The Shortlist/Tools
The 6 best AI Search monitoring tools
Published Sep 14, 2026
Buyers now ask a model instead of a search engine. They type a question, get three or four names back, and start there. If your brand is not one of the names, you never find out. Nothing shows up in Search Console and nothing shows up in your analytics, because there was no click to lose.
That is the gap these tools fill. You give them the questions your buyers ask. They run those questions against ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and the rest, every day, and tell you who got named, in what order, in what tone, and which pages the model read to get there.
Six tools, ranked for a marketing team or an agency buying this without an enterprise contract.
At a glance
The shortlist, ranked
| # | Tool | Best for | Base | Entry price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Peec AI | Marketing teams and agencies that want several engines, citation-level detail and server-log data without moving to an enterprise contract | Berlin, with a New York office since 2026 | From $95/mo (Starter, 50 prompts). Agency plans from $245/mo |
| 2 | Rankscale | Teams that want the widest engine coverage for the least money, and do not mind a small team behind it | Europe, remote | From $20/mo (Essentials). Pro $99, Growth $385, Enterprise $780 |
| 3 | Omnia | Smaller teams that want to start free, track a focused prompt set, and read the results without training anyone | Madrid | From €79/mo (Growth, 25 prompts). Pro €279, Enterprise from €499 |
| 4 | AthenaHQ | Teams that want the tool to act on the findings, and need Meta AI or Amazon Rufus covered | United States | Free Essential tier (300 credits). Starter $295/mo, Enterprise custom |
| 5 | Profound | Enterprise teams with a procurement process, a SOC 2 requirement and budget above the self-serve tiers | New York | From $99/mo (Starter, ChatGPT only). Growth $399, Enterprise custom |
| 6 | Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | Teams already paying for Semrush who want AI tracking in the same login | Boston, with offices worldwide | $99/mo per domain. Semrush One, bundling SEO and AI visibility, from $199/mo |
Pricing re-checked against every vendor's own page on Sep 14, 2026
What it really costs
The same workload, priced across every tool
Entry prices are not comparable, because they buy different things. So we priced one identical workload across all of them: 150 prompts, tracked daily against six engines, on one seat, for twelve months. That is 27,000 answers a month, which is a normal load for one brand in a competitive category.
| Tool | Plan this forces | Per month | 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peec AI | Pro, $245/mo | $245 | $2,940 |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | $99 base plus 125 extra prompts | About $279, for four engines | About $3,348 |
| Omnia | Enterprise, from €499/mo (Pro caps at 100 prompts) | From €499 | From €5,988 |
| Rankscale | Enterprise, $780/mo (Growth caps at 22,000 answers) | $780 | $9,360 |
| Profound | Enterprise (Growth caps at 100 prompts and three engines) | Not published | Not published |
| AthenaHQ | Enterprise (Starter includes 3,600 of the 27,000 credits needed) | Not published | Not published |
Three of the six cannot be priced for this workload from public information. That is the finding, not a gap in our research: Profound and AthenaHQ both publish an entry price and then require a quote for anything at this scale, and Semrush cannot reach six engines at any price because its AI toolkit covers four. Annual billing takes 15% to 20% off most of these. We show monthly, because that is the number vendors advertise.
Methodology
How this was put together
The buyer we ranked for is a marketing team or an agency that wants daily tracking across several AI engines, bought self-serve, without a procurement cycle. That choice does most of the work in the order below. A tool that covers one engine at its entry price ranks lower here than one that covers six, even where the first tool is the bigger company.
Everything comes from public sources: each vendor's own pricing page, product documentation and changelog, plus funding announcements and public review profiles. Where a vendor publishes nothing on a point, we say so rather than guess.
Prices are the published list price for a single seat, in the currency the vendor publishes. We use the monthly figure, not the discounted annual one, because the annual discount is easy to find and the monthly number is the one you compare on. Where engines cost extra, we say which ones and roughly what they add, since that is where quoted prices and real invoices usually part company.
We checked the engine lists against each vendor's own documentation in September 2026. This category ships weekly, so treat any coverage claim as a snapshot. Several third-party review posts about these tools are published by competing vendors and were wrong on checkable facts at the time of writing, which is why nothing here is sourced from one.
Entry prices are close to useless for comparing these tools, so we also priced one identical workload across all six and published the arithmetic. Where a vendor cannot be priced for that workload from public information, the table says so rather than guessing a number.
We re-check every price against the vendor's own page and stamp the date on this guide. Anything that changes goes in the changelog at the bottom, including changes that make an entry look worse.
The order is our judgement about fit for that buyer. Every entry says where the tool is the stronger pick and where it is not, including the one at the top.
The tools
Every entry in detail
#1
Peec AI
- Best for
- Marketing teams and agencies that want several engines, citation-level detail and server-log data without moving to an enterprise contract
- Base
- Berlin, with a New York office since 2026
- Entry price
- From $95/mo (Starter, 50 prompts). Agency plans from $245/mo
- Terms
- Monthly or annual, around 15% off annual. No free tier
Six engines are included at the entry price, which is the widest default coverage in this list and the reason it sits first for this buyer. ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot all run from Starter upwards. The part most teams underrate is what sits underneath the visibility chart: every answer is broken down into the sources the model actually read, classified as editorial, corporate, UGC, reference or your own site, so you can see whether you are losing because nobody writes about you or because the pages that do exist are not being retrieved. Server-log integration is the other unusual piece, with eight ways to connect, so you can watch AI crawlers hit your site rather than infer it. Founded in 2025 and grown quickly since, with more than 3,000 customers and a stated $4M ARR inside the first ten months.
Where it is stronger
- Six engines at the entry price, where most tools here start with one to four
- Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode tracked as separate surfaces, which matters because they return different answers
- Source classification and gap analysis, so the data points at what to do rather than only at how you are doing
- Server-log crawl data, which almost nothing else in this price band offers
- Agency plans priced in credits with a published formula, so 25 client projects cost what the arithmetic says
- Fact-checking against facts you supply, which catches models repeating outdated claims about you
Where it is not
- Founded in 2025, so the track record is short next to Semrush or Ahrefs
- Engines beyond the included six are billed per engine per month, so a Claude and Grok requirement moves the real price above the list price
- No free tier. The cheapest look costs $95
- 50 prompts at Starter is tight for a broad category, and prompts are the thing you run out of first
- 18 G2 reviews is a thin base to judge from, however good the average
- One G2 reviewer reported that roughly 40% of the auto-suggested prompts overlapped, leaving manual work to find the ones worth a slot
What it does
- Engines included on every plan, as of 14 September 2026: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot
- Data access: CSV and Looker Studio on all plans, REST API and an MCP server on the higher tiers
- AI-referred traffic: AI Referrals joins measured GA4 sessions rather than estimating them
- Recommendations: Peec Actions produces prioritised actions from the source gaps it finds
- Visibility, position, sentiment and share of voice, tracked daily
- Source and citation analysis, with five source classifications and a gap report
- Crawlability checks across 40+ AI bots from 20+ vendors
- Crawl insights from server logs, via Cloudflare, Vercel, AWS CloudFront, Akamai, a WordPress plugin, webhook or CSV
- Brand perception and fact-checking, which flags answers that contradict facts you supply
- AI shopping and product visibility tracking
Published proof
- Raised roughly $29M in total: a seed round led by 20VC in July 2025 and a $21M Series A led by Singular in November 2025
- States more than 3,000 marketing teams, brands and agencies as customers
- Names Zalando, Squarespace, Hugo Boss, Brevo, TUI, Wix, n8n, Fielmann and Attio as customers
- Names Seer Interactive, Peak Ace, Previsible, Eskimoz, Omniscient, Kinesso and Mindshare as agency customers
- States $4M+ ARR within its first ten months
- 4.8 out of 5 on G2 across 18 reviews
- Listed at number 14 in the Sifted AI Top 100, and in the Accel Europe AI 100
- Publishes an agency credit formula anyone can check: one prompt, against one model, for one day, costs one credit
#2
Rankscale
- Best for
- Teams that want the widest engine coverage for the least money, and do not mind a small team behind it
- Base
- Europe, remote
- Entry price
- From $20/mo (Essentials). Pro $99, Growth $385, Enterprise $780
- Terms
- Monthly or annual, 15% off annual. Unused credits roll over to a per-tier cap
The cheapest serious entry point here by a wide margin, and the widest engine list, with more than 17 engines covered including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Mistral and Grok. It is bootstrapped and built by two founders, Mathias Ptacek and Patrick Schmid, which shows in both directions: releases land close to weekly, and there is no enterprise apparatus behind it. Citation analysis and GEO site audits are the parts people keep for, and there is a REST API, a Looker Studio connector and an MCP server. Traffic analytics from Search Console and GA4 were still in beta at the time of writing.
Where it is stronger
- The widest engine list in this guide, at 17+
- A $20 tier, which makes it the only realistic way to try this properly on no budget
- Citation analysis and site audits in the same tool, so measurement and diagnosis sit together
- Credit rollover, which few credit-based tools offer
- Fast release cadence, visible in a public changelog
Where it is not
- A two-founder bootstrapped team, which is a real risk if you need vendor stability for procurement
- Credit-based pricing means the monthly cost moves with usage, so budgets are estimates rather than fixed
- Search Console and GA4 analytics were in beta at the time of writing
- No published enterprise compliance posture such as SOC 2 or SSO
- Thin public review base compared with the larger names here
What it does
- Engines included on every plan, as of 14 September 2026: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek and Mistral, with 17+ supported in total
- Data access: REST API, Looker Studio connector and an MCP server
- AI-referred traffic: Search Console and GA4 analytics, in beta at the time of writing
- Recommendations: GEO site audits with 94+ technical checkpoints
- Competitor leaderboards and share of voice
- Sentiment analysis
- Citation analysis showing which sources each engine cited
Published proof
- Publishes full pricing for all four tiers, including the $20 entry
- Founders named publicly: Mathias Ptacek and Patrick Schmid
- Bootstrapped, with no outside funding announced
- Shipped releases at close to weekly cadence through 2026, published in a public changelog
- Credits roll over to a stated per-tier cap, which is published rather than described
#3
Omnia
- Best for
- Smaller teams that want to start free, track a focused prompt set, and read the results without training anyone
- Base
- Madrid
- Entry price
- From €79/mo (Growth, 25 prompts). Pro €279, Enterprise from €499
- Terms
- Monthly or annual, 20% off annual. 14-day free trial, no card required
The easiest way into this category if you are not sure yet whether you need it. A 14-day trial with no card, then €79 a month for 25 prompts. Founded in Madrid in 2024 by Daniel Espejo, previously at Klarna, and funded with a €3.5M pre-seed in October 2025 led by Visionaries Club. Four engines are on by default and you can turn on up to seven. The thing it does better than its size suggests is surface the actual questions people ask AI about your category, which is useful when you are still working out what to track. Citation tracking runs in any language or region, and insight credits never expire.
Where it is stronger
- A real free trial with no card, which is rare here
- The lowest entry price of the euro-billed tools at €79
- Prompt discovery that tells you what to track, not only how you are doing
- Credits that never expire, so a quiet month is not wasted budget
- Simple enough that a small team can read it without onboarding
Where it is not
- Four engines by default is the narrowest coverage in this guide
- 25 prompts at the entry tier runs out fast in a broad category
- Founded in 2024 and the smallest team here, on a €3.5M pre-seed
- Priced in euros, which adds currency friction for a US team
- No server-log or crawler data
What it does
- Engines included by default, as of 14 September 2026: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode, with up to seven available
- Data access: API access and data exports on paid plans
- AI-referred traffic: not offered
- Recommendations: Omnio surfaces the questions buyers ask about your category
- Citation tracking in any language or region
- Competitive intelligence and share of voice
- Sentiment analysis
Published proof
- Raised a €3.5M pre-seed in October 2025, led by Visionaries Club with Kfund and Baobab Ventures
- Founder named publicly: Daniel Espejo, previously at Klarna
- Publishes full pricing for all three tiers
- Offers a 14-day trial with no card required
- States that monthly and purchased credits combine and never expire
#4
AthenaHQ
- Best for
- Teams that want the tool to act on the findings, and need Meta AI or Amazon Rufus covered
- Base
- United States
- Entry price
- Free Essential tier (300 credits). Starter $295/mo, Enterprise custom
- Terms
- Monthly or annual, $245/mo billed annually. Free tier available indefinitely
Built by two former Google Search and DeepMind engineers, Andrew Yan and Alan Yao, and backed by Y Combinator on $2.2M. Nine platforms are tracked on every plan including the ones most tools skip, Meta AI and Amazon Rufus, which matters if you sell anything people buy on Amazon. What separates it from the dashboards is that it tries to do the next step for you: an optimisation agent turns the monitoring data into on-page and off-page recommendations rather than leaving you to interpret a chart. There is a genuine free tier at 300 credits, and then a jump to $295.
Where it is stronger
- Covers Meta AI and Amazon Rufus, which most of this list does not
- A real free tier, so you can see your own data before paying
- Every engine on every plan, with no per-engine add-ons
- Recommendations and an agent that acts, rather than a dashboard you interpret
- Founding team with search engineering background at Google and DeepMind
Where it is not
- The jump from free to $295 is the steepest step in this guide
- Credit-based, so heavy prompt sets cost more than the headline suggests
- $2.2M raised is the smallest funding base here, which procurement may query
- No server-log or crawler analytics
- Enterprise pricing is not published
What it does
- Engines included on every tier, as of 14 September 2026: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot and Grok, plus DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral
- Data access: API access on Starter is a paid add-on, priced on request
- AI-referred traffic: not offered
- Recommendations: an advanced content optimisation agent producing on-page and off-page actions
- Source attribution showing which pages each engine referenced
- Sentiment monitoring on brand mentions
- SSO and audit logs on Enterprise
Published proof
- Y Combinator backed, with $2.2M raised
- Founders named publicly: Andrew Yan and Alan Yao, formerly of Google Search and DeepMind
- Publishes the Starter price, the annual price and the credit allowance
- All nine platforms are available on every paid plan, including the free tier's credit allowance
- Names SSO and audit logs as Enterprise features
#5
Profound
- Best for
- Enterprise teams with a procurement process, a SOC 2 requirement and budget above the self-serve tiers
- Base
- New York
- Entry price
- From $99/mo (Starter, ChatGPT only). Growth $399, Enterprise custom
- Terms
- Prices shown are billed yearly. No free tier
The best-funded company in this guide and the name a board is most likely to recognise, with $58.5M raised including a $35M Series B led by Sequoia. It ranks fifth here for one reason, which is the buyer we ranked for. Starter is $99 a month and tracks ChatGPT only. Three engines needs Growth at $399, and the full nine needs Enterprise, where the price is not published. If you are buying self-serve and want several engines, that maths is against you. If you are running a procurement cycle and need SSO, SAML and SOC 2, this is the strongest option on the list and the ranking above does not apply to you.
Where it is stronger
- By far the largest funding base here, which matters to procurement
- SOC 2, SSO and SAML, which most tools in this guide do not offer at all
- The strongest enterprise support model, including dedicated Slack
- Multiple company tracking, useful for holding groups and portfolios
- The most recognised brand in the category, which shortens internal approval
Where it is not
- The $99 tier tracks ChatGPT only, so it is not a multi-engine product at entry price
- Reaching three engines costs $399, and all nine requires Enterprise
- Enterprise pricing is not published, so you cannot compare without a sales call
- No free tier
- Prices shown are the annual-billing figures, so monthly billing costs more than the headline
What it does
- Engines by tier, as of 14 September 2026: ChatGPT at Starter; ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews at Growth; up to nine including Google AI Mode at Enterprise
- Data access: API and integrations on Enterprise
- AI-referred traffic: agent analytics covering AI crawler and referral behaviour
- Recommendations: Agents credits, from 100 a month at Starter
- Prompt tracking, from 50 at Starter
- Multiple company tracking on Enterprise
- Dedicated Slack support on Enterprise
- SSO, SAML and SOC 2 compliance on Enterprise
Published proof
- Raised $58.5M in total, including a $35M Series B led by Sequoia
- Publishes Starter and Growth pricing, and the engine count at each tier
- States SOC 2 compliance and SSO/SAML availability on Enterprise
- Publishes its own research and tooling on AI Search, widely cited across the category
- Names dedicated Slack support as an Enterprise entitlement
#6
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit
- Best for
- Teams already paying for Semrush who want AI tracking in the same login
- Base
- Boston, with offices worldwide
- Entry price
- $99/mo per domain. Semrush One, bundling SEO and AI visibility, from $199/mo
- Terms
- Per domain and per seat. Extra prompts and extra seats are billed separately
Not really a standalone product, and it does not need to be. If Semrush is already your SEO stack, this puts AI visibility in the tool your team opens anyway, which is worth more than a feature list. $99 a month covers one domain, 25 prompts and four engines: ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity. The catch is how it scales. Each extra domain is another $99, each extra seat is another $99, and another 50 prompts is roughly $60. For one brand that is fine. For an agency with fifteen clients the arithmetic gets bad quickly, and the credit-based tools above are cheaper by a wide margin.
Where it is stronger
- No new vendor, no new login and no new invoice if you already use Semrush
- The AI data sits next to keyword, backlink and technical data, so one person can read all of it
- The bundle at $199 is good value if you need both halves
- The largest research and support organisation of anything here
- Easiest internal approval of any tool on this list
Where it is not
- Four engines, with no Copilot, Claude, Grok or Google AI Mode as separate surfaces
- 25 prompts per domain is the smallest allowance in this guide
- Per-domain and per-seat pricing makes it the most expensive option for agencies at any scale
- Little value unless you are already in the Semrush ecosystem
- No server-log or crawler analytics in the AI toolkit
What it does
- Engines included, as of 14 September 2026: ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity, with Google reported as one combined surface
- Data access: exports and reporting within the Semrush platform
- AI-referred traffic: available through the wider Semrush analytics suite rather than the AI toolkit
- Recommendations: a site audit scoring AI readiness
- Prompt tracking with daily AI rankings, 25 prompts included per domain
- Brand performance analysis for one domain
- AI competitor analysis and prompt research
- Sits inside the wider Semrush platform alongside the classic SEO toolkits
Published proof
- Publishes the $99 per domain price and the 25-prompt allowance
- Publishes add-on pricing: roughly $60 for 50 extra prompts, $99 per extra domain, $99 per extra seat
- Semrush One bundles SEO and AI visibility from $199/mo
- Part of a long-established public company with a large published research output
- Publishes its own AI visibility research and roundups, which are themselves among the most cited sources in this category
Engine count is the number that decides your bill
Every tool here publishes a headline price and almost none of them means the same thing by it. Profound is $99 and tracks ChatGPT. Peec AI is $95 and tracks six engines. Semrush is $99 and tracks four, for one domain, for one seat. Those three numbers look identical in a spreadsheet and buy very different products.
So before you compare prices, write down the engines you actually need. For most B2B teams that is ChatGPT first, then Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, then Perplexity. Google is worth thinking about carefully, because AI Overviews and AI Mode are different surfaces that return different answers to the same question, and a tool that reports one number for Google is hiding half the picture.
Then price the tools against that list rather than against each other. A cheap tool that charges per engine can end up costing more than an expensive one that includes them, and the gap usually shows up on the second invoice rather than the first.
Measuring is the easy half
Every tool in this guide will tell you that you are mentioned in 30% of answers. Far fewer will tell you why, and that is the number you need, because visibility is an output. The input is which pages the model retrieved before it answered.
This is why source and citation data matters more than the visibility chart. When you look at the URLs behind a prompt where a competitor got named and you did not, the answer is usually one of two things. Either the cited pages are third-party sites you are missing from, which is a PR and review-profile problem, or they are your own pages that the model read and did not quote, which is a content problem. Those need completely different work, and a tool that only reports a percentage cannot tell you which one you have.
A worked example. You sell project management software. You ask ChatGPT for the best project management tool for agencies and you are not named. You open the sources and find four of them are roundup posts on other people's blogs and one is a Reddit thread. None of them mention you. No amount of rewriting your own homepage fixes that, because your homepage was never in the retrieval set. The work is getting into those five pages.
What we left out, and why
We left out the free prompt checkers. They run one question once and show you a snapshot, which is fine for a demo and useless for a trend. AI answers move day to day, and one reading tells you nothing about direction.
We left out the general brand-monitoring platforms that added an AI tab. Social listening and AI answer tracking look similar on a slide and behave differently underneath. If a tool was built to count mentions across the web and now also reads ChatGPT, the AI half is usually shallow, and the source-level data is the first thing missing.
We left out content-optimisation tools that report AI visibility as a side feature. They are often good at what they were built for. They are not measurement tools, and buying one instead of a tracker leaves you optimising against numbers nobody is checking.
We also left out several tools with respectable products and no published pricing at any tier. That is a defensible way to sell software and a bad fit for a guide whose whole premise is comparing what things cost.
FAQ
Questions buyers actually ask
- What should an AI Search monitoring tool cost?
- Between $79 and $500 a month for a single brand, depending mostly on how many engines and prompts you need. Published entry points in this guide run from $20 to $295. A realistic figure for one brand tracking a serious prompt set across five or six engines is $250 to $500 a month. Agencies should price on the credit-based plans instead, because per-domain pricing becomes the largest line item somewhere around the fifth client.
- How many prompts do we actually need to track?
- Most teams need 50 to 150. Start with the questions your sales team hears, the comparisons buyers make between you and two named competitors, and the category questions where you would want to be one of the three names returned. Fewer than 30 and you are reading noise. More than 200 and you are usually tracking variations of the same question, which costs money and tells you nothing new.
- Is Google AI Overviews the same as Google AI Mode?
- No, and this trips people up. AI Overviews is the summary that appears above the classic results for some queries. AI Mode is a separate conversational surface you switch into. They draw on different retrieval and regularly return different brands for the same question. If a tool reports a single number for Google, ask which of the two it measured.
- Will tracking improve our visibility on its own?
- No. These tools measure the problem, they do not fix it. The improvement comes from what you do with the source data: getting into the third-party pages models retrieve, fixing your own pages so they are quotable, and building review profiles that models trust. Buy a tool to know where you stand and to check whether the work is landing. Budget separately for the work.
- How long before we see a change in AI answers?
- One to two quarters for a shift you can trust. Retrieval indexes refresh on their own schedules, earned coverage takes time to land and longer to be picked up, and review profiles build slowly. Read a set of prompts over weeks rather than one prompt over days. Daily movement in this data is mostly noise, and the tools that chart it hourly are not doing you a favour.
- Do these tools work outside English?
- Coverage varies more than the marketing suggests. Most track multiple countries and languages on paid tiers, but the engine availability differs by market and some engines are not offered in some countries at all. If you sell outside the US, check the specific country and language list against your markets before you buy, and ask how the tool handles a market where an engine is unavailable.
Changelog
What has changed since we published
- Sep 14, 2026
- First published. All prices checked against each vendor's own pricing page on the same day.
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