Gumshoe AI vs AI Peekaboo (2026): Which AI visibility tool is right for you?

Key Takeaways

• Pricing model is the biggest difference: Gumshoe AI charges $0.10 per conversation with a 3-report free tier, while AI Peekaboo uses traditional monthly subscriptions (estimated $49-79/mo) with a 7-day trial
• Model coverage: Gumshoe tracks ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity; AI Peekaboo adds Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode to that list
• Agency focus: AI Peekaboo offers white-labeling and multi-client management built for agencies, while Gumshoe is more brand-focused
• Both are monitoring-only tools: Neither platform offers content gap analysis, AI crawler logs, or optimization features found in more comprehensive platforms
• Gumshoe has transparent pricing: You know exactly what you'll pay upfront. AI Peekaboo requires contacting sales for pricing details
• For serious AI visibility work: Both tools provide basic tracking, but if you need to actually improve your visibility (not just monitor it), you'll want something that helps you create optimized content and track what's missing -- tools like Promptwatch cover that angle with content gap analysis and AI-powered content generation

Overview

Gumshoe AI

Gumshoe AI

Track your brand mentions across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity

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Gumshoe AI positions itself as a straightforward brand monitoring tool for AI search. The core pitch: track how often your brand shows up in responses from ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, then see how you stack up against competitors. It uses persona-based tracking -- you can see how different buyer types get different AI recommendations. The pay-per-report pricing model is unusual in this space: you get 3 free reports to test it out, then pay $0.10 per conversation after that. No monthly commitment, no wasted spend on unused capacity.

The platform focuses on visibility metrics: brand mention frequency, competitive ranking, topic coverage, and which sources AI models cite when they mention you. It's designed for marketers who want a quick baseline understanding of their AI presence without committing to a full monthly subscription.

AI Peekaboo

AI Peekaboo

Track brand mentions across ChatGPT and Perplexity with basic monitoring

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AI Peekaboo (often just called Peekaboo) takes a more agency-oriented approach. It tracks brand visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode -- a slightly broader model set than Gumshoe. The platform includes white-labeling and multi-client management, making it a natural fit for agencies managing multiple brands. It also integrates with Google Search Console, which helps connect traditional SEO data with AI visibility metrics.

Pricing isn't publicly listed, but market positioning suggests it starts around $49-79/month based on comparable tools. There's a 7-day free trial to test it out. The interface emphasizes dashboards and reporting -- you select prompts to track, then monitor how your brand performs over time across different AI models.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Pricing comparison

The pricing models are fundamentally different. Gumshoe's pay-per-use approach means you could spend $10 running 100 conversations or $100 running 1,000 -- it scales directly with usage. AI Peekaboo's monthly subscription gives you predictable costs but you're paying whether you use it heavily or not. For brands running occasional checks, Gumshoe is cheaper. For agencies running continuous monitoring across multiple clients, a flat monthly rate might make more sense.

Model coverage and tracking capabilities

Gumshoe AI covers three major models: ChatGPT (OpenAI), Gemini (Google), and Perplexity. That's the core set most brands care about -- these are the AI tools people actually use for product research and recommendations. The platform generates thousands of conversations with these models, tracking when and how your brand gets mentioned.

AI Peekaboo adds Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode to the mix, giving you visibility into how Google's AI features surface your brand in traditional search results. This is useful if you're trying to connect AI visibility with SEO performance. The Google Search Console integration reinforces this -- you can see how AI mentions correlate with actual search traffic.

Neither tool tracks some of the newer or niche models like Claude, Meta AI, DeepSeek, Grok, or Mistral. If you need comprehensive coverage across all major LLMs, you'll need a more expansive platform.

Persona and topic tracking

Both tools let you track how different personas see your brand. For example, you might track how a "budget-conscious startup founder" gets different recommendations than an "enterprise IT director." This matters because AI models tailor responses based on context clues in the prompt.

Gumshoe emphasizes topic visibility -- you can see how your brand performs across different subject areas (e.g., "team communication tools" vs "project management software"). AI Peekaboo offers similar topic tracking but frames it more around prompt selection -- you pick specific prompts to monitor rather than broad topic categories.

In practice, both approaches get you to the same place: understanding which queries trigger brand mentions and which don't.

Competitive intelligence

Both platforms offer competitive benchmarking. You can see how often competitors get mentioned alongside your brand, which brands dominate specific topics, and how your visibility compares over time.

Gumshoe presents this as "Competitive Rank" -- a straightforward leaderboard showing who's winning for each topic and persona. AI Peekaboo includes similar competitor tracking but integrates it into broader visibility dashboards.

The limitation with both tools: they show you the gap but don't help you close it. You can see that a competitor is mentioned 3x more often than you for "best CRM for small business," but neither platform tells you what content you're missing or helps you create it. That's where the monitoring-only model hits a wall.

Agency features and white-labeling

AI Peekaboo is clearly built for agencies. The white-labeling lets you rebrand the entire platform as your own tool, which is huge if you're selling AI visibility monitoring as a service to clients. Multi-client management means you can switch between different brands without logging in and out.

Gumshoe doesn't offer white-labeling or multi-client dashboards. You can share reports with your team, but it's not designed for agencies managing dozens of clients. If you're an agency, AI Peekaboo is the obvious choice here.

That said, Gumshoe's pay-per-use pricing could work for agencies in a different way: you only pay when you run reports for clients, so you're not carrying fixed costs for inactive accounts. But without white-labeling, you're limited in how you can package it.

Content and optimization features

Gumshoe AI includes "AI-assisted content generation" in its paid tier. Based on the website copy, this appears to be tactical recommendations and content suggestions based on what's working for competitors. It's not clear how deep this goes -- whether it's full article generation or just bullet-point suggestions.

AI Peekaboo doesn't mention content generation at all. It's purely a monitoring and analytics tool.

Here's the thing: both tools are fundamentally trackers. They tell you where you stand but leave the heavy lifting -- figuring out what content to create, actually writing it, optimizing it for AI citations -- to you. If you're serious about improving your AI visibility (not just tracking it), you need a platform that closes the loop. Promptwatch does this with Answer Gap Analysis (shows exactly which prompts competitors rank for but you don't) and an AI writing agent that generates content grounded in 880M+ citation data. It's the difference between a dashboard that shows problems and a platform that helps you fix them.

Promptwatch

Track and optimize your brand visibility in AI search engines

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Data and reporting

Both platforms offer scheduled reports and trend tracking. Gumshoe lets you see how your visibility changes over time, which models mention you most, and what sources they cite. AI Peekaboo provides similar trend data plus the Google Search Console integration for connecting AI visibility to traditional search metrics.

Neither tool offers AI crawler logs -- real-time tracking of when ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, etc. actually crawl your website. This is a blind spot. You can see that your brand isn't getting cited, but you don't know if AI models are even reading your content in the first place. Crawler logs (available in platforms like Promptwatch) show you indexing issues, which pages AI models access, and how often they return.

Gumshoe includes "Storage integrations" in its feature list, suggesting you can export data to your own systems. AI Peekaboo's integration capabilities aren't detailed on the website.

User experience and setup

Gumshoe's onboarding is straightforward: you get 3 free reports to test the platform, then decide if you want to keep going. The pay-per-use model means there's no pressure to commit to a monthly plan before you know if it's useful.

AI Peekaboo offers a 7-day trial, which is standard for SaaS tools. The trial gives you access to the full platform, but you need to enter payment details upfront (typical trial behavior).

Both tools require you to define what you want to track -- your brand name, competitor names, relevant topics or prompts. Neither offers automatic prompt discovery (where the platform suggests high-value prompts based on your industry). You're building your tracking setup manually.

Pros and cons

Gumshoe AI pros

• Transparent pay-per-use pricing -- you know exactly what you'll spend
• 3 free reports to test without commitment
• Persona-based tracking for understanding different buyer perspectives
• Competitive benchmarking built in
• AI-assisted content generation (paid tier) for optimization hints

Gumshoe AI cons

• Only tracks 3 AI models (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity)
• No white-labeling or multi-client management for agencies
• No AI crawler logs or indexing insights
• Content generation features are vague -- unclear how actionable they are
• Costs can add up quickly if you're running hundreds of reports monthly

AI Peekaboo pros

• Tracks 5 AI models including Google AI Overviews and AI Mode
• White-labeling and multi-client management for agencies
• Google Search Console integration connects AI visibility to traditional SEO
• Predictable monthly pricing (good for budgeting)
• 7-day trial to test the platform

AI Peekaboo cons

• Pricing not publicly disclosed -- you have to contact sales
• No content generation or optimization features
• No AI crawler logs or indexing insights
• Monthly subscription means you pay even if you don't use it heavily
• Less transparent about what's included at each tier

Who should pick which tool

Choose Gumshoe AI if:

• You're a brand (not an agency) doing occasional AI visibility checks
• You want to test AI monitoring without committing to a monthly subscription
• You prefer transparent, usage-based pricing
• You value persona-based tracking and want to see how different buyer types get different recommendations
• You're comfortable with tracking just the big three models (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity)

Choose AI Peekaboo if:

• You're an agency managing multiple client brands
• You need white-labeling to rebrand the tool as your own
• You want Google AI Overviews and AI Mode tracking alongside the major LLMs
• You prefer predictable monthly costs over pay-per-use
• Google Search Console integration matters for connecting AI visibility to traditional SEO metrics

Choose neither if:

• You need more than monitoring -- you want content gap analysis, AI crawler logs, and tools to actually improve your visibility, not just track it. In that case, look at comprehensive platforms like Promptwatch that help you find gaps, generate optimized content, and close the loop with traffic attribution.

Final verdict

Gumshoe AI and AI Peekaboo are both basic monitoring tools that do one thing: show you how often your brand appears in AI responses. The choice comes down to pricing preference and whether you need agency features.

Gumshoe wins on pricing transparency and flexibility -- pay-per-use is rare in this space and makes sense for brands doing occasional checks. AI Peekaboo wins for agencies with its white-labeling and multi-client management, plus it tracks a couple more AI models.

But here's the reality: both tools are dashboards that show you problems without helping you fix them. You'll see that competitors are mentioned more often, but you won't know what content you're missing or how to create it. For brands serious about AI visibility, monitoring is just step one. The real work is optimization -- and that requires tools that go beyond tracking.