The cheapest AI visibility tools that are actually worth paying for

Every week someone asks me the same thing. "I just want to see if ChatGPT mentions my brand. What's the cheapest tool that doesn't suck?"

Fair question. The answer is more annoying than it should be, because the cheapest sticker price is almost never the cheapest real price.

Let me get the disclosure out of the way first, because it changes how you should read everything below. I build one of these tools. It is called LLM Pulse, and it competes directly with most of the products in this article. So I have an obvious incentive to talk it up.

The way I deal with that is simple: I will tell you exactly where someone else is the better buy. If you finish this and pick a competitor, that is fine. I would rather you trust me than click something.

So this is a ranking by value, not by the number on the pricing page. Value means: what you actually pay per month once you add the models you need and the seats your team needs, and whether the data is worth having at all.

The trap: sticker price versus real price

Here is the thing nobody tells you when you start shopping.

AI visibility tools love to advertise a low entry number and then charge you extra for two things: the AI models you want to track, and the people on your team who want to log in.

Both of those can quietly double your bill.

Models first. A tool that "starts at $89" but includes only three engines, then charges per extra model, gets expensive fast the moment you want Claude or Grok or Google's AI Mode in the mix. And you will want them, because your customers use them.

Seats second. If a tool charges per seat and you have a founder, a marketer, an SEO and an agency contact who all need access, that "cheap" plan is now four logins deep and the price looks nothing like the ad.

So when I rank these, I am ranking the price you actually pay in month two, not the one on the landing page.

The short version

If you want the answer without the reasoning:

• Cheapest honest entry point: Otterly, at $29/month.
• Best value for a team or agency: LLM Pulse, at 49 €/month, because unlimited seats and included models mean the real cost barely moves as you grow.
• Best if you are a mid-sized team that lives in the tool daily: Peec AI, as long as you do the model-add-on maths first.

Now the detail.

Otterly: the cheapest way to stop guessing

If your budget is genuinely tiny and you just need to know whether you show up, Otterly is where I send people. Their Lite plan is $29/month for 15 prompts, and it is not a crippled demo. You get screenshots of the real AI outputs, a Brand Visibility Index, domain ranking, link citations and prompt intent volume. Unlimited team members, which I respect at that price.

The catch is scale. Fifteen prompts is enough to monitor a handful of core questions, not a category. The next step up is Standard at $189/month for 100 prompts, and Premium at $489 for 400. Some of the newer engines are add-ons on the lower tiers, so read that page before you assume everything is included.

The part that makes Otterly interesting for the technical crowd: it ships an MCP server, a public API and a Claude skill. For $29 that is genuinely generous, and if you just want to pull AI visibility data into your own workflow and go, it is hard to argue with.

Where Otterly wins: the absolute floor. Nothing legitimate is cheaper to start.

LLM Pulse: cheapest once you count seats and models

This is my tool, so weigh what follows accordingly.

LLM Pulse starts at 49 €/month for the Starter plan: 50 prompts, 5 competitors. On paper that is 20 € more than Otterly's floor. On a spreadsheet for an actual team, it usually comes out cheaper, and here is why.

Every plan includes unlimited seats. No per-seat fee, ever. Your founder, your two marketers, your SEO and your agency can all log in on the 49 € plan and the price does not move. If you have ever watched a "cheap" tool balloon because everyone needed a login, you know how much that matters.

Every plan also includes five core models: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews. Not three. Five. Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek and Meta AI can be added when you need them. So the base price is the base price, not the opening bid.

And every plan, including the 14-day trial, comes with a hosted MCP server with 45+ tools over OAuth. No API key to manage. You point Claude or ChatGPT at it and pull your own visibility data straight into a conversation. That is still rare in this category, and it is not gated behind an enterprise call.

The plans, as of July 2026:

Prices change, so check the pricing page before you buy.

The feature I would actually pay for is on the Growth plan and up: real AI traffic analytics. You connect GA4 or Plausible and see the actual visits, conversions and sales that ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini send you. Mentions are nice. Revenue is the point. Most tools at this price stop at "you were mentioned" and leave the money question unanswered.

For agencies, the value case is the white-label. Your logo, your colours, your domain, zero LLM Pulse branding, a separate project per client, plus the Looker Studio connector and REST API for client reporting. If you resell this, unlimited seats and white-label together change the unit economics completely.

Where LLM Pulse wins: teams and agencies, because the price you see is close to the price you pay.

Where it does not: if you are a solo operator tracking ten prompts and you will never add a model or a seat, Otterly's $29 is simply less money. I am not going to pretend otherwise.

Peec AI: strong for teams, mind the model add-ons

Peec AI is a good product and I recommend it honestly. It is built for teams and agencies, with daily tracking, sentiment, and genuinely strong regional and multi-language tracking with competitor comparison by country. If your work is international and you care about how you look market by market, Peec is worth a serious look.

Pricing runs from about $89/month for the starter (25 prompts), roughly $199 (100 prompts), and around $499 (~300 prompts). Unlimited seats on all plans, which I like.

Here is the honest caveat, and it is the whole reason this article has a section on hidden costs. Peec includes three models, and extra models are paid add-ons priced per model. So the $89 headline is real, but if you want to track five or six engines the way most people now need to, your actual monthly number climbs above the sticker. Do that maths before you commit. For some teams it is still the right call. Just do it with your eyes open.

Where Peec wins: multi-country teams who want daily, granular regional data and will happily pay for the models they need.

The suites: Ahrefs and Semrush

If you already pay for Ahrefs or Semrush, both now bundle AI-visibility features. Ahrefs Brand Radar and the Semrush AI Toolkit are shallower than any of the specialists above, but they cost you nothing extra because they are already in your subscription.

My honest take: if you have light needs and one of these is already on your invoice, start there. Do not buy a dedicated tool to answer a question your existing suite can half-answer for free. When you outgrow it, and you will if AI visibility becomes a real channel for you, move to a specialist. Not before.

So what do I actually tell people?

It depends on exactly two things: how many prompts you need, and how many people and models will touch the account.

If you are one person testing the water: Otterly at $29. Cheapest real entry, nothing to argue with.

If you are a team or an agency, or you can see yourself adding models and seats within a quarter: LLM Pulse at 49 €, because unlimited seats and five included models mean the real cost barely moves as you grow, and the trial includes the MCP server so you can wire it into your own tooling before you pay a cent. Yes, that is my tool. Try it against the others and judge for yourself.

If you are a mid-sized international team who wants daily granular regional data: Peec, after you have added up the model add-ons.

The cheapest tool is rarely the one with the smallest number on the page. It is the one whose price in month six still looks like the price in month one.

Track that, and you will pick right.