Key takeaways
- AnswerGist is a free, one-off audit: 15 fixed buyer questions across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Good for a first look, thin for ongoing work.
- Promptwatch is the strongest pick if you want to go from audit to fixing: tracking, crawler logs, content gap analysis and a Content Agent that publishes.
- Otterly.AI ($29/mo) and Peec AI (from about $95/mo) are the cheap, monitoring-first options.
- Profound and Scrunch AI suit mid-market and enterprise teams. AthenaHQ sits in between.
- Semrush and Ahrefs Brand Radar make sense mainly if you already pay for those suites.
AnswerGist does one thing and says so plainly. You enter your product URL and a work email on your own domain, confirm it by email, and it runs 15 buyer questions through four engines. You get a composite score, a score per engine, share of voice against rivals, the prompts you lose, and fix files like FAQ JSON-LD and a you-vs-rival comparison page. It is aimed at founders who do their own marketing, and the audit is free with no card.
So why look elsewhere? Mostly because a single audit is a snapshot. AI answers are non-deterministic, so one run of 15 prompts tells you little about trends. The prompt set is fixed, so you can't track the exact questions your market asks. There is no Gemini or Copilot coverage, no integrations listed, no crawler data and no traffic attribution. Pricing for anything beyond the audit isn't published. To be fair to AnswerGist, it is refreshingly honest: it ranks itself 178th of 180 in its own Visibility Index with a score of 0.0. One thing worth knowing is the sponsored front-page board, where ranks are bought with dollars (spots start around $6). AnswerGist says sponsoring never changes a score, but the board includes some low-quality listings. I couldn't find independent reviews of the tool, so treat what follows about it as based on its own site.
What you do after the audit matters more than the score. Promptwatch's content-type data (Sep 28 to Oct 4, 2026) shows product pages are 22.4% of ChatGPT citations, landing pages 16.8% and listicles 13.6%. That supports AnswerGist's fix approach of comparison pages and FAQs, but you need a way to keep doing it and to check whether it worked.
Promptwatch
Promptwatch is where I'd point someone who has run the AnswerGist audit, seen the red numbers and now wants to fix them. Where AnswerGist stops at the report, Promptwatch keeps going: content gap analysis shows which prompts AI answers that your pages don't cover, the Content Agent plans, writes and publishes to WordPress, Webflow or Framer, and the Action Board turns findings into a prioritized to-do list. Published pages are then tracked through crawls, citations and AI traffic, so underperformers come back as actions.
The tracking is also much deeper than 15 prompts. It runs daily across the real interfaces of ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Meta AI and Alexa, plus API models like Claude and DeepSeek, by country and language. Prompt volumes, difficulty scores and query fan-outs help you pick which questions to chase. IP-verified AI crawler logs show whether GPTBot or ClaudeBot can even read your pages, which is often the real reason a brand is absent. Visitor analytics tie AI referrals to actual conversions. It also covers Reddit, YouTube and LinkedIn citations, ChatGPT Shopping and Ads Radar.
Trade-offs: it is a bigger product than a founder checking visibility once needs, and there is more to learn. Monitoring depth scales with plan. Pricing starts with a free Explore tier (10 prompts, ChatGPT only), then Essential at about $95/mo, Professional about $245/mo and Business about $579/mo, with a 7-day trial on monthly plans. The Content Agent is on Business and Enterprise. Confirm current numbers at promptwatch.com/pricing. It is rated 4.7/5 on G2, used by 1,840+ brands and agencies, and ISO/IEC 27001 certified.
Best for: teams that want audit, fix and measurement in one loop, and agencies managing several clients.
AthenaHQ
AthenaHQ is a GEO platform covering ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Claude, Gemini and more (reviews cite 8 to 11 engines depending on plan). Compared with AnswerGist you get continuous tracking, citation source analysis, content optimization recommendations and ROI tracking aimed at executives. Its customer list leans mid-market and enterprise.
The downside is cost. Starter is around $295/mo, which is a big step from a free audit. Sources conflict on whether there is a free tier (one review mentions 300 credits), so check before assuming either way. It recommends more than it executes, so your team still does the writing and publishing.
Best for: mid-market marketing teams that need reporting for stakeholders and have people to act on recommendations.
Semrush
Semrush folds AI visibility into its SEO suite through the AI Visibility Toolkit, with prompt research and AI brand sentiment next to keyword, backlink and site audit tools. Entry pricing is reported at $99/mo per domain for the toolkit and Semrush One from about $165/mo on annual billing, though sources disagree, so verify on the pricing page. Entry prompt limits are modest (25 to 50 depending on the source).
The appeal is having everything in one login. The weakness is that AI visibility is a bolt-on: shallow AI-specific data compared with dedicated platforms, no AI crawler logs, and nothing like a content agent that publishes against gaps.
Best for: teams already paying for Semrush who want AI numbers beside their existing SEO data.
Otterly.AI
Otterly.AI is the cheapest credible monitor here. Lite is $29/mo for 15 prompts, Standard $189/mo for 100, and it has a 14-day trial. It tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini and Copilot, with Claude as an add-on according to reviews. It also has a GEO audit feature that checks crawlability and content.
Compared with AnswerGist, you get ongoing tracking, brand position and coverage over time, and competitor comparison. What you don't get is much help changing the answers: it is mostly insights. And 15 prompts at entry is a pilot, not a program.
Best for: small brands and consultants who want cheap ongoing monitoring.
Peec AI
Peec AI is a Berlin-based monitor built around visibility, position and sentiment, with multi-language and multi-country tracking and unlimited seats. Reported pricing runs around EUR 85 to 89 for Starter (about $95 in some reviews), then Professional near EUR 199 and custom Enterprise. Entry gives 50 prompts, a choice of 3 models and 1 project, and extra models cost more. Claude isn't on self-serve plans per one review.
It is strong for agencies, with free pitch workspaces and client-friendly packaging. It is monitoring only, though. No crawler logs, no content generation, no visitor attribution. You will see the problem clearly and fix it somewhere else.
Best for: agencies and marketing teams that want a clean, multi-region dashboard and handle optimization separately.
Profound
Profound is the enterprise heavyweight. It combines visibility tracking, prompt volume data, AI crawler analytics and an AI Marketer that drafts and stages content, with up to nine engines on Enterprise plus SOC 2 and SSO. Customers include MongoDB, Ramp and Zapier.
Pricing is custom. One review says self-serve brand plans were dropped in September 2026, so older $99 and $399 figures are probably stale. Estimates of $1,000 to $3,000+ per month circulate, but nothing is published. For a founder running their own marketing, that is overkill and a long sales conversation.
Best for: enterprise marketing teams with budget, security reviews and several stakeholders.
Ahrefs Brand Radar
Brand Radar counts mentions, citations and AI share of voice from a large pre-built index, with YouTube, Reddit and TikTok tracking in beta. The AI Visibility Index starts at $199/mo, custom prompts run $50 to $699/mo, and Lite ($129/mo) includes 5 prompts. Claude is available via custom prompts and burns 8 checks per update. There is no free trial.
Its best trick is linking AI citations to backlink and content data. Reviews flag price, add-on engines and a monthly refresh on chatbot data as limits. It tells you what is happening, not what to write.
Best for: existing Ahrefs users who want AI visibility next to backlink data.
Scrunch AI
Scrunch leans toward optimization. It adds persona-based prompt testing, page-level audits and citation-quality scoring, and has an Agent Experience Platform that serves an AI-readable version of your site. Core is about $250/mo (350 prompts per the tool listing, 125 per another review, so confirm), with a 7-day trial and Agency Core at $500/mo. Sources disagree on whether Claude, Gemini and Meta sit on Core or only Enterprise.
It costs more than the budget monitors and the best features are enterprise-gated. Best for: mid-market teams that want persona-level testing and are comfortable at $250+/mo.
Which one should you pick?
- Just want a free first look: stay with AnswerGist, then run its fixes manually. Treat the score as one sample.
- Want to fix, publish and measure: Promptwatch.
- Tight budget, monitoring only: Otterly.AI, or Peec AI if you need more prompts and regions.
- Already on an SEO suite: Semrush or Ahrefs Brand Radar.
- Enterprise with procurement: Profound, Scrunch or AthenaHQ.
For more options, the GEO software directory at bestgeosoftware.com lists many more tools. Prices here come from vendor pages and third-party reviews that sometimes conflict, so confirm before you buy.