The one question to ask any vendor
Every tool in this category will show you a score. Very few will tell you how it was produced.
Ask this: how many runs per prompt per AI assistant sit behind the number? Profound answers it publicly — one run per prompt per platform per day, with a published study arguing that is close enough at portfolio scale. Peec and Otterly document a daily cadence but never say how many runs that is. The answer decides how much weight a single row deserves, and most vendors do not give it.
This is not a gotcha. It is the difference between a metric you can act on and a metric that generates meetings.
The established tools
These are real products with real customers, and if you have budget they are reasonable choices. We are not going to pretend otherwise — a roundup that only recommends its author is not a roundup.
- Profound — the enterprise end. Broad assistant coverage and agency-grade reporting. Priced accordingly.
- Peec AI — strong on competitor comparison, popular with European agencies.
- Otterly — among the earlier entrants; straightforward prompt tracking and link monitoring.
- Semrush and Ahrefs — AI visibility bolted onto an existing SEO suite. Sensible if you already pay for the suite; the AI-specific depth is shallower than the specialists.
- Similarweb, Scrunch, ZipTie — also in the category, with varying focus on share-of-voice versus prompt-level detail.
- Free, no-signup checks: Semrush’s AI Search Visibility Checker (three runs a day without registering) and Ahrefs’ free AI Visibility Checker. Both are genuinely free and worth running before you pay anyone.
Where we fit, and where we don't
Being free with no signup is not our differentiator, and selling it as one would be dishonest. Semrush and Ahrefs both offer free, no-signup AI visibility checks — from far larger brands, with broader assistant coverage. If you want a quick score, use one of those first. They are good.
What we do that they do not is put the sample size on the report: how many questions, how many runs on each AI assistant, and the exact scoring formula. We also refuse to report an average position, because at these sample sizes that number would imply a precision it has not earned.
What we do not do yet is continuous tracking. If you need daily monitoring across many brands with alerting and API access today, one of the paid tools above is the right answer and we would rather say so.
How to choose in practice
If you have never checked: run something free first. You may find you are already well covered, in which case none of these tools is worth paying for yet.
If you are actively working on it: you need repeated measurement over time, from any vendor that will tell you its sampling method.
If you manage many brands: you need multi-workspace support and API access, which currently means the enterprise end.
Check your own domain
Free, no signup, about two minutes.
Free · No signup · ~2 minutes
Common questions
Is a free AI visibility tool good enough?
For finding out where you stand, yes. For knowing whether a change worked, no — that needs the same questions asked repeatedly over time, which is what paid tracking is for.
Why do these tools disagree with each other?
Mostly sampling. AI answers vary between identical runs, so two tools asking the same prompt at different moments legitimately get different results. Differences in prompt wording and in whether a tool counts mentions or citations account for the rest.
Do I need a tool at all?
Not necessarily. You can ask the AI assistants yourself, repeat each question a few times, and keep a spreadsheet. Tools are worth paying for when you want that done consistently, on a schedule, without you remembering to.
Related questions
Last updated 24 August 2026