Let me get the conflict of interest out of the way in the first line: I build one of these tools. It is called LLM Pulse. So read the whole thing knowing that.

I still think this post is worth writing, because most "best AI visibility tools" lists are affiliate pages dressed up as reviews. Twenty tools, a table, a "winner" that happens to pay the highest commission. That is not useful when you are the one who has to pick.

So here is the version I would have wanted before I started: fewer tools, more honesty, and a clear note about where my own product is the wrong choice.

What these tools actually do

A quick definition, because the category has three names and none of them are settled.

You will see GEO (generative engine optimization), AEO (answer engine optimization) and "AI visibility". They point at the same thing: showing up when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's AI answers about your category.

The tools in this post do some mix of four jobs:

  • Run a set of prompts against several models on a schedule and record whether your brand appears.
  • Track your share of voice against competitors, and whether the model describes you well or badly.
  • Show which sources the models cite, so you know what to influence.
  • Connect analytics so you can see the traffic and sales that AI actually sends you.

That is the honest core. Everything else is packaging.

One thing worth saying early: none of these tools change your ranking. They measure it. The work of getting cited still happens off their platform, mostly on third-party sites you do not control. If someone sells you a dashboard as if it were a growth lever, be skeptical.

How I would choose

I do not believe in a single "best" tool here, because the buyers are too different. A Fortune 500 team and a freelance SEO are not shopping for the same thing.

So I will group by who you are.

  • You are an agency or a team with real budget, tracking many brands. Depth and seats matter more than price.
  • You are a marketing team at one company. You want good models, sentiment and analytics without enterprise friction.
  • You are a solo SEO or a small brand. You want to know if you are being mentioned, cheaply, without a sales call.
  • You already pay for an SEO suite. You may not need a new tool at all.

Prices below are a snapshot from July 2026, taken from each vendor's own pricing page. They will change. Treat them as a rough shape, not a quote.

Profound: the enterprise end of the market

Profound is the tool people mean when they say "the serious one". It is built for large teams: prompt volume estimation, a shopping module, agent analytics, SOC 2, SSO, the whole enterprise checklist.

The catch is that it shows. Profound does not publish real pricing. The site is demo-led, and third-party reviews in early 2026 put actual enterprise deployments somewhere in the low thousands per month. There have been public references to $99 and $399 signal tiers, but the center of gravity is clearly enterprise.

If you are a big brand and AI visibility is now a board-level line item, Profound is a safe, deep choice. If you are anyone else, the lack of a public price and a self-serve entry point tells you it is not built for you.

Peec AI: strong pick for teams and agencies

Peec AI has become the default recommendation for teams that want depth without an enterprise contract. Pricing starts around $89/month for a starter tier and moves up through roughly $199 and $499 as you add prompts.

The two things people like: unlimited seats on every plan, which matters a lot for agencies, and strong regional and multi-language tracking, with competitor comparison broken out by country. Daily tracking, sentiment, prompt suggestions from your content.

The one to watch is the model math. Plans include three models, and extra models are add-ons priced per model. If you want full coverage across every engine, the sticker price is not the real price. Do the sum before you commit.

Otterly.ai: the cheapest honest way in

Otterly.ai is where I send people who just want to know, this month, whether AI mentions them at all. The Lite plan is $29/month for 15 prompts, and it still includes the core engines, multi-country tracking and unlimited team members. Standard is around $189 for 100 prompts.

For $29 you are not getting deep analytics. You are getting a real answer to a real question, with screenshots of the actual AI outputs, which is a nice touch for convincing a skeptical boss. It also ships an MCP server, a public API and a Claude skill, which is more than you would expect at the price.

Read the model coverage carefully. On some tiers the newer engines are add-ons. But as a first paid step out of "I have no idea if AI knows we exist", it is hard to argue with $29.

LLM Pulse: the one I build

Here is the biased section. I will try to make the bias useful instead of hiding it.

I started LLM Pulse in 2025 because I wanted a tool that answered the whole question, not just "are you mentioned". So it tracks visibility across the five core models on every plan, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews, and you can add Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek and Meta AI on top. That is more model coverage than most tools give you without an enterprise call. It also shows the exact words AI uses to describe you, flags negative or wrong framing before your customers see it, tells you which bots crawl which pages, and connects GA4 or Plausible so you see the real visits and conversions AI sends, not just the mentions.

Two things I am genuinely proud of. First, the pricing is public and fair: €49/month to start (50 prompts, 5 competitors), then €99, €299 and up to €1,086, with unlimited seats on every plan and no per-seat tax. Second, every plan, including the trial, includes a hosted MCP server with 45-plus tools over OAuth, so you can pull your own data straight into Claude or ChatGPT without an API key. That is still rare in this category.

For agencies there is a specific reason to look. LLM Pulse is fully white-label: your logo, your colors, your domain, zero LLM Pulse branding, a separate project per client, plus a Looker Studio connector and a REST API to drop the data into client reports. If you resell AI visibility, that combination at this price is hard to match.

Now the honest part, the part an affiliate page would never write. If all you need is a monthly check of whether you are mentioned, you do not need us. Otterly at $29 does that fine. And if you are a Fortune 500 that requires on-prem and a dedicated strategist, Profound is a more natural fit. Where LLM Pulse wins is the middle, and it is a big middle: serious teams and agencies who want real depth, more models, the analytics side and white-label, all on public pricing and without an enterprise sales cycle. That is who we built it for.

If you already pay for a suite

Do not overlook this. If you are already inside Ahrefs or Semrush, both now ship AI visibility features (Ahrefs has Brand Radar, Semrush has its AI Toolkit). They are not as deep as the specialists, but "good enough and already in your subscription" beats "best in class and a new invoice" more often than vendors like me want to admit.

Start there. Move to a dedicated tool when the suite feature stops answering your questions, not before.

The snapshot table

Tool Entry price/mo Best for Watch out for
Profound No public price, enterprise-led Large brands, deepest data No self-serve, thousands/mo in practice
Peec AI ~$89 Teams and agencies Extra models are paid add-ons
Otterly.ai $29 Solo SEOs, first paid step Newer engines add-ons on some tiers
LLM Pulse €49 Teams and agencies wanting depth, more models, white-label + analytics Overkill for a one-off mention check
Ahrefs / Semrush Bundled You already pay for the suite Shallower than the specialists

Prices as of July 2026, from each vendor's pricing page. They move. Check before you buy.

What actually matters when you pick

Ignore the feature-count arms race. After a year of building in this category, these are the questions that actually decide whether a tool is worth it.

Does it track the models your customers use? Coverage of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI is the floor. If a tool is missing one of the big ones, that is not a small gap.

Is the pricing real? A public price and a self-serve trial is a signal the tool respects your time. A mandatory demo for a $200 product is a signal it does not.

Does it count the model math honestly? The advertised price and the price with full model coverage can be very different. Ask.

Can you get your data out? An MCP server or an API means the tool works inside your stack instead of trapping your data in a dashboard. This is quietly becoming the thing that separates tools built for 2026 from tools built for 2023.

Does it tell you what to do? Measurement without a next step is just anxiety with a chart. The good tools point at the source you need to influence.

My honest conclusion

If I take my own logo off the table for a second: there is no single winner, and anyone who gives you one is selling something.

Solo or just checking, start at Otterly for $29. A team or agency that wants depth without an enterprise contract, look hard at Peec AI and at LLM Pulse, and pick on which side of the analytics-versus-multi-market trade-off you land. A giant brand with a procurement process, Profound. Already paying for a suite, use what you have until it stops answering you.

I build one of these. I still think the right first move for most people is to spend $29, learn whether AI even knows you exist, and only then decide how much tooling the answer deserves.

The category is loud right now. The honest version is quieter than the ads.

Disclosure: I am the founder of LLM Pulse, one of the tools reviewed here. Pricing and feature details for all tools were taken from each vendor's own website in July 2026 and will change over time. Sources: Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.ai and LLM Pulse pricing pages.