Key takeaways
- AI Peekaboo is the cheapest entry point (the official page says plans start at $30/mo), but checks run every 2 days at that level and you get 3 models, not the full 5 surfaces.
- Knowatoa ($59/mo) is the best fit if you care about how AI describes your product, not just whether it names you. The entry plan covers only 3 of its 7 engines, and volume limits are not published.
- Visby AI ($79/mo) is the priciest at entry, with the tightest prompt cap (15 prompts) but built-in article generation and GEO task suggestions.
- Review sites carry stale pricing for all three. Check the official pricing pages before you buy. The figures below were taken from vendor pages and third-party reviews gathered in late October 2026.
- If you want monitoring plus the work of fixing what you find, you are outside this category and should look at a fuller platform.
Why early-stage brands start with a simple monitor
You have a small site, maybe a few dozen pages, and someone on the team has asked "are we showing up in ChatGPT?" You don't need a 40-seat enterprise contract to answer that. You need a baseline: which prompts mention you, which competitors show up instead, and which pages get cited.
That is the job of these three tools. They run a set of prompts against AI engines on a schedule and report whether your brand appears. They differ in price, in how many prompts you can track, in how often they check, and in what they do beyond the mention count.
One thing to know before comparing: citation slots vary a lot by engine. Promptwatch's Average Sources Per Response data shows ChatGPT citing about 5 sources per web-search answer, while Google AI Overviews and Perplexity cite roughly 10. So a tool that covers one engine tells you very little about the others, and engine count matters more than it looks on a pricing page.
The three tools at a glance
| Visby AI | AI Peekaboo | Knowatoa | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $79/mo | From $30/mo (configurable) | $59/mo |
| Engines at entry | 3 (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity) | 3 models (5 surfaces on the platform) | 3 of 7 (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode) |
| Top self-serve tier | $199/mo (Growth) | Around $200 (older G2 tier) | $199/mo (all 7 engines) |
| Prompt limits | 15 / 90 / 250+ by tier | 40 prompts at $30 per one reviewer | Not published |
| Check frequency | Not confirmed | Every 2 days at entry | Daily, automated |
| Standout | Article generation, GEO tasks | White-label reports, API, MCP | Brand attribute and sentiment tracking |
| Free plan or trial | AppSumo deal reported | 14-day trial on some configurations | Free trial; free plan unconfirmed |
Treat this table as a starting point. Peekaboo and Visby in particular have conflicting numbers across review sites, and I flag those below.
Visby AI
Visby AI (also seen as Visibility.ai) is the most conventional of the three. It watches ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity, and it leans toward a "here is what to do next" workflow rather than just a dashboard.
Pricing and limits
According to the official pricing page and Ansvisor's breakdown, Starter is $79/mo with 15 prompts, 45 AI answers analyzed per month and 5 article generations. Growth is $199/mo with 90 prompts, 270 answers and 15 articles. Enterprise is quoted by sales, with 250+ prompts and 25 articles. G2 lists Enterprise at $499/mo, which conflicts with the sales-quoted version, so ask before assuming either.
Older reviews, including Data-Mania's, describe Visby as custom-priced with no free plan. That is stale. Pricing is public now. A lifetime deal has also appeared on AppSumo, according to a Reddit thread in r/geotoolsreview, which is worth checking if you are watching every dollar.
Who it suits
The 15-prompt Starter cap is the catch. Fifteen prompts is enough to check your brand name and a handful of buying questions, not enough to cover a product line. Visby makes sense if you want the monitoring and the content generation in one place and you are fine paying for that bundle. G2 shows a 4.8 rating from 109 reviews, which is a decent signal for a young product, though small review pools skew positive.
AI Peekaboo
AI Peekaboo is the budget pick, and it is the one that packs the most unusual features for the price.
Pricing and limits
The official page says every plan starts at $30 a month, with a pay-for-what-you-track configuration. Configurations of $100 or more begin billing at checkout. Per a review on thatmarketingbuddy, $30 gets you 1 brand, 40 prompts, 3 AI models and checks every 2 days, with a 14-day card-backed trial on some configurations.
You will see other numbers elsewhere. G2 lists older tiers (Starter $50 for 40 prompts, Peek $100 for 40 prompts, Grow $200 for 100 prompts), Nathan Ojaokomo's roundup quotes $50/mo, and Writesonic says "starting at $100." Those are older than the current $30 page. Since pricing is configurable, the live page wins.
What you get beyond the dashboard
Peekaboo ships white-label reporting on every tier, a Read + Write API, and MCP access so you can query visibility data from Claude, ChatGPT and other agents. That is more integration surface than you would expect under $100. It tracks five AI surfaces in total, against seven-plus for some competitors, and each self-serve plan is scoped to one brand. Agencies with 10+ brands are pushed to sales for custom pricing.
Caveats
Two things. First, a check every two days means you will miss short-lived swings, which matters less for a baseline and more once you are shipping content weekly. Second, Peekaboo runs an affiliate program that pays 20% recurring, so some of the glowing reviews may come with an incentive. Look for disclosure.
Knowatoa
Knowatoa has the widest engine coverage of the three and a different philosophy.
Pricing and limits
Per the official pricing page, Starter is $59/mo and covers ChatGPT, AI Overviews and AI Mode (3 services). Growth is $199/mo with all 7 services (adding Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Meta AI). Enterprise is custom. All plans include AI-answer gaps, competitor visibility gaps, citation sources, brand sentiment alerts, multi-language and multi-market tracking, a weekly digest and Discord and email support.
The reporting stack (API, MCP, Looker Studio, NinjaCat) starts at Growth, not Starter. EchoWi notes that Knowatoa doesn't publish prompt or response limits, and calculates $19.67 per service on Starter and $28.43 on Growth. Data-Mania mentions a free plan of 10 questions on ChatGPT only. I could not confirm that on the official site, so don't count on it. There is a free trial, and an agency pricing calculator at knowatoa.com/pricing/agency.
The attribute angle
Where Knowatoa stands out is that it tracks whether AI describes your product correctly, not only whether it names you. Product names, leadership details and standout features are tracked as attributes. For an early-stage brand this matters more than it sounds. A young company often has thin, outdated or contradictory information online, and a model that confidently says your product does something it doesn't is a worse problem than not being mentioned. Daily automated monitoring helps catch it fast.
The weakness is the unpublished limits. You cannot easily predict what you are buying, so run the trial hard before you pay.
Head-to-head on what matters for a small team
Price per useful check
Peekaboo wins on sticker price. Knowatoa is in the middle. Visby costs the most for the smallest prompt allowance. But sticker price misleads here. At $79, Visby's Starter gives you 15 prompts and 45 analyzed answers a month. Peekaboo's $30 gives you 40 prompts checked every two days. The unit economics favor Peekaboo clearly, with the trade-off of fewer models and slower checks.
Engine coverage
If you only care about ChatGPT and Google, all three work at entry level. If Perplexity matters (and it is a good test engine, since it cites about 10 sources per answer and the count is very steady), Visby and Peekaboo have it at the base level, while Knowatoa makes you move to Growth. If you want Claude, Gemini or Meta AI, Knowatoa Growth is the only one of the three that lists all of them.
Reporting and integrations
Peekaboo is the clear leader for the money: white-label reports and API/MCP access at every tier. Knowatoa gates the same sort of thing behind $199. Visby is lighter on integrations and heavier on content output.
Acting on what you find
Only Visby bundles article generation and GEO task generation at the entry tier. Knowatoa surfaces gaps and citation sources but you do the fixing. Peekaboo gives scores, competitor benchmarks and citation data, so you can see why you show up or don't, then work elsewhere.
Which one to pick
- Solo founder watching a budget: AI Peekaboo. You get a baseline for $30 and room to connect it to your own reporting.
- Product with messy or contested facts online: Knowatoa. The attribute and sentiment tracking is the closest to what you are worried about.
- Team with no content pipeline that wants ideas and drafts together: Visby AI, as long as 15 prompts will cover you.
- Small agency: Peekaboo's white-label reporting is attractive, but one brand per plan gets expensive fast. Knowatoa's agency calculator is worth running.
Other cheap options worth a look
Reviewers keep citing a handful of budget alternatives: Otterly ($29/mo), Promptmonitor ($29), Rank Prompt ($39), Nightwatch ($39), Peec AI (about $80), and Rankscale and Athena (around $49). Our catalog has pages for several of them.
Otterly.AI
If you want to browse more rank trackers built for AI search, the directory at ai-rank-tools.com lists many of them side by side.
When a simple monitor is not enough
All three tools answer "was my brand mentioned?" Once you have the baseline, the next questions are harder. Why am I not cited? Are AI crawlers even reaching my pages? Does any of this bring traffic? Basic monitors rarely answer those.
This is where a fuller platform pays for itself. Promptwatch is one option: it adds IP-verified AI crawler logs, visitor analytics for AI-referred traffic, content gap analysis and a Content Agent that drafts and publishes against your gaps, then tracks whether the new pages get cited. Its Essential plan is $95/mo, so it is not far above this group's price range, and the Explore tier is free (ChatGPT only, 10 prompts) if you only want to test it. Confirm current pricing at promptwatch.com/pricing.
One more thing. Whichever tool you choose, spend the first week building a decent prompt list from real customer questions, not just your brand name. A $30 monitor with good prompts beats a $200 one with vague prompts. And if you want expert hands on the strategy side rather than another dashboard, agencies like 1001 SEO Media work on technical SEO and AI search visibility together.
Bottom line
Start with AI Peekaboo if cost is the constraint, Knowatoa if accuracy of how AI describes you is the worry, and Visby if you want content suggestions in the same box. Run each free trial or 14-day trial with the same 15 to 20 prompts, compare what each reports, and check the live pricing page on the day you buy. Most of the third-party numbers you will find, including some in this article's sources, are already out of date.