AI visibility tools compared
How do the AI visibility tools compare? As of October 2026, the hosted tools (Peec AI, Profound, Otterly.AI, Scrunch, Ahrefs Brand Radar and Semrush AI Visibility) cover more engines, including Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI surfaces, and charge from about $29 a month to custom enterprise contracts. Elmo and Limelit Open are open source and cover those engines too, through vendor APIs and paid scraping services. Cheap Seats is an open-source project I wrote to make my own product better, inspired by those tools; it’s free and always will be, and it does the part most teams use most of the time. It asks Claude and OpenAI models your buyers’ questions, grades every answer recommended, mentioned or absent, ends every run with a ranked fix list, and runs on the Claude subscription you already have (ChatGPT optional). When you outgrow it, this page is how to choose where to go next.
Everything below comes from each tool’s own pages, read in October 2026. Where a page didn’t say something, the table says “not stated” rather than guessing, and where a price wasn’t clear, it links the pricing page instead of quoting a number. Cheap Seats is our product, so check its rows against the docs the same way.
Engines, price and hosting
| Tool | Engines covered | Pricing model, entry price | Self-hosted or SaaS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cheap Seats | Claude and OpenAI models, through their APIs or the Claude Code and Codex CLIs | Free and open source (MIT); runs on your existing Claude subscription (ChatGPT optional) | Self-hosted: one Docker container with SQLite |
| Peec AI | Names ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini; links an AI Mode tracker | Monthly plans (Starter, Pro, Advanced) and custom Enterprise; no prices shown, see their pricing page | SaaS |
| Profound | Up to 9 on Enterprise: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, AI Overviews, Exa Search | Free 7-day trial; Enterprise custom; an Agency Growth plan, see their pricing page | SaaS |
| Otterly.AI | ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot included; AI Mode, Gemini and Claude as add-ons | Per plan; Lite $29/month for 15 prompts | SaaS |
| Scrunch | ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode/Overviews, Meta | Per plan; Starter $250/month billed annually or $300 month-to-month | SaaS |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, ChatGPT; Claude in the AI Visibility Index | Paid; see their pricing page | SaaS |
| Semrush AI Visibility | Names Google AI Mode and ChatGPT; Claude not mentioned | $99/month for the AI Visibility Toolkit | SaaS |
| Elmo | ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot through paid scrapers; Claude, Grok, Mistral and others through direct APIs | Free and open source (MIT); you pay the scrapers, model APIs and a TypeSafe key. Elmo Cloud from $29/month | Self-hosted (Docker Compose, PostgreSQL) or SaaS |
| Limelit Open | ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini through APIs; AI Overviews, AI Mode, Bing Copilot through scrapers | Free and open source (Apache-2.0); you pay your providers. Limelit Cloud credit packs from $19.99 | Self-hosted (one binary, SQLite); Cloud is SaaS |
What Cheap Seats costs. Cheap Seats is free and open source (MIT). Claude is required, through a subscription or an API key; ChatGPT (Codex or an OpenAI key) is optional and adds a second assistant’s answers. On your own machine, with a Claude Code subscription, answers, grading and the fix list can all run on the claude CLI, with no API key and no extra spend. Host it and you pay your host (and, in a container, API usage, since the image has no CLIs: about $0.03 to grade a 68-answer run, under a daily budget cap). Cost and budget has the details.
Prompts, grading, fixes and API
| Tool | Your own prompts | Recommended vs. mentioned | Fix recommendations | API / MCP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cheap Seats | Yes, as TOML in your git repo, changed by pull request | Yes: each answer graded recommended, mentioned or absent, with position, top pick, share of voice and objections | A ranked fix list every run: the page, what it must say, the prompts it should flip, and a Claude Code prompt | JSON API and MCP server, plus web UI and CLI |
| Peec AI | Yes, tracked prompts | Not stated | “Recommended actions”, ranked and grouped by earned and owned | API and MCP |
| Profound | Yes; on Enterprise, edit, disable or add prompts | Not stated | “Suggestions”; AI Marketer agents draft content | API on Enterprise; MCP not mentioned |
| Otterly.AI | Yes, 15 to 400 by plan | Not stated | Recommendations, GEO URL audits, content briefs | API and MCP from Standard |
| Scrunch | Yes, 350 custom on Starter | Not stated | “Actionable recommendations” and Insights | Enterprise Data API; MCP not mentioned |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Yes, custom prompts | Not stated | Not described | Not described for Brand Radar; Ahrefs lists an SEO API and SEO MCP separately |
| Semrush AI Visibility | Yes, 25 prompts; 50 more for $60/month | Not stated | AI-generated strategic recommendations | Not described for the toolkit; Semrush lists an API and MCP separately |
| Elmo | Yes, by hand or from an onboarding wizard | Mentions confirmed by a model, with sentiment; recommendation not graded | Opportunities: one LLM call over your data, refreshed about weekly | REST API, TypeScript and Python SDKs, MCP |
| Limelit Open | Yes, a starter pack plus your own | Not graded; a text search finds mentions, with list rank | Not in the open core (Cloud) | JSON API and MCP |
Table dated October 2026. Prices and engine lists change often; follow the links to check.
Start with Cheap Seats
If you’re just finding out whether AI assistants recommend you, start free. Cheap Seats asks Claude and OpenAI models your questions with web search and from memory, grades each answer strictly, and stores everything in a SQLite file you keep. Its prompts change by pull request, and its fixes land as pull requests. You’ll learn which buyer questions matter, and those questions carry over to any tool you pick later.
Free, open-source trackers
Three trackers here are open source and free to self-host. They differ more in approach than in price.
- Cheap Seats (MIT) asks Claude and OpenAI models directly, through their APIs or the
claudeandcodexCLIs, so it runs on a subscription you already have. A Claude call grades every answer recommended, mentioned or absent; every rate carries an interval; each run ends in a fix list. No hosted tier. It doesn’t reach Google’s AI surfaces, Perplexity, Gemini or Copilot; Which AI engines Cheap Seats asks says why. - Elmo (MIT, Blue Whale Software) reaches the consumer surfaces through paid scrapers and adds direct model APIs. A TypeSafe model confirms each name match and reads sentiment. PostgreSQL, multi-brand, shareable reports, SDKs. Elmo Cloud is the hosted version.
- Limelit Open (Apache-2.0) is one Go binary with SQLite and an MCP server, asking seven engines through APIs and scrapers, and finding your brand by deterministic text search. It’s the open core of Limelit Cloud.
Others exist on GitHub, described here in their own words. They aren’t reviewed on this site:
- Canonry (MIT): “Agent-first AI SEO (AEO/GEO) operating platform”.
- Lettertrace (MIT): “Open source BYOK AEO telemetry”.
- OpenSight (MIT): “See how AI talks about your brand”.
- Gego (GPL-3.0): “Generative Engine Optimization for your brand, track your GEO across all LLMs”.
- OneGlanse (MIT): “Open-source AI visibility, AEO & GEO tracker”, monitoring answers “through real product UIs”.
How to choose where to go next
If you outgrow Cheap Seats, do whatever suits you. I’d suggest Gauge; that team is great. These are the usual signs, and where each points:
- You need Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews or AI Mode. Cheap Seats asks only Claude and OpenAI models. Otterly.AI includes AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot on its entry plan; Profound lists the most engines, nine on Enterprise.
- You need SOC 2 and SSO. Profound lists SOC 2 and SSO/SAML on Enterprise, and Scrunch lists SOC 2 Type II.
- You’re an agency. Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.AI and Scrunch all have agency programmes or pages. Cheap Seats has no agency tier.
- You already pay for Ahrefs or Semrush. Their AI visibility tools sit beside the SEO work you already do there.
- You want open source, with more engines. Elmo and Limelit Open reach Google’s AI surfaces, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, through vendor APIs and paid scraping services.
- You’d rather not run anything. The hosted tools, and Elmo Cloud and Limelit Cloud, run it for you.
Taking your prompts with you
Cheap Seats’ prompt sets are plain TOML in your own git repo, each prompt a line of text with an id. The buyer questions you refined are yours: plain text you can copy into whichever tool you choose. You can also keep Cheap Seats running alongside, for the strict grading and the fix list. For one tool at a time, see Compare.
The code is on GitHub, and Getting started takes you from a checkout to your first run.