Use a tool when you have a team that can act on the numbers. Hire a consultant when you need the numbers read and the fixes delivered. This page compares seven AI visibility tools by surfaces, published price, and who does the fixing, then shows where a consultancy fits.
Published 23 July 2026 by Creative Data Engineers. Prices checked 23 July 2026.
Use an AI visibility tool if you have in-house SEO or content capacity and only need measurement: published tiers start at $29 per month and the better platforms cover six or more AI surfaces. Hire a GEO consultant when nobody on your team can translate a mention rate into content, schema, and rendering fixes: an audit costs more up front but arrives with the work prioritized, and in our case with the fixes drafted. The two are not rivals. The honest split looks like this:
Your team already writes content and manages schema. Buy a tool from the table below, wire it into your reporting, and act on the gaps yourselves. Cheapest path by far.
A dashboard nobody acts on is shelf decoration. A consultant reads the data, decides what to fix first, and delivers the fixes. That is the gap between knowing and moving.
Start with a measured baseline audit, then decide. The audit tells you whether your problem is readability, content, or third-party coverage, and each has a different price tag.
Profound has the widest engine list and an enterprise lean. Otterly.AI has the lowest published entry price. Semrush and Ahrefs bolt AI tracking onto suites you may already pay for. Searchable adds a content arm to its monitoring. Knowatoa and Peec AI sit between. Here is the full picture, from each vendor's own published pricing:
| Vendor | What it is | AI surfaces tracked | Published price | Who implements fixes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profound | AI answer monitoring platform | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Claude. Engine count is tier-gated: the entry tier tracks ChatGPT only. | $99/mo (Starter) and $399/mo (Growth), billed yearly. Enterprise custom. | Your team. Software only. |
| Otterly.AI | AI search monitoring tool | Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot on all plans. Claude, Gemini, and AI Mode are paid add-ons. | $29 / $189 / $489 per month. Annual saves about 15%. | Your team. Software only. |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | Module in the Semrush suite | ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, Perplexity. Grok and Claude on Enterprise. | $99/mo per domain, billed annually. Enterprise custom. | Your team. Software only. |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Module from Ahrefs | AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, plus YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit visibility. | $398/mo (select platforms) or $699/mo (all platforms). | Your team. Software only. |
| Knowatoa | Tracker with service add-ons | ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI Overviews. | $59/mo (Starter) or $199/mo (Growth). | Partly them: done-for-you content services on the Growth tier. |
| Peec AI | AI visibility platform (Berlin) | ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini. | Tiered subscription; current figures on peec.ai. | Your team. Software only. |
| Searchable | AEO platform with a content arm (London) | ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity on core plans; Copilot, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Google AI Mode, Gemini selectable or as add-ons. | $125/mo (Pro), $400/mo (Scale), $999+/mo (Enterprise). Custom on request. | Partly the tool: AI-generated articles and audit recommendations. Review and publishing stay with your team. |
| Creative Data Engineers | Consultancy with its own measurement engine | ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity in a real browser, plus Claude through a grounded API. More on request. | Baseline Audit from €4,900 one-time. Monitor + Fix from €1,490/mo. | We draft the fixes ready to publish. Your team pastes them in. |
Prices and engine coverage come from each vendor's published pricing page, checked on 23 July 2026. Tiers change often; treat this table as a dated snapshot, and check the vendor page before you buy. Enterprise pricing is unpublished across the board.
Five software alternatives and one non-software alternative, each strongest in a different situation:
Three kinds of partner do this work, and which is best for generative engine optimization in 2026 depends on your size and market:
The table above. They give your team the measurement and leave the work to you. Right when you have in-house capacity and just need the numbers.
iPullRank, the US agency behind the relevance engineering approach with clients such as Target and Adidas, runs large bespoke engagements without published pricing. Right at enterprise scale with enterprise budgets.
Where Creative Data Engineers sits: a measured baseline, real-browser validation, and fixes delivered ready to publish, with prices on the page. Built for European B2C brands whose customers research before they buy.
Whoever you pick, apply the same three-question filter: do they measure before they recommend, do they publish their method, and do they deliver work your team can actually ship. A partner who fails any of the three is selling slides.
We run the measurement ourselves: a fixed question set built from real buyer demand, scored across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity in a real browser, plus Claude through a grounded API.
Then we do the part software leaves open: the fix list ordered by impact, citation-gap content and FAQ sections drafted ready to publish, and a branded dashboard you own. The method is public: how the measurement works, step by step.
And the honest counter-recommendation: if you only need a monthly number and your team can act on it, buy a tool. The table above is your shortlist, and Otterly.AI at $29 is a fine place to start. Come to us when the number needs to move and nobody has time to move it.
Published tiers run from $29 per month (Otterly.AI Lite, 15 prompts) to $999+ per month (Searchable Enterprise). In between: Profound starts at $99 per month for ChatGPT-only tracking, Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit is $99 per month per domain, Searchable Pro is $125, Knowatoa runs $59 to $199, and Ahrefs Brand Radar $398 to $699. Enterprise tiers are custom-priced everywhere. A consultant-run baseline audit is a different shape of spend: ours starts at €4,900 one-time and includes the fix list and a strategy session, with ongoing monitoring plus delivered fixes from €1,490 per month. Prices checked 23 July 2026 on each vendor's published pricing page.
Yes, at page level. Our free AI Visibility Inspector scans any URL and shows what AI crawlers actually read from it, up to 5 scans a day. Semrush also offers a free AI visibility checker on its site. Free checks tell you whether a page is readable and structured for AI engines; they do not track whether AI assistants mention your brand over time, which is what the paid tools and consultant monitoring measure.
Mostly no. Profound, Otterly.AI, Semrush, Ahrefs Brand Radar, and Peec AI are monitoring software: they report where you stand and leave the content, schema, and rendering work to your team. Knowatoa and Searchable are partial exceptions: Knowatoa with done-for-you content services on its top tier, Searchable with AI-generated articles your team still reviews and publishes. Consultancies work the other way around: the measurement exists to drive the fixes. Our Monitor + Fix tier delivers citation-gap fixes and FAQ sections drafted ready to publish, so your team pastes them in instead of writing them.
It depends on your size and market. Enterprise brands, especially in the US, often work with iPullRank, the agency behind the relevance engineering approach, with clients like Target and Adidas and no published pricing. European mid-market and enterprise B2C brands that want measurement and delivered fixes from one partner are who we built the Creative Data Engineers AI Search Visibility service for: a measured baseline from €4,900, real-browser validation, and fixes drafted ready to publish. Judge any GEO partner on three things: do they measure before they recommend, do they show their method, and do they deliver work your team can ship.
Profound and Otterly.AI are software subscriptions you operate yourself. Creative Data Engineers is a consultancy that runs its own measurement engine and then does the part software leaves open: reading the numbers, deciding what to fix first, and delivering the content and schema changes ready to publish. You get a branded dashboard you own, validation in the real AI products rather than API calls alone, and a partner accountable for the trend. If you only need the numbers and have a team to act on them, a tool is the cheaper choice.
A Baseline Audit measures where you stand across the AI surfaces your buyers use, with a fix list ordered by impact. From €4,900, two weeks from kickoff to dashboard.