--- title: "Best AEO Tools (2026): 13 AI Search Tools Compared" description: "The best AEO tools in 2026 for tracking and growing how often ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI cite your brand, plus the SEO tools that still feed them." url: https://getaob.com/aeo-tools --- # Best AEO tools (2026): how to track AI search visibility, and what actually moves it AEO tools measure how often AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews mention or cite your brand when buyers ask about your category, and show which pages those answers pull from. AEO stands for answer engine optimization. Some vendors call the same thing GEO or LLM visibility. Below is the data source OneGTM uses for its own SERP and AI-search work, then the dedicated AEO trackers, then the SEO tools that still matter because AI answers lean on the same pages that rank. Prices are what each vendor publishes. Some links may be referral links, which never changes what you pay or who is listed. A tracker only tells you where you stand. The section at the end covers what changes the number. By [Garrett Wolfe](https://garrettawolfe.com), founder of OneGTM (Clay Artisan Solutions Partner) and former GTM engineer at Unify. Updated October 26, 2026. Key takeaways - Gauge, Profound, Peec AI, Scrunch, and AthenaHQ all track prompts across AI engines. They differ on engine coverage, prompt volume, and what they help you do after. - Entry prices run from $29/month (Otterly Lite) to $599/month (Gauge Growth). Profound sells to enterprises on custom quotes. - Check which engines a plan covers. Several vendors sell Claude, Gemini, or Google AI Mode as add-ons. - AI answers cite third-party lists, Reddit, reviews, and docs heavily. Getting onto those pages moves visibility more than rewriting your homepage. - Classic SEO still feeds AEO. Pages that rank and get crawled are the pages AI engines retrieve. ## What OneGTM uses We pull SERP results, keyword data, and AI-search brand mentions through treg, a pay-per-call catalog, and have Claude Code read the results and suggest page changes. It keeps the bill at cents per check instead of another monthly seat. See how we run that loop on [Claude Code for GTM](https://getaob.com/claude-code-gtm). ### [treg](https://treg.to/?utm_source=onegtm&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=aeo-tools) OneGTM uses this Pay-per-call gateway to 4,000+ endpoints from over 100 providers on one token, including SERP and SEO data, backlinks, keyword volume, AI-search brand mentions, and Search Console through your own account. Built for agents, so Claude Code or Cursor can call it directly. **Best for:** Ad hoc SERP and AI-mention checks without a seat license **Pricing:** No subscription. You pay per call, with the price shown before each call and no markup. $1.00 free to start. Example: keyword volume from Semrush at $0.006 per call. Search Console queries are free through your own account. ## AEO tools for AI search visibility These run a set of prompts against AI engines on a schedule, record whether your brand shows up, and show which sources the answers cite. Pick on engine coverage, prompt volume, and whether the tool helps you act on what it finds. ### [Gauge](https://www.withgauge.com/?utm_source=onegtm&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=aeo-tools) AI search visibility analytics that tracks how your brand shows up across AI engines, with citation analysis showing which sites and pages the models pull from. A built-in agent, Ask Gauge, analyzes the data and drafts briefs and articles you can publish to Webflow, Framer, GitHub, or Sanity. It also tests which products coding agents pick for a task and where they get stuck in your docs. **Best for:** B2B and dev-tool teams that want tracking and content work in one place **Pricing:** Growth $599/month: 600 prompts run daily, ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Microsoft Copilot, 3 seats, unlimited domains and competitors. Enterprise custom, adding Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Perplexity. Claude and Grok can be tracked on either plan with your own API keys. ### [Profound](https://www.tryprofound.com/?utm_source=onegtm&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=aeo-tools) Enterprise AI visibility platform covering up to nine engines, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, and DeepSeek, with prompt volume data, ChatGPT Shopping, exports, and an API. **Best for:** Large brands that need broad engine coverage and SSO **Pricing:** Free trial with 50 preset prompts run daily for 7 days. Enterprise custom pricing with unlimited seats. A self-serve Agency Growth plan is mentioned without a published price. ### [Peec AI](https://peec.ai/?utm_source=onegtm&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=aeo-tools) Prompt tracking across AI engines with source and competitor views, unlimited users on every plan, and a choice of three models per plan with more as add-ons. **Best for:** SEO teams that want a clean self-serve tracker **Pricing:** Starter $95/month (50 prompts), Pro $245/month (150 prompts), Advanced $495/month (350 prompts, 5 projects), billed monthly. Prices show in euros for European visitors (EUR 85, 205, 425). Enterprise custom, annual. ### [Otterly.AI](https://otterly.ai/?utm_source=onegtm&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=aeo-tools) Low-cost AI search monitoring across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot, with Claude, Google AI Mode, and Gemini sold as add-ons. **Best for:** Small teams testing AEO before committing budget **Pricing:** Lite $29/month (15 prompts), Standard $189/month (100 prompts), Premium $489/month (400 prompts). 15% off annually ($25, $160, $422). Enterprise custom from 1,000 prompts. Free trial. ### [Scrunch](https://scrunch.com/?utm_source=onegtm&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=aeo-tools) AI visibility platform covering ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, and Meta, with personas, page audits, and agent traffic monitoring. Its Agent Experience Platform serves an AI-friendly version of your site to crawlers. **Best for:** Marketing teams that want audits and agent traffic data alongside tracking **Pricing:** Starter $250/month billed annually ($300 monthly) with 350 custom prompts and 3 users. Growth $417/month billed annually ($500 monthly) with 700 prompts and 5 users. Enterprise custom. 7-day free trial, no card. ### [AthenaHQ](https://www.athenahq.ai/?utm_source=onegtm&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=aeo-tools) Credit-based AI visibility tracker where one credit is one AI response, with unlimited topics and prompts on paid plans and coverage of 11 models including Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI, and Mistral. **Best for:** Teams that want wide model coverage and usage-based billing **Pricing:** Essential free with 300 credits. Starter $295/month with 3,600 credits. Enterprise custom. Annual billing listed at 17% off. ### [Ahrefs Brand Radar](https://ahrefs.com/brand-radar?utm_source=onegtm&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=aeo-tools) Ahrefs' AI visibility product. Custom Prompts tracks your own buyer questions, and the AI Visibility Index looks up any brand across a large prompt database, covering AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot. **Best for:** Teams already paying for Ahrefs **Pricing:** Custom Prompts from $50/month, with a small prompt allowance free on paid Ahrefs plans (5 prompts on Lite). AI Visibility Index from $199/month. Ahrefs itself: Starter $29, Lite $129, Standard $249, Advanced $449, Enterprise $1,499 per month. Choosing tools for an outbound build? Send me your current stack and what you want it to do. I'll tell you what I'd keep and what I'd change. Get a stack review ## SEO tools that still feed AI answers AI engines retrieve pages from a search index before they answer. Pages that rank, load fast, and get crawled cleanly are the ones they can cite, so the SEO basics still decide a lot of your AEO result. ### [Semrush](https://www.semrush.com/?utm_source=onegtm&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=aeo-tools) Keyword research, rank tracking, site audits, and backlinks, now sold as SEO plus AI Search plans that track a set of prompts daily in AI engines. **Best for:** One tool for keyword research and basic AI prompt tracking **Pricing:** Free plan. SEO $139/month ($117.33 billed annually). Starter $199/month ($165.17 annually) with 50 daily prompts. Pro+ $299/month ($248.17 annually) with 100 daily prompts. Advanced custom. ### [Surfer](https://surfer.ai/?utm_source=onegtm&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=aeo-tools) Content editor that scores drafts against what ranks for a keyword, plus an AI Search Analytics plan that tracks brand visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini, and AI Overviews. **Best for:** Writers optimizing individual articles **Pricing:** Billed yearly: Discovery $49, Standard $99, Pro $182, Peace of Mind $299 per month. AI Search Analytics $82/month billed yearly. Enterprise custom. ### [Clearscope](https://www.clearscope.io/?utm_source=onegtm&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=aeo-tools) Content optimization and inventory monitoring, with query tracking across ChatGPT and Gemini and a view of the web searches AI platforms run while building an answer. **Best for:** Content teams refreshing an existing library **Pricing:** Essentials $129/month (50 tracked queries, 50 pages). Business $399/month (300 queries, 300 pages). Enterprise custom. ### [Screaming Frog SEO Spider](https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider?utm_source=onegtm&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=aeo-tools) Desktop crawler that finds broken links, redirect chains, missing titles, blocked pages, and structured data errors. Run it before you blame the AI engines for ignoring a page. **Best for:** Technical audits and schema checks **Pricing:** Free up to 500 URLs per crawl. Paid licence GBP 199 per year. ### [Google Search Console](https://search.google.com/search-console) Google's own data on which queries show your pages, clicks, indexing status, and rich result errors. AI Overviews traffic is folded into the web search numbers. **Best for:** Indexing problems and the real query data **Pricing:** Free. Prices are from each vendor's site as of October 2026 and change often, so check before you buy. This is an opinionated list, not a paid ranking. Some links are referral links that may earn us a credit; that never changes what you pay or who makes the list. ## AEO tools compared | Tool | Best for | Starting price | | --- | --- | --- | | treg (OneGTM uses) | Ad hoc SERP and AI-mention checks without a seat license | Pay per call; $1 free | | Gauge | B2B and dev-tool teams that want tracking and content work in one place | Growth $599/month | | Profound | Large brands that need broad engine coverage and SSO | Custom pricing | | Peec AI | SEO teams that want a clean self-serve tracker | Starter $95/month | | Otterly.AI | Small teams testing AEO before committing budget | Lite $29/month | | Scrunch | Marketing teams that want audits and agent traffic data alongside tracking | Starter $250/month billed annually | | AthenaHQ | Teams that want wide model coverage and usage-based billing | Free; Starter $295/month | | Ahrefs Brand Radar | Teams already paying for Ahrefs | From $50/month | | Semrush | One tool for keyword research and basic AI prompt tracking | SEO $139/month | | Surfer | Writers optimizing individual articles | From $49/month billed yearly | | Clearscope | Content teams refreshing an existing library | Essentials $129/month | | Screaming Frog SEO Spider | Technical audits and schema checks | Free; GBP 199/year | | Google Search Console | Indexing problems and the real query data | Free | Starting prices as published by each vendor in October 2026. ## How to choose an AEO tool Start with the engines your buyers use. For B2B software that usually means ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, and increasingly Claude. Check the plan, since several vendors cover three or four engines in the base price and charge extra for the rest. Then size the prompt set. Fifty well-chosen prompts that mirror real buyer questions beat 600 generic ones. Write them from sales call transcripts and the questions prospects type, then split them by persona and stage. - Engine coverage in the plan you will actually buy, not the enterprise tier. - Citation data: which URLs the engines cite, so you know where to get listed. - Daily runs, because AI answers vary from one run to the next. - Competitor tracking on the same prompts. - Exports or an API if you want the data in your own dashboard. - Whether it helps you act (briefs, audits, content) or only reports. ## How to do AEO in practice Tracking tells you the score. These are the changes that move it, roughly in order of payoff for a B2B company. - Answer first. Open each page and each FAQ answer with a sentence that answers the question outright and names specific tools or numbers. Models lift those sentences. - Add structured data. Mark up FAQs with FAQPage schema, articles with Article, and tool lists with ItemList, then validate them in Search Console and Screaming Frog. - Publish an llms.txt file at your root that summarizes who you are and links your key pages in Markdown. It is cheap, and some agents read it. - Get cited on third-party lists. AI answers lean on roundups, review sites, Reddit threads, and comparison pages. Find the URLs your trackers show being cited and get your product onto them. - Build pages for the questions buyers ask: comparisons, alternatives, pricing, and best-of lists for your category, each with a dated update. - Keep pages crawlable. Do not block GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, or Google-Extended in robots.txt unless you mean to, and serve the content in HTML, not only through JavaScript. - Keep facts consistent. Pricing, positioning, and customer names should match across your site, LinkedIn, G2, and Crunchbase, or the models will hedge. ## Common AEO mistakes Most teams buy a tracker, look at a share-of-voice chart for a month, and stop. The chart moves slowly and only when you ship changes off-site as well as on-site. - Tracking vanity prompts that include your brand name. Track the category questions a buyer asks before they know you. - Reading one run as truth. Answers change between runs, so look at trends over weeks. - Rewriting the homepage and ignoring the third-party pages the engines actually cite. - Dropping SEO. AI engines still retrieve from search indexes, and pages that do not rank rarely get cited. ## When to get help with AEO Picking a tracker is quick. The work is building the prompt set from real buyer language, shipping the pages and schema, and getting listed on the sources the engines cite, then checking the trend every week. OneGTM runs that loop with Claude Code and treg: pull SERP and AI-mention data, find the cited sources, and ship page changes. You own the pages and the data. - Competitors show up in ChatGPT answers for your category and you do not. - You bought a tracker but nobody acts on what it shows. - You want comparison and best-of pages built without hiring a content team. - You need the AEO data next to pipeline data in your CRM. Book a call ## AEO tools FAQ ### What are the best AEO tools? The best AEO tools in 2026 are Gauge, Profound, Peec AI, Scrunch, AthenaHQ, Otterly.AI, and Ahrefs Brand Radar for tracking AI search visibility, with Semrush, Surfer, and Clearscope covering the SEO side. Gauge suits B2B teams that want tracking plus content work, Profound suits large enterprises, and Otterly is the cheapest place to start at $29 a month. ### What is answer engine optimization (AEO)? Answer engine optimization is the work of getting your brand mentioned and cited in answers from AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews. It overlaps with SEO, but adds answer-first copy, structured data, and getting listed on the third-party pages those engines cite. ### What is the difference between AEO and SEO? SEO aims to rank a page in a list of links, while AEO aims to get your brand named inside the AI-generated answer. They share a foundation, since AI engines retrieve pages from search indexes, but AEO puts more weight on direct answers, structured data, and mentions on third-party sites. ### How much do AEO tools cost? AEO tools cost from about $29 to $600 a month for self-serve plans. Otterly.AI starts at $29, Peec AI at $95, Scrunch at $250 billed annually, AthenaHQ at $295, and Gauge Growth at $599. Profound and the enterprise tiers of most vendors are custom priced. ### How do I track if ChatGPT mentions my brand? Use an AEO tracker such as Gauge, Peec AI, Otterly.AI, or Scrunch, which run a fixed set of buyer prompts in ChatGPT on a schedule and record whether your brand appears and which sources are cited. For one-off checks, a pay-per-call data catalog like treg can pull AI-search brand mentions without a subscription. ### Does llms.txt help with AEO? llms.txt can help a little and costs almost nothing to add. It is a Markdown file at your site root that summarizes your company and links key pages for AI agents. No major engine has confirmed it as a ranking factor, so treat it as a supplement to schema, answer-first copy, and third-party citations. ### How do I get my product cited in AI search answers? Get listed on the pages AI engines already cite for your category, such as best-of roundups, comparison pages, review sites, and Reddit threads, and publish your own answer-first pages with FAQPage schema. AEO tools like Gauge, Profound, and Peec AI show which URLs are being cited so you know where to focus. Not showing up when buyers ask ChatGPT about your category? ## Related - [Claude Code for GTM](https://getaob.com/claude-code-gtm): Custom GTM tooling, data pipelines, and internal apps built with AI coding agents. - [Best content creation tools](https://getaob.com/content-creation-tools): Writing, design, video, and repurposing tools for B2B founders and marketing teams, with pricing. - [Cursor for marketing](https://getaob.com/cursor-for-marketing): Claude Code, Cursor and the agentic marketing tools built for marketers, with pricing and how to set them up. - [Best growth hacking tools](https://getaob.com/growth-hacking-tools): Scraping, automation, analytics and referral tools for B2B startups, with what OneGTM runs and pricing. - [B2B demand generation agency](https://getaob.com/demand-generation-agency): Pipeline programs that connect content, signals, and outbound. - [All GTM tool guides](https://getaob.com/gtm-tools): Every tool category we cover, from cold email and LinkedIn to signals and dialers. ## Get an AEO review Tell me what you're building. I reply the same day. Book a call at [getaob.com/#contact](https://getaob.com/#contact) or email [team@getaob.com](mailto:team@getaob.com).