Answer engine optimization tools: free and paid options

Someone asks a simple question in a planning meeting: when people ask ChatGPT or Google’s AI Mode for a recommendation in our category, do we show up? You can answer it by hand for ten prompts. For two hundred prompts across five answer engines, repeated every month with competitors alongside, you need software. That is the gap answer engine optimization tools fill.

This roundup covers twelve of them, free options first. We checked each vendor’s own pricing and product pages on November 3, 2026; prices change often, so confirm before you buy. No vendor paid to be included. One of the free tools is ours, and we say so where it appears.

What does an answer engine optimization tool do?

An AEO tool shows how answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google’s AI features treat your brand. Most run a fixed set of prompts on a schedule and record whether you are mentioned or cited, alongside competitors. Others audit whether AI crawlers can reach and read your pages, or report first-party data from the search engines themselves.

That gives three kinds of tool:

• Prompt trackers run prompts through AI platforms and log mentions, citations, sentiment and AI share of voice. Most paid AEO tools are this type.
• Readiness auditors check the technical side: crawler access, rendering, snippet eligibility and structured data.
• First-party consoles from Google and Microsoft report what their own AI features actually showed or cited.

What should you look for?

• The platforms your audience uses. Coverage of AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Claude varies by plan, and some platforms are paid add-ons.
• Prompt volume and frequency. Plans are priced by prompts or credits. Twenty well-chosen prompts run daily can be more useful than four hundred run weekly.
• Mentions and citations reported separately. Being named in an answer and being linked as a source are different outcomes.
• Competitor tracking, exports and locations. Check how many competitors, countries and languages are included before comparing prices.

Free answer engine optimization tools

Google Search Console: Search generative AI reports

Google’s own reports show how often your pages appeared in AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative features in Discover, broken down by page, country, device and date (Google Search Central blog). They report impressions only, with no query data. Google says they reached all websites on August 31, 2026. Best for: anyone with a verified site; this is first-party data no third-party tool can replicate.

Bing Webmaster Tools: AI Performance

Microsoft’s report counts how often your content is cited in Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. It shows total citations, cited pages, a sample of the grounding queries used to retrieve your content, and trends over time (Bing Webmaster blog). It launched as a public preview in February 2026 and does not report clicks. Best for: seeing which of your pages Copilot actually cites, and for which queries.

HubSpot AEO Grader

A free, one-time check that scores your brand out of 100 across sentiment, presence quality, brand recognition, share of voice and market competition, using ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. HubSpot says the results reflect what those models say “based on their training data”, and you complete a short form (company, location, industry, product) to see the full report. Best for: a quick read on brand perception; it is not ongoing monitoring.

Ahrefs free AI visibility checker

A no-signup snapshot of how a brand appears across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, AI Overviews and AI Mode: total mentions, mentions by platform, and the top five topics, cited domains and cited pages. Ahrefs describes it as a limited preview. Best for: checking a competitor or prospect in seconds.

AthenaHQ Essential plan

AthenaHQ’s free tier includes 300 credits, where one credit is one AI response, across ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot. That is enough to run a small prompt set a few times before deciding whether to pay. Best for: trying a full prompt tracker without a card.

Seouch AI visibility checker

Our AI visibility checker is a readiness auditor rather than a prompt tracker. It checks whether robots.txt allows 17 AI crawlers, requests your page with several AI crawler user agents to spot firewall blocks, and scores on-page signals such as snippet eligibility, entity markup and answer-ready sections. A mentions check for ChatGPT and Google’s AI features is unlocked with an email address. Best for: finding technical blocks before you pay to track prompts.

Paid answer engine optimization tools

Otterly.AI

A prompt tracker with plans from $29 per month (Lite, 15 prompts) to $189 (Standard, 100 prompts) and $489 (Premium, 400 prompts). All plans cover ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot; Google AI Mode with Gemini, and Claude, are paid add-ons. There is a free trial for new users. Best for: small teams that want a low entry price.

Peec AI

Plans start at $95 per month (Starter: 50 prompts, three active models, one country), rising to $245 (Pro, 150 prompts) and $495 (Advanced, 350 prompts). Self-serve plans choose from ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI; Perplexity, Claude and several others are listed for Enterprise. Prompts run daily. Best for: teams tracking several markets who want daily data.

Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

Sold standalone at $99 per month per domain, with 50 extra prompts for $60 per month; Semrush’s knowledge base says there is no free trial for it. It covers brand performance, prompt tracking (Semrush names ChatGPT and Google AI Mode), prompt research, sentiment and an audit for AI crawler blockers. Semrush’s combined SEO and AI search plans start at $117.33 per month billed annually ($139 monthly). Best for: teams already using Semrush.

Ahrefs Brand Radar

An add-on to a paid Ahrefs subscription. The AI Visibility Index tier, which reports on Ahrefs’ own prompt index, costs $199 per month and covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot; custom prompt tracking starts at $50 per month and can add Claude. It reports mentions, citations, AI share of voice and estimated impressions. Best for: benchmarking a category against competitors without writing every prompt yourself.

Scrunch

Starter costs $300 per month month-to-month or $250 billed annually, with 350 custom prompts and 1,000 industry prompts; Growth is $500 or $417. Coverage includes ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews and Meta. There is a seven-day free trial without a card. Best for: mid-sized brands that want broad platform coverage on a self-serve plan.

Profound

Enterprise-oriented, with custom pricing and up to nine answer engines including ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, Claude and AI Overviews. Beyond prompt tracking it offers prompt volume data, which Profound says is drawn from real user conversations with AI, agent analytics on how bots access your site, and ChatGPT Shopping visibility. A free trial runs 50 prompts daily for seven days on three platforms. Best for: large brands that want research data as well as tracking.

Which tool should you start with?

Situation	A sensible starting point
No budget	Search Console and Bing reports, one free snapshot, and a manual prompt set in a spreadsheet
Not sure your site is even crawlable by AI	A readiness audit before any tracker
One brand, small team	An entry plan from a dedicated tracker, sized to 20–50 prompts
Already pay for Semrush or Ahrefs	Their add-on, so data sits beside your SEO reports
Several brands or markets	A tracker priced by prompts and countries, trialled on your real prompt set

Our view: run any shortlisted tool on the same 20 prompts for two weeks before committing. Differences in how tools count mentions and citations become obvious quickly.

How accurate are AEO tools?

Treat their numbers as samples. Trackers run their own prompts, usually without the location, history and personalization a real user brings, and answers vary from one run to the next. None can see actual user conversations. Google says to be cautious of third-party tools that claim access to internal Google metrics, and points site owners to Search Console instead (Google Search Central). The useful signal is the trend across a stable prompt set, not any single score.

What to do next

Start with what is free and first-party: switch on Search Console’s generative AI reports and Bing’s AI Performance view, and run a readiness check so a crawler block is not skewing everything else. Then write the 20 prompts that matter most to your revenue, and use them to trial one or two paid trackers side by side. For background on the discipline itself, read the answer engine optimization guide; for a table-led comparison of the same market, see generative engine optimization tools compared.

Frequently asked questions

What is an answer engine optimization tool?

An answer engine optimization tool shows how AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI features treat your brand. Most run a fixed set of prompts on a schedule and record whether you are mentioned or cited. Others audit whether AI crawlers can reach your pages, or report first-party impressions and citations.

Are there free AEO tools?

Yes. Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools both report AI visibility data for free. HubSpot's AEO Grader and Ahrefs' free AI visibility checker give one-time snapshots, and AthenaHQ has a free plan with a small credit allowance. Free readiness audits check crawler access and on-page signals.

How much do AEO tools cost?

Among the tools we checked in November 2026, entry-level paid plans ranged from $29 per month (Otterly.AI Lite, 15 prompts) to around $300 per month (Scrunch Starter, monthly billing). Add-ons inside larger SEO suites cost $99 per month per domain (Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit) or $50 to $199 per month and up (Ahrefs Brand Radar, on top of a paid Ahrefs plan). Enterprise plans are priced on request.

Can an AEO tool tell me exactly how often I appear in ChatGPT?

No tool can see real user conversations in ChatGPT. Trackers run their own prompts and report what those prompts returned, which is a sample. Treat the numbers as a trend line for the prompts you chose, not as a measure of all user activity.