Key takeaways
- Most AI visibility platforms charge $89-$499+/month but differ wildly in what that money buys you -- monitoring-only vs. full optimization workflows
- Promptwatch is the only platform in this comparison that includes AI content generation alongside tracking, making it the closest thing to an end-to-end GEO stack
- Peec AI and Otterly.AI are the most affordable entry points for teams that just need citation and prompt monitoring
- Profound and Scrunch both target enterprise buyers and price accordingly -- expect $499+/month before you unlock the features that matter
- AthenaHQ sits in an awkward middle ground: solid analytics, but no content tools and limited pricing transparency
- Free trials exist across most platforms, but the trial scope varies dramatically -- always check prompt limits before committing
The AI visibility platform market has gotten crowded fast. Twelve months ago there were maybe five serious options. Now there are dozens, and the pricing pages have gotten deliberately confusing -- buried feature tables, "contact us" tiers for anything interesting, and starter plans that look affordable until you realize they cap you at 10 prompts.
This guide cuts through that. I've looked at the actual pricing, the actual feature sets, and the actual limits for six of the most-discussed platforms in 2026: Promptwatch, Peec AI, Profound, Otterly.AI, AthenaHQ, and Scrunch. The goal is simple: what do you actually get per dollar?
The six platforms at a glance
Before going deep on each one, here's the honest summary:
| Platform | Starting price | AI models tracked | Content generation | Crawler logs | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Promptwatch | $99/mo | 10+ | Yes (Content Agents) | Yes (Pro+) | Teams wanting monitoring + optimization |
| Peec AI | ~$89/mo | 5+ | No | No | Agencies needing clean reporting |
| Profound | $499+/mo | 6+ | No | Yes | Enterprise analytics teams |
| Otterly.AI | ~$79/mo | 6+ | No | Beta | Budget-conscious monitoring |
| AthenaHQ | Custom | 8+ | No | No | Technical SEO focus |
| Scrunch | Custom | 5+ | Limited | Yes | Mid-market with content needs |
Promptwatch
Promptwatch is the platform I'd describe as the most complete option in this comparison -- not because it's the cheapest, but because it's the only one that closes the loop between "where am I invisible?" and "here's content that fixes it."
What it costs
Three public tiers:
- Essential: $99/month -- 1 site, 50 prompts, 5 AI-generated articles
- Professional: $249/month -- 2 sites, 150 prompts, 15 articles, crawler logs, state/city tracking
- Business: $579/month -- 5 sites, 350 prompts, 30 articles
Agency and enterprise pricing is custom. Annual billing drops the price meaningfully. There's a free trial.
What you actually get
The thing that separates Promptwatch from every other platform in this list is the action loop. Most tools show you a dashboard and leave you to figure out what to do next. Promptwatch has three connected pieces:
Answer Gap Analysis shows you exactly which prompts your competitors are visible for and you're not. Not a vague "you're missing coverage in X topic" -- the specific questions AI models are answering without citing your site.
Content Agents then generate articles, listicles, and comparison pages grounded in that gap data. The briefs pull in real prompt volumes, competitor citation data, screenshots, and brand guidance. This isn't generic AI writing -- it's content built around the specific gaps the gap analysis identified.
Page-level tracking then shows which of your pages are being cited, by which models, and how often. The crawler logs (Professional and up) show you when AI crawlers hit your site, which pages they read, and when those pages move from crawled to cited.
The platform tracks 10+ AI models: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Grok, DeepSeek, Copilot, Meta AI, and Mistral. It also tracks ChatGPT Shopping appearances and Reddit/YouTube citations -- two channels most competitors ignore entirely.
The honest trade-off
At $99/month for the entry tier, you get 50 prompts and 5 articles. That's enough to get started and see real value, but growing teams will hit the Professional tier quickly. The $249/month jump is significant. If you genuinely only need monitoring and have no interest in content generation, you're paying for features you won't use.
Peec AI
Peec AI is a clean, focused monitoring tool. It does prompt tracking, citation analysis, and multi-engine coverage without trying to be everything.
What it costs
Peec AI's public pricing starts around $89/month for their entry plan. Higher tiers exist but pricing gets less transparent as you scale. There's no public enterprise pricing.
What you actually get
Peec AI covers the monitoring basics well: track how your brand appears across multiple AI engines, see which prompts you're cited for, compare against competitors. The reporting is genuinely clean -- agencies in particular seem to like it because the output is easy to share with clients.
What it doesn't have: crawler logs, content generation, visitor analytics, or any optimization tooling. It's a monitoring dashboard. If your workflow is "track visibility, then go elsewhere to act on it," Peec AI is a reasonable choice at its price point.
The API access is described as "limited" on most comparison pages, which matters if you're trying to pipe data into a custom reporting setup.
The honest trade-off
For $89/month you get solid monitoring. But the ceiling is low -- there's no path from "I see the gap" to "here's how to fix it" within the platform. Teams that outgrow pure monitoring will eventually need to layer in other tools or switch platforms.
Profound
Profound is the enterprise option in this comparison. It has strong analytics, real crawler logs, and visitor attribution -- but the price reflects that.
What it costs
Profound's public pricing starts at $499/month and goes up from there. Most teams with serious requirements end up in custom pricing territory. There's no meaningful free tier.
What you actually get
Profound's analytics depth is genuinely impressive. You get engine-by-engine comparison, citation analysis, competitor benchmarking, and crawler logs that show AI agents visiting your site. The visitor analytics -- connecting AI visibility to actual traffic -- is a feature most platforms don't have at all.
For large enterprises with dedicated analytics teams, Profound makes sense. The data is rich, the reporting is detailed, and the crawler logs give you real insight into how AI engines are discovering (or not discovering) your content.
What it doesn't have: content generation. Profound will tell you exactly what's wrong with your AI visibility. It won't help you fix it. That's a deliberate product choice -- they're building an analytics platform, not a content tool. Whether that's a problem depends on whether your team has the bandwidth to act on the data independently.
The honest trade-off
$499/month is a real commitment. You're paying for depth of analytics, not breadth of workflow. If you're a 500-person company with a dedicated SEO team that just needs better data, Profound delivers. If you're a 10-person marketing team that needs to both understand and fix your AI visibility, the price-to-utility ratio gets harder to justify.
Otterly.AI
Otterly.AI is the most affordable serious option in this comparison. It covers the core monitoring pillars and has been transparent about where it focuses versus where it doesn't.
What it costs
Otterly.AI's entry pricing is around $79/month. They have multiple tiers, and the feature set scales with price. Crawler logs are in beta -- not fully available across all plans.
What you actually get
Otterly.AI does prompt tracking, citation analysis, multi-engine coverage, and competitor monitoring. The citation and engine-comparison analytics are a genuine strength -- the platform gives you good visibility into which AI engines cite which sources and how that changes over time.
The MCP server integration is a differentiator: AI-native teams can query their brand data directly without leaving their workflow. That's a niche feature, but if your team works heavily in AI-native environments, it's useful.
What it doesn't have: content generation, visitor analytics (limited), and crawler logs are still in beta. Like Peec AI, it's fundamentally a monitoring tool.
The honest trade-off
At ~$79/month, Otterly.AI is the most accessible entry point for teams that want real multi-engine monitoring without a large budget. The trade-off is the same as every other monitoring-only tool: you'll see the problem clearly but need to solve it elsewhere.
AthenaHQ
AthenaHQ has a technical SEO focus and covers 8+ AI engines, but pricing transparency is low and the feature set stops at monitoring.
What it costs
AthenaHQ doesn't publish clear pricing tiers. Most reviews describe it as "custom pricing" or "contact sales." That's a yellow flag for smaller teams -- it usually means the entry point is higher than you'd expect.
What you actually get
AthenaHQ tracks brand mentions, citations, and competitor visibility across 8+ AI engines. The technical SEO angle means it integrates reasonably well with existing SEO workflows. Engine comparison and citation analysis are solid.
What it doesn't have: crawler logs, content generation, visitor analytics, or any optimization tooling. The lack of pricing transparency makes it hard to evaluate value without going through a sales process.
The honest trade-off
If you're already deep in a technical SEO workflow and want AI visibility data layered in, AthenaHQ might fit. But the opaque pricing and monitoring-only feature set make it hard to recommend over platforms that are more transparent about what you're paying for.
Scrunch
Scrunch sits in an interesting middle position -- it has crawler logs and some content generation capability, which puts it closer to Promptwatch than the pure monitoring tools.
What it costs
Scrunch pricing is custom. There's no public pricing page with clear tiers. Based on what's available publicly, expect pricing in the $300-$500+/month range for meaningful access.
What you actually get
Scrunch covers the monitoring basics (prompt tracking, citation analysis, multi-engine, competitor benchmarking) and adds crawler logs and visitor analytics. The content generation is described as "limited" in most comparisons -- it exists, but it's not the core of the product.
For mid-market teams that need more than pure monitoring but aren't ready for Profound's price point, Scrunch is worth evaluating. The crawler logs in particular are a meaningful differentiator from the monitoring-only tools.
The honest trade-off
The lack of public pricing is frustrating. You can't evaluate Scrunch without going through a sales process, which adds friction. And the content generation being "limited" means it's not a full alternative to Promptwatch's Content Agents -- it's more of a monitoring platform with some content features bolted on.
Head-to-head: what you get at each price point
Here's the practical question most buyers actually have: "I have $X/month to spend -- what's the best option?"
| Budget | Best option | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Under $100/mo | Otterly.AI or Peec AI | Both cover monitoring basics at accessible price points |
| $100-$250/mo | Promptwatch Essential | Adds content generation and 10+ model tracking |
| $250-$500/mo | Promptwatch Professional | Crawler logs, 150 prompts, 15 articles/month |
| $500+/mo | Promptwatch Business or Profound | Profound for pure analytics depth; Promptwatch for optimization |
| Enterprise | Promptwatch or Profound | Depends on whether you need content generation or just data |
The monitoring-only problem
Something worth naming directly: four of the six platforms in this comparison are monitoring-only tools. They show you data. They don't help you act on it.
That's not inherently wrong -- data is valuable. But if you're evaluating these platforms, you should be honest with yourself about what happens after you see the gap. Do you have a content team that can take a gap analysis and turn it into published articles within a week? Or will the insights sit in a dashboard while everyone argues about priorities?
Most marketing teams don't have that bandwidth. Which is why the "monitoring + optimization" model that Promptwatch uses is more useful in practice than it might look on a feature comparison table. The gap analysis is only as valuable as what you do with it.
Features that separate the leaders from the rest
A few specific capabilities that are worth asking about when you evaluate any platform:
Crawler logs: Do you see when ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude actually crawls your pages? This is how you diagnose indexing problems -- not just "I'm not being cited" but "the crawler hit my page and then stopped returning." Promptwatch, Profound, and Scrunch have this. The others don't.
Prompt volume data: Can you see how often a given prompt is actually being asked? Without this, you're optimizing blind -- you might win visibility for a prompt nobody uses. Promptwatch surfaces volume estimates and difficulty scores. Most competitors don't.
Reddit and YouTube tracking: AI models cite Reddit threads and YouTube videos constantly. If you don't know which discussions are driving recommendations in your category, you're missing a major lever. Promptwatch tracks this. None of the other platforms in this comparison do.
Traffic attribution: Can you connect AI visibility to actual website visits and revenue? Profound and Scrunch have some visitor analytics. Promptwatch connects visibility to traffic attribution. Most monitoring-only tools have nothing.
Content generation: Can the platform help you create content that fills the gaps it identifies? Only Promptwatch does this in a meaningful way among the six platforms compared here.
Which platform should you actually buy?
The honest answer depends on your situation:
If you're a small team or agency with a limited budget and just need to show clients that you're tracking AI visibility, Otterly.AI or Peec AI will do the job without breaking the bank.
If you're a marketing team that needs to both understand and improve AI visibility -- and you don't have a separate content team to act on the data -- Promptwatch is the most complete option. The Essential tier at $99/month is a reasonable starting point, and the Professional tier at $249/month is where the platform really opens up.
If you're a large enterprise with a dedicated analytics team and you primarily need data depth rather than content tooling, Profound is worth the premium.
Scrunch and AthenaHQ are harder to recommend without transparent pricing. The sales-first approach makes it difficult to evaluate value before committing to a conversation.
The market is moving fast, and the gap between monitoring-only tools and full optimization platforms is widening. A year from now, "we track your AI visibility" will be table stakes. The platforms that help you act on that data are the ones that will matter.