Guide · Tools comparison · Last verified August 4, 2026
AI Search Visibility Tools Compared: Which One Fits Your Business (2026)
Disclosure, before anything else: this comparison is published by CustomerHalo, which makes one of the tools below. We are not going to pretend to rank ourselves #1 on a neutral-looking list — that genre is exactly what federal review rules and common sense frown on. Instead, this page maps who each tool is actually built for, using each vendor's own published pages, verified on the date above. Several tools here are genuinely better than ours for their intended customer, and we say so. If we've gotten any fact about any vendor wrong, email [email protected] and we'll correct it promptly.
The short answer: "AI search visibility" tools now split into three different products wearing one label. Enterprise brands tracking share of voice in AI answers should look at Similarweb, Ahrefs Brand Radar, or Profound. Marketing teams, SEOs, and agencies managing prompt-level visibility should look at Peec AI, Otterly.AI, or Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit. Local service businesses — a dentist, a med spa, an HVAC company — are a different problem: as of August 2026, none of those six tools mentions local-intent ("near me") searches, Google review analysis, or local-competitor identification anywhere on its site. That segment is what CustomerHalo exists for.
Start with who you are, not with features
Every tool below tracks some version of "does AI mention us?" The differences that matter are what gets asked, what evidence gets analyzed, and who the answer is for:
- Brand-level tools ask AI engines about your brand and category at national scale, then dashboard the mentions, sentiment, and cited sources. The customer is a marketing or insights team at a company people ask about by name.
- Prompt-tracking tools let you define a set of prompts and monitor your visibility, position, and citations on them over time — the daily workflow of SEO and content teams, priced per prompt.
- Local diagnosis asks a different question entirely: when someone near you asks "who does Botox in Nashville" or "best implant dentist near me," are you in the answer — and if not, which local rival is, and what public evidence (reviews, recency, service-specific proof) put them there? Nobody asks AI about a local business by brand at scale; the buyer intent is all "near me."
The tools, alphabetically
Ahrefs Brand Radar
What it does: tracks brand visibility across AI platforms plus YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit; monitors AI mentions and citations and benchmarks competitors, backed by what Ahrefs describes as a database of 476M+ organic prompts.
Built for (their positioning): companies expanding reach into AI answers and alternative search platforms; "3,000+ companies."
Pricing: Select Platforms $398/mo; All Platforms $699/mo (2,500 checks/mo).
Engines: Google AI Overviews & AI Mode, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok.
Local-intent queries: not mentioned on their site · Google reviews: not mentioned · Local competitors: not mentioned · Output: monitoring & benchmarking
Best fit: brands with real search-prompt volume who want AI visibility alongside YouTube/TikTok/Reddit in one place, with Ahrefs' data scale behind it.
CustomerHalo
What it does (ours — apply skepticism accordingly): runs the local buyer searches a business's customers actually make — "Botox in Nashville, TN," "emergency furnace repair near me" — live on Google data and inside an AI search engine, then diagnoses the result against the business's Google reviews (recency, service-specific evidence) and four automatically selected true local competitors. Output is a plain-language report and, on the paid tier, a prepared first action: page outline, copy-paste brief, checklist.
Built for: local service businesses — dental, med spa, salons, home services — and explicitly not for national brands, agencies at scale, or e-commerce.
Pricing: free report (no account) · $19 one-time complete plan · Halo Tracking $29/mo per location, monthly re-runs.
Engines: Google data plus one AI search engine (Gemini with Search grounding), queried live per report.
Local-intent queries: core product · Google reviews: newest 300 analyzed + competitors' 200 · Local competitors: 4 auto-selected · Output: diagnosis + prepared action
Honest limits: one engine (not nine), one location per report, no traffic analytics, no sentiment dashboards, no API. If you need brand share-of-voice across many engines, use the tools above. Our research methodology is published in full — a five-market dental study and a five-market med spa study.
Otterly.AI
What it does: AI search monitoring — prompt research, brand-visibility analytics across engines, content audits scoring crawlability and citation potential, and weekly GEO content recommendations.
Built for (their positioning): "30,000+ Marketing Pros worldwide" — agencies, marketing teams, and content strategists; the most accessible entry price of the monitoring tools.
Pricing: Lite $29/mo (15 prompts) · Standard $189/mo (100 prompts, API) · Premium $489/mo (400 prompts) · Enterprise custom. Some engines (Gemini, Claude, AI Mode) are paid add-ons.
Engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot on base plans; Gemini, Google AI Mode, Claude as add-ons.
Local-intent queries: not mentioned on their site · Google reviews: not mentioned · Local competitors: not mentioned · Output: recommendations included
Best fit: marketing teams and agencies that want prompt-level AI monitoring with actionable content recommendations at the lowest entry price in the category.
Peec AI
What it does: AI search analytics — visibility, position, and sentiment across AI platforms; competitor benchmarking; identification of which sources (G2, Reddit, LinkedIn, editorial sites) influence AI answers; exports to CSV, Looker Studio, and API.
Built for (their words): "AI search analytics for marketing teams" and SEO agencies; "trusted by 2500+ marketing teams," with dedicated agency bundles.
Pricing: Starter $95/mo (50 prompts, 3 models) · Pro $245/mo · Advanced $495/mo (multi-country) · Enterprise custom. Extra models $30–$140/mo. (Prices verified in a rendered browser session on the date above; their pricing page requires JavaScript.)
Engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini; Claude and others on Enterprise.
Local-intent queries: country/language level, not "near me" · Google reviews: B2B review platforms (G2) as citation sources only · Local competitors: not mentioned · Output: dashboards + strategy recommendations
Best fit: marketing teams and agencies wanting polished multi-client AI analytics with strong citation-source analysis and reporting exports.
Profound
What it does: a "full-stack" AI-search marketing platform: answer-engine insights (brand representation in AI answers), prompt-volume data, AI-crawler analytics on your own site, autonomous marketing agents, and "Aim," a prioritized-recommendations feature.
Built for (their positioning): "the marketer of the future" — enterprise-leaning with a self-serve entry tier; SOC 2 and SSO on Enterprise.
Pricing: Starter $99/mo billed yearly (ChatGPT only, 50 prompts) · Growth $399/mo (3 engines, 100 prompts) · Enterprise custom (up to 9 engines).
Engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Google AI Overviews.
Local-intent queries: not mentioned on their site · Google reviews: not mentioned · Local competitors: not mentioned · Output: prioritized recommendations ("Aim")
Best fit: sophisticated marketing organizations that want the widest engine coverage plus crawler-level data on how AI systems read their site.
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit
What it does: tracks brand mentions across AI platforms, benchmarks competitor AI visibility and share of voice by platform/region/topic, analyzes sentiment, prompt research, AI search health audits, and white-label reporting — inside the broader Semrush platform.
Built for (their words): "AI platforms are recommending brands. Make sure they choose yours." — SEOs and marketers already in the Semrush ecosystem.
Pricing: $99/mo billed annually — 25 custom prompts tracked daily, 1 domain; additional users $45/mo.
Engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity "and other LLMs."
Local-intent queries: not on the AI Visibility pages · Google reviews: not mentioned there · Local competitors: brand/domain-level only · Output: dashboards, audits, reports
Best fit: teams already paying for Semrush who want AI visibility folded into their existing SEO workflow. (Semrush sells local-marketing products separately; its AI Visibility pages don't connect the two, so we don't either.)
Similarweb AI Search Intelligence
What it does: tracks brand mentions in LLM responses with prompt analysis (the actual user prompts and answers), citation analysis of which sources influence answers, sentiment filtering, and — uniquely in this set — measurement of actual referral traffic your site receives from AI chatbots, via Similarweb's clickstream panel.
Built for (their positioning): marketing teams and digital brands; testimonial logos run Fortune-500-adjacent (Ford, The Economist, Anthropologie).
Pricing: AI Search Intelligence from $99/mo standalone; $399/mo adds the full competitive-intelligence and SEO/AEO suites.
Engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and others.
Local-intent queries: not mentioned on their site · Google reviews: not mentioned · Local competitors: brand/domain-level only · Output: dashboards & traffic analytics
Best fit: brands whose sites receive enough traffic for panel measurement and who want AI visibility connected to actual referral-traffic data — the thing nobody else here measures. For a low-traffic local business site, panel-based analytics have little to see.
The fit table
| Tool | Built for | Entry price | Local-intent queries | Google review analysis | Local competitors | Action plan output |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Brands, multi-platform reach | $398/mo | — | — | — | — |
| CustomerHalo | Local service businesses | $0 / $19 / $29/mo | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Otterly.AI | Marketing teams, agencies | $29/mo | — | — | — | Recommendations |
| Peec AI | Marketing teams, SEO agencies | $95/mo | — | — | — | Partial |
| Profound | Enterprise marketing orgs | $99/mo (annual) | — | — | — | Yes ("Aim") |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | SEO teams in Semrush | $99/mo (annual) | — | — | — | — |
| Similarweb AI Search Intelligence | Digital brands, insights teams | $99/mo | — | — | — | — |
"—" means the capability is not mentioned anywhere on the vendor's own site as of August 4, 2026 — not that we tested and found it absent. Prices are entry tiers as published that day; several vendors bill annually or gate engines behind add-ons, so check current pages before buying anything, including ours.
The local gap — and why it exists
The pattern in that table isn't an accident. The six monitoring tools are built around brands people ask about by name: track the brand's mentions, benchmark against named competitors, count citations. A local service business fails that model twice. First, nobody asks ChatGPT about "Hjem Aesthetics" at national scale — the buyer intent is "Botox near me," a query class none of these tools' sites mention. Second, the evidence that decides local AI answers isn't domain authority — in our two published five-market studies (dental, med spa), 4.9–5.0-star businesses with up to 3,064 reviews mostly failed to appear in treatment-intent answers, while businesses with service-specific review evidence appeared instead. Diagnosing that requires reading Google reviews and identifying true local rivals — which is a different product, not a missing feature.
You can sanity-check the gap yourself in five minutes, free, with no tool at all: ask an AI assistant "who does [your money service] in [your city]," then ask for your business by name. If you appear for your name but not your service, you have the exact gap our studies found in eight of ten excellent businesses.
Run the local check properly — free
CustomerHalo runs your buyers' actual searches live, compares your reviews and recency against your true local competitors, and tells you plainly where you stand. About ten minutes; no account.
Analyze My Business FreeAnd if you're an enterprise brand or an agency: genuinely, pick from the table above instead.
How this comparison was made, and corrections
Method. Every fact above was taken from the named vendor's own public website on August 4, 2026 — product pages and pricing pages, fetched and read that day; screenshots captured the same day at 1280×800. Where a vendor's pricing page required JavaScript to display prices, we verified in a rendered browser session and said so. We did not rely on review sites, affiliate posts, or third-party summaries for any claim. "Not mentioned" means exactly that: we searched the vendor's site and found no reference — it is not a claim that the capability was tested and found absent. CustomerHalo's own entry follows the same format, written with the same restraint, and its limitations are listed.
Corrections. Comparison pages rot. If you work at any company above and something here is wrong or has changed, email [email protected] — verified corrections are made promptly and material ones noted here with the date. The "last verified" date at the top reflects the most recent full re-check.
Sources
- Ahrefs, Brand Radar — features, pricing, engine list, prompt-database claim.
- CustomerHalo — homepage, dental study methodology, med spa study methodology.
- Otterly.AI — homepage and pricing.
- Peec AI — homepage and pricing (JavaScript-rendered; verified in-browser).
- Profound — homepage and pricing.
- Semrush — AI Visibility Toolkit and AI pricing.
- Similarweb — AI Search Intelligence.
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