Key takeaways
- Sticker prices in this category run from about $29 to $2,000 a month, but prompt count, engine count, and billing term change what a plan really costs.
- At $50 a month you get monitoring or one content tool, not both. At $200 you get a real tracking stack. At $500 you get scale, or the first tools that help you fix problems.
- A $99 plan that tracks one engine can cost more per answer than a $95 plan that tracks three. Compare cost per prompt per engine.
- Several vendors restructured pricing in 2026. Treat every number here as a starting point and confirm it on the live pricing page.
- Most of the cheap tiers only tell you where you are invisible. The pricier ones start to help you change it.
Why the sticker price misleads
I went through a pile of 2026 pricing pages and comparison posts for this guide, and the first thing that jumped out was the spread. One comparison by Tim Soulo of Ahrefs lists 12 tools from $39 to $2,000 a month. Rankable's own roundup puts self-serve plans at $29 to $599. Another source says most businesses pay $15 to $200. They are all describing the same market, and they are all technically right.
The gap exists because "AI SEO tool" covers at least three different products:
- Visibility trackers that run prompts through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and others, then report whether your brand shows up.
- Content tools that score or write drafts, priced by article or report volume.
- Agents and platforms that research, write, publish, and measure.
A $50 tracker and a $50 content tool are not substitutes. Before you compare prices, decide which job you are hiring the tool for.
One caveat on sources: several of the comparison posts I used are written by vendors who compete in this space (Ayzeo, Rankable, Agenzy, Surmado). Their framing leans their way. Where numbers conflict, I say so.
What drives the bill
Four variables explain most of the difference between plans.
Prompts tracked
Every tracker meters how many prompts you can monitor. Entry plans sit at 15 to 50 prompts, mid-tier at 100 to 150, and upper tiers at 350 to 400. Most tools make you add each prompt by hand. Ahrefs Brand Radar is the exception in Soulo's comparison, with a 243M+ prompt database already built in.
Engines covered
This one catches people out. Promptwatch Data's sources-per-response report found ChatGPT cites about 5 sources per web-search answer, while Google AI Overviews and Perplexity cite about 10. Copilot's average swung from under 2 to nearly 17 within weeks. Different engines behave differently, and the report recommends measuring each one separately. A tool that only covers ChatGPT misses the engines with more citation slots.
Billing term
Annual billing typically saves about 15%, or 17% at vendors that give 12 months for the price of 10. But some headline prices only apply if you pay a year upfront. Profound's $99 Starter is billed yearly, so that is $1,188 out of pocket on day one. Otterly's $189 Standard plan is month to month.
Seats, projects, and countries
Seats matter for agencies. Clearscope includes unlimited users, which is unusual. Peec's newer plans reportedly include unlimited seats. Multi-country tracking is often a tier gate too.
The $50 a month tier
At this price you are buying a narrow slice of the stack. Pick one.
Option A: cheap visibility monitoring
Otterly.AI Lite is $29 a month ($25 annual) for 15 prompts across four engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot. Users are unlimited.
Otterly.AI
Ahrefs Brand Radar starts around $50 a month standalone with custom prompts, per Soulo's March 2026 data. It also tracks YouTube, Reddit and TikTok visibility, which most trackers skip.
HubSpot's AEO product is quoted at $50 a month for continuous prompt monitoring, with no HubSpot subscription required (checked 2 September 2026 by OutreachBloom).
Rankscale starts at about EUR 20 for Essentials and claims 17+ engines, though I would check how many prompts that actually buys you.
Option B: a content tool
Frase runs $39 to $49 a month for around 10 articles. Writesonic starts at $39. Both are drafting and optimization helpers rather than visibility tools.
What you do not get
At $50 you will not get crawler logs, traffic attribution, or anything that tells you what to fix. Fifteen prompts is a spot check, not a program. Use this tier to confirm whether AI visibility is worth pursuing, then upgrade.
The $200 a month tier
This is where the category gets sensible for a small team. Prices cluster around $95 to $245, with a lot of overlap.
| Tool | Approx. price | What it covers | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peec AI Starter | $95/mo (or EUR 70 annual after an August 2026 restructure) | 50 prompts, 3 of 6 engines, 1 project, 1 country | A 4th engine costs $35/mo extra; pricing is in flux |
| Peec AI Pro | $245/mo | 150 prompts, 2 projects, 3 countries | Priced above $200 on monthly billing |
| Otterly Standard | $189/mo ($160 annual) | 100 prompts across 4 engines | Prompt limits cap quickly for larger brands |
| Profound Starter | $99/mo billed yearly | ChatGPT only, 50 prompts, 1 seat | No exports; single engine |
| Profound Growth | $399/mo yearly | 100 prompts, 3 engines, 3 seats | Quoted at roughly $499 in Profound's own June 2026 content |
| Semrush One | $199/mo | Traditional SEO plus AI visibility | AI tracking is one part of a bigger suite |
| AirOps | $200/mo | Workflow automation for content | Scales steeply, up to $2,000/mo |
| Surfer | $99/mo | Content optimization | Prompt limits are small |
| Clearscope | $129/mo | 20 drafts, unlimited users | Now counts tracked queries too |
Profound
The cost-per-answer trap
Agenzy calculated cost per prompt-engine-day. Profound Starter is the most expensive at $0.0660 because it only covers one engine. Profound Growth is $0.0443. Peec Starter is $0.0211. Otterly Premium is cheapest at $0.0102. That is one vendor-adjacent calculation, so check it yourself, but the lesson holds. A $99 plan can cost more per answer than a $95 one.
Pricing conflicts to know about
Profound's published price is murky. Two sources put Starter at $99 and Growth at $399 on annual billing. Profound's own comparison content from June 2026 quotes Growth at roughly $499. Another source says Profound has no self-serve price beyond a 7-day trial and then a custom Enterprise deal. I cannot settle that for you. Ask for a written quote.
Peec is similar. Its pricing page showed $95, $245 and $495 monthly, while Ayzeo says plans were restructured on August 14, 2026 into EUR geo-priced plans of 70, 180 and 360, billed annually. Soulo's March figures of EUR 89 and EUR 199 are stale.
Where Promptwatch fits at this price
If you want a tracker that also helps with the fixing, Promptwatch Essential is $95 a month with 50 prompts, 6,000 responses, all AI models, country tracking, a site audit, content gap analysis, and 500 Agent Credits. That is in the same range as Peec Starter, but with crawler-side and action features most trackers at this price lack. Professional is $245 a month with 150 prompts and five AEO articles included. Confirm current numbers at promptwatch.com/pricing.
The $500 a month tier
At $500 you are paying for one of three things: volume, multiple projects, or automation.
| Tool | Approx. price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Otterly Premium | $489/mo ($422 annual) | 400 prompts, lowest cost per prompt-engine-day |
| Peec Advanced | $495/mo | 350 prompts, 5 projects |
| Goodie AI | $295 to $495/mo | 11+ engines including Amazon Rufus |
| AthenaHQ | $295/mo for 3,600 credits | Broad engine coverage |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar (all AI) | $699/mo | 6 AI indexes with 243M+ prompt database |
| Rankable | $99 to $599/mo | Publishing agent; $599 covers 15 sites |
| Evertune Pro | $800/mo | Enterprise GEO focus |
The interesting split here is monitoring versus execution. Most tools under $500 stop at reporting. Promptwatch's Business plan at $579 a month is a bit over the line, but it includes 350 prompts, 42,000 responses, the automated Content Agent that writes and publishes to Webflow, Framer or WordPress, state and city tracking, Shopping Insights and Ads Radar. Agencies can look at Kick-off ($199) and Growth ($399) plans with unlimited projects and prompts instead.
That is a different product from a pure tracker. You are paying to close the loop, not only to see the problem.
What the cost of each tier really buys
| Budget | What you realistically get | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|
| $50 | 15 to 50 prompts, 1 to 4 engines, or a content tool | Testing whether AI visibility matters |
| $200 | 50 to 150 prompts, 3 to 4 engines, basic reporting | A single brand with a small team |
| $500 | 350 to 400 prompts, multiple projects, or content automation | Multi-brand teams, agencies, serious programs |
Costs outside the subscription
Software is only part of the spend. OutreachBloom's guide, written by an agency that sells this work, puts AEO and GEO agency retainers at $2,000 to $10,000 a month for most B2B companies, with one-off audits at $1,000 to $4,000. WebFX quotes a wider range. Treat those as one agency's view of its own market. For comparison, SE Ranking's survey of 260 SEO agencies found $500 to $1,000 a month was the most popular retainer, and freelancers charge $500 to $1,500 a month.
Piece by piece, OutreachBloom lists FAQ and schema deployment at $500 to $2,000 to build, then $200 to $500 a month. Reddit and community seeding runs $500 to $2,000 a month. If you buy a $200 tool and have nobody to act on it, the real cost is the staff time.
If you would rather hand off execution, a 1001 SEO Media engagement is the agency route. It pairs senior specialists with a GEO platform rather than just handing you a dashboard.
How to pick without overpaying
Here is the checklist I would run before paying for anything.
- Count the engines you need. If your buyers use ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, a ChatGPT-only plan is a poor fit.
- Divide price by prompts times engines. Not perfect, but it exposes bad deals fast.
- Check billing term. Is the price monthly or annual-only? Annual saves around 15% to 17% but locks you in.
- Ask what happens when you find a gap. If the tool only reports, budget separately for content and fixes.
- Look for real-UI tracking. Answers in the actual ChatGPT interface can differ from API outputs.
- Verify the live page. Peec and Profound both show pricing drift.
If you are still comparing, the GEO software directory lists more options by category, and AI rank tracking tools are covered separately. For general software research, SurferStack has reviews and alternatives.
Bottom line
Spend $50 to find out whether AI answers mention you at all. Spend $200 when you need a repeatable tracking program across several engines. Spend $500 or more when you want volume, multiple projects, or software that does some of the fixing for you. Whatever you pick, compare engines and prompts, not headline price, and check the live pricing page the day you buy.