answer per prompt, not an average. The pricing page shows no prices; access runs on credits, and 2,500 buys roughly 48 prompts a week for a year on ChatGPT in Auto mode (checked 22 October 2026). It suits enterprises already on Conductor. It is not built to give you a sampled rate.

HubSpot AEO

HubSpot AEO, still labelled beta, is the simplest purchase here: $50 a month, or $45 billed annually, for 25 prompts, with no HubSpot subscription needed, and included in Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise (checked 22 October 2026). Its knowledge base says it runs prompts daily on ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and reports brand visibility, prompt coverage, share of voice and citations kept separate from mentions. It does not say whether it reads the apps or the APIs, and its advice on variance is to "review performance across multiple days or weeks before evaluating trends." It suits teams already in HubSpot. It does not track AI Overviews or AI Mode.

AIO Copilot

AIO Copilot is ours, so weigh this entry accordingly. It samples how often AI assistants name a client against its rivals and shows the margin of error beside each rate, then sets that sampled figure next to two measured ones: AI Overview impressions from Search Console and AI citations from Bing Webmaster Tools. All three go into white label monthly and quarterly reports under the agency's name, beside the client's SEO and Google Ads work. It is priced per site, per month. It is not for a brand team that only wants AI sentiment monitoring; a dedicated tracker such as Scrunch or Profound covers more assistants for that job. Our page on how AIO Copilot reports sampled and measured AI visibility shows the view.

How much do AEO tools cost?

Vendors bill in different units: prompts, answers, credits, checks, domains, brands. Dividing each entry plan by the answers it buys makes them comparable. Prices are for monthly billing; where a vendor gives no answer count, the arithmetic is ours.

Answers buy precision on the prompts you chose, but only more prompts make the set represent your market, so 4,500 answers over 50 prompts give a steadier brand-wide rate than 1,800 over 15.

How do you test an AEO tool before you pay?

Vendor demos run on prompt sets that flatter the product. Four checks cut through them.

Run the same prompts in two tools for two weeks. Pick 30 to 50 questions the client's buyers actually ask, fix the rivals, the country and the assistants, and load them into both trials on the same day. If the tools disagree on direction, or one puts the client at 40% and the other at 15%, ask each vendor to explain the gap.

Ask how many runs each prompt gets, per assistant, per reporting period, and ask for the margin of error. If the dashboard shows none, ask for the number of answers behind each percentage and apply the one-over-root-n rule yourself. Treat average position inside an AI answer as decoration; the SparkToro runs put a repeated order at about 1 in 1,000.

Check that it separates mentions, citations and links, and that you can open the raw answer behind any data point, because a client will ask why a number moved. Then hold it against what is measured: if a tracker says Copilot cites you twice as often while Bing's own AI Performance report is flat for the same weeks, believe Bing.

Can you track AI visibility for free?

Partly, and it is the place to start. Search Console's AI reports show impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date; Google's announcement lists no clicks or queries. Bing's report shows citations, cited pages and grounding queries, and since June a Citation Share for each grounding query, though not which sites take the rest. GA4 records sessions from assistants that pass a referrer.

None of that tells you whether an assistant recommended a rival when it left you out, which is the gap a paid tracker fills. Before paying, check that your pages are built to be cited: our free AIO readiness checker reads a page for the signals AI answers draw on, and our complete guide to AI-powered optimization covers the fixes it points to.

Which AEO tool should you choose?

Start from the question your client or your boss will ask. If it is whether the brand appears in Google's and Microsoft's AI answers, Search Console and Bing measure much of that for free. If it is which brands assistants recommend in the category, you need a prompt tracker, and the right one is the one whose numbers you can defend: a published method, enough prompts and runs, and a margin you can quote.

On that test, Peec AI is the strongest self-serve choice for agencies that must explain the method to clients, SE Visible the best value for an in-house team that needs no white label, and Otterly.AI the cheapest place to learn, on a plan with enough prompts. Brand Radar earns its place for research and pitches, and Semrush or SE Ranking make sense if you already pay for the suite. Enterprise teams choosing among Scrunch, Profound, AthenaHQ and Conductor should put Conductor's latest-response rule and AthenaHQ's credit weighting into the evaluation.

Whichever it is, run the two-week test before you sign, and make the vendor say how many answers sit behind each percentage. A tracker that cannot answer is selling a screenshot with a trend line drawn through it.

Frequently Asked Questions