Key takeaways
- All four tools (Otterly.AI, Peec.ai, Airefs, SE Visible) offer AI search monitoring at accessible price points, but their depth varies significantly
- Otterly.AI has the lowest entry price ($29/mo) and the most mature GEO audit feature set among budget options
- Peec.ai and SE Visible both stand out for unlimited seats, making them practical for agencies and multi-person teams
- Airefs is the newest of the four and focuses tightly on brand tracking across AI engines with a clean interface
- None of these tools include content generation or crawler log analysis -- if you need to act on what you find, you'll need to supplement or upgrade
- For teams that want to go beyond monitoring and actually improve their AI visibility, a platform like Promptwatch closes the loop with content gap analysis, AI writing, and traffic attribution
The budget AI visibility market has gotten crowded fast. In 2024, there were maybe a handful of tools tracking how brands appeared in ChatGPT and Perplexity. By mid-2026, there are dozens -- and four names keep coming up when people are looking for something affordable and functional: Otterly.AI, Peec.ai, Airefs, and SE Visible.
They all do roughly the same thing at a surface level: you tell the tool which brand you want to track, give it some prompts, and it checks how often you appear in AI-generated answers. But the differences between them matter a lot depending on what you actually need.
This guide breaks down each tool honestly -- what it does well, where it falls short, and who it's actually built for.
What these tools actually do (and don't do)
Before getting into the comparisons, it's worth being clear about the category. AI visibility tools in the budget tier are almost always monitoring tools. They run your prompts against AI models on a schedule, capture the responses, and tell you whether your brand was mentioned, cited, or recommended.
That's genuinely useful. Knowing you're invisible in ChatGPT when someone asks "what's the best [your category] tool" is valuable information. The problem is that most of these tools stop there. They show you the gap but don't help you close it.
Keep that in mind as you read through each tool. The question isn't just "does it track my brand?" -- it's "what can I actually do with the data?"
Otterly.AI
Otterly.AI
Otterly.AI is one of the oldest purpose-built AI visibility tools in the market, and it shows -- in a good way. The product has had time to mature, and the GEO audit features are more developed than most competitors at this price point.
The starting price is $29/month (Lite tier), which is genuinely the lowest entry point among serious AI visibility tools. At that price you get basic brand monitoring across a handful of AI engines including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini.
Where Otterly.AI differentiates itself is in the audit layer. It doesn't just tell you whether you appeared -- it gives you structured feedback on why you might not be appearing, and what content gaps might be contributing to your low visibility. For a budget tool, that's a meaningful step toward actionability.
What it does well:
- Lowest entry price in the category
- GEO audit features that go beyond raw mention tracking
- Clean, easy-to-use interface that doesn't require a technical background
- Good for solo founders and small marketing teams who want to start somewhere
Where it falls short:
- The base plan tracks only 4 AI models -- you'll need to upgrade for broader coverage
- No crawler log analysis (you can't see which AI bots are visiting your site)
- No built-in content generation -- audits tell you what's missing, but you have to write the fix yourself
- Prompt limits can feel tight on lower tiers if you're tracking multiple competitors
Best for: Solo founders, small SaaS companies, and content marketers who want an affordable starting point with some audit depth. If you're just getting into GEO and want to understand the landscape before committing to a bigger platform, Otterly.AI is a reasonable first step.
Peec.ai
Peec.ai takes a different approach to pricing than most tools in this space. Rather than charging per seat, it offers unlimited users across its plans -- which makes it unusually practical for agencies and marketing teams where multiple people need access to the same data.
The starting price is around €85/month, which puts it above Otterly.AI but still firmly in the budget tier. For that price you get multi-model tracking (up to 10 models at higher tiers), competitive share-of-voice analysis, and the unlimited seats that make it stand out.
The platform is clean and relatively easy to navigate. It's designed for teams that want to monitor AI visibility across multiple brands or clients without paying per-user fees that balloon as the team grows.
What it does well:
- Unlimited seats -- genuinely rare at this price point
- Flexible model selection (you can choose which AI engines to track)
- Good competitive benchmarking features
- Works well for agencies managing multiple client brands
Where it falls short:
- Monitoring-focused -- there's no content generation or optimization workflow built in
- No Reddit or YouTube tracking (these sources increasingly influence what AI models recommend)
- No AI crawler logs
- The prompt volume limits on lower tiers can be a constraint for larger campaigns
Best for: Agencies and multi-person marketing teams that need everyone looking at the same data without paying per-seat fees. If you're managing 3-5 client brands and need a cost-effective way to report on AI visibility, Peec.ai's pricing structure works in your favor.
Airefs
Airefs is the newest of the four tools covered here, and it's positioning itself as a clean, focused brand tracking tool for AI search. The interface is notably polished for a newer product, and the setup process is fast -- you can have your first prompts running within minutes.
The core offering is brand mention tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and a few other models. Airefs also includes some basic competitor comparison features, letting you see how your brand stacks up against named competitors in AI responses.
It's worth being honest that Airefs is still building out its feature set. Some capabilities that more established tools take for granted -- like detailed sentiment analysis or citation source tracking -- are either limited or still in development.
What it does well:
- Very fast setup -- low friction to get started
- Clean, modern interface
- Competitive comparison features included at entry level
- Good for teams that want simple, clear data without a lot of configuration
Where it falls short:
- Newer product means some features are still maturing
- Limited depth on citation analysis compared to Otterly.AI or Peec.ai
- No content generation, no crawler logs
- Smaller track record -- less community knowledge and fewer integrations
Best for: Teams that want to get started quickly with minimal setup, or companies doing an initial AI visibility audit before committing to a more comprehensive platform. Airefs is a reasonable entry point, but most teams will outgrow it fairly quickly if they're serious about GEO.
SE Visible
SE Visible is SE Ranking's standalone AI visibility product, spun off as a separate tool in 2025. It benefits from SE Ranking's existing infrastructure and data capabilities, which gives it some advantages over pure-play startups.
The starting price is $99/month, which is the highest of the four tools in this guide. For that price you get multi-brand tracking, multi-country support, and coverage across 5 AI models. The multi-country capability is genuinely useful -- most budget tools default to US-only tracking, and SE Visible's regional flexibility makes it more practical for international brands.
Like Peec.ai, SE Visible is also relatively generous with seats, making it a reasonable choice for teams. The SE Ranking heritage means the UI is familiar to anyone who's used traditional SEO rank tracking tools.
What it does well:
- Multi-country and multi-language support -- better than most budget tools
- Multi-brand tracking on a single plan
- Familiar interface for teams already using SE Ranking
- Solid competitive benchmarking
Where it falls short:
- $99/month starting price is the highest in this group
- Monitoring-only -- no content generation, no crawler logs, no traffic attribution
- 5 AI models is decent but not comprehensive
- Being a spinoff product means it sometimes feels like an add-on rather than a purpose-built platform
Best for: International brands that need multi-country AI visibility tracking without paying enterprise prices. Also a natural fit for teams already in the SE Ranking ecosystem who want to add AI monitoring without switching platforms.
Side-by-side comparison
| Feature | Otterly.AI | Peec.ai | Airefs | SE Visible |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $29/mo | €85/mo | Varies | $99/mo |
| AI models tracked | 4 (base) | Up to 10 | 4-6 | 5 |
| Unlimited seats | No | Yes | No | Partial |
| Multi-country | Limited | Yes | Limited | Yes |
| GEO audit features | Yes | Basic | Basic | No |
| Content generation | No | No | No | No |
| Crawler log analysis | No | No | No | No |
| Reddit/YouTube tracking | No | No | No | No |
| Traffic attribution | No | No | No | No |
| Competitive benchmarking | Basic | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Best for | Solo/small teams | Agencies | Quick start | International brands |
The monitoring-only problem
Here's the honest assessment: all four of these tools are monitoring layers. They show you data. They don't help you change it.
That's not a knock on any of them specifically -- it's a category-wide limitation at the budget tier. But it's worth naming clearly, because a lot of buyers come to these tools expecting to improve their AI visibility and end up with a dashboard full of data they don't know how to act on.
The research backs this up. A Princeton study on Generative Engine Optimization (accepted to KDD 2024) found that GEO techniques can boost AI visibility by up to 40%. Kevin Indig's analysis of 1.2 million citations found that content with question-and-answer headings gets cited 2x more often, and content with 15+ named entities gets cited 4.8x more. That's actionable -- but none of the four tools in this guide will help you implement those changes.
If you're serious about improving your AI visibility rather than just measuring it, you'll eventually need a platform that closes the loop. Promptwatch is one of the few tools that goes beyond tracking -- it includes answer gap analysis to show you exactly which prompts competitors rank for that you don't, a built-in AI writing agent that generates content grounded in real citation data, and page-level tracking to show you which specific pages are getting cited by which models.
That's a different product category than what Otterly.AI, Peec.ai, Airefs, and SE Visible offer -- and a different price point. But if you're investing time in GEO, it's worth knowing the difference between a monitoring tool and an optimization platform.
How to choose between the four
The right choice depends less on feature lists and more on your actual situation:
Choose Otterly.AI if you're an individual or small team just starting out, you want the lowest possible entry price, and you value having some audit guidance alongside the monitoring data. The $29/month Lite tier is a reasonable way to start learning what AI visibility tracking looks like before committing more budget.
Choose Peec.ai if you're an agency or a team with multiple people who need access to the same data. The unlimited seats model is genuinely unusual at this price point, and if you're managing several client brands, the math works out better than per-seat alternatives.
Choose Airefs if you want to get up and running fast with minimal configuration, or if you're doing a one-time audit before deciding on a longer-term platform. The clean interface and quick setup make it low-friction for initial exploration.
Choose SE Visible if you're tracking a brand that operates in multiple countries and needs regional AI visibility data, or if you're already in the SE Ranking ecosystem and want to add AI monitoring without a major workflow change.
What to look for as you scale
Most teams that start with a budget monitoring tool eventually hit the same wall: they can see they're invisible in AI search, but they don't know what to do about it. At that point, the questions shift from "where do I appear?" to "what content should I create?" and "how do I know if it's working?"
That's when it makes sense to evaluate platforms that include content gap analysis, prompt volume data, and traffic attribution alongside the monitoring layer. The budget tools in this guide are a reasonable starting point -- but treat them as a starting point, not a destination.
The AI search landscape is moving fast. ChatGPT alone now accounts for roughly 56% of AI search referral traffic according to Otterly.AI's own 2026 research. Brands that figure out how to show up in those answers early will have a meaningful advantage over those that wait until the market is saturated.
Start tracking now. Then figure out how to act on what you find.