AEO Tools in 2026: Free and paid ways to track AI visibility

AEO tools track whether AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Mode mention, link or cite your business, using sampled prompts rather than a live index you can query directly. This guide covers seven ways to do that, four of them free, and explains the one method that costs nothing: a manual prompt-test log you run yourself once a month.

I track this site's own visibility with the free tools below, and I opened the vendor page for every paid tool named here before writing about it. This guide starts with what costs nothing, because that is where most small Indian businesses should start too. For the checks to run before you start measuring, see my AEO audit checklist, the companion piece to this guide, and if the term AEO itself is new to you, my AEO guide covers the basics first.

What AEO tools actually measure

AEO tools measure mentions, citations and estimated visibility across AI engines, built from a fixed panel of prompts run on a schedule, not a live crawl of every possible question. That sampling is a real limitation: a tool tracking 25 or 100 prompts a month cannot see the millions of unique questions real users actually type, so treat every number as directional rather than exact.

None of these tools, free or paid, can show you a rank. AI engines do not return a ranked list the way Google's ten blue links do, so what you are actually tracking is whether you appear at all across a sample of realistic prompts, and how that presence changes month to month.

Google is explicit about this for its own AI features. Its documentation on AI features and your website states that no special markup is required to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, that normal SEO fundamentals apply, and that clicks from these features are counted inside Search Console's existing Web totals rather than a separate report, at the time of writing (September 2026). Tracking tools sit on top of that foundation; they do not replace the underlying work covered in my SEO and GEO checklist.

The free stack: Rs 0 ways to track AI visibility

Four methods below cost nothing and cover most of what a small business needs before paying for anything. Set up all four once and revisit them monthly rather than buying a specialist tool on day one. None of this is a new category of tool either: it sits alongside the free tools I already recommend in my best free SEO tools guide, just pointed at AI engines instead of Google alone.

1. Search Console: the Generative AI performance report

This is the most direct free signal available, so set it up first. Search Console now ships a dedicated Generative AI performance report showing how many times links to your site were shown inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Google's own help documentation states it reached every website worldwide as of 31 August 2026. The report counts impressions only, with no clicks or position data, and your property may still show nothing if your impressions in these features are too low or the rollout simply has not reached you yet.

The regular Performance report still matters alongside it, because Google folds AI-feature clicks into its existing Web totals rather than breaking them out there too. Filter that report by a query containing your brand name and watch for impressions or clicks with no obvious matching organic ranking change, which can be a sign of AI-feature visibility beyond what the dedicated report alone shows. My Search Console for beginners guide covers the full setup if you have not verified your property yet.

2. The manual prompt-test log

A manual prompt-test log is a spreadsheet where you ask the same handful of real questions inside ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Mode every month, then record what comes back. It is the only method on this list that works for any business regardless of budget, and it is what I recommend setting up before touching any paid tool. The five steps below are the full method: nothing is left out.

Step 1: Write down 5 real prompts your customers would type

Write the exact sentence a customer would type, not a keyword. "Best dentist near Kothrud for a root canal" works; "dentist Kothrud" does not, because AI engines respond to conversational questions, not search terms. Pull these from your own FAQ page, from Search Console queries, or from questions customers actually send on WhatsApp. The common pitfall is writing prompts the way you would search Google instead of the way someone would talk to an assistant; verify you got it right by reading each prompt aloud and checking it sounds like a real question. My guide on whether FAQ schema helps you get cited in AI Overviews explains why FAQ content and AI prompts overlap so closely.

Step 2: Run each prompt in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode

Open a fresh, signed-out or new chat in each tool so an old conversation does not bias the answer, then paste in the identical wording for every prompt. Note whether your business name or URL appears anywhere in the response, and whether it is a plain mention, a clickable citation, or absent entirely. A common pitfall is editing the prompt slightly between engines, which makes the comparison meaningless; verify consistency by copying the exact same text each time rather than retyping it.

Step 3: Record what comes back in a shared sheet

Add one row per prompt per engine per month, with columns for the date, the prompt, the engine, and a simple mentioned, linked or absent result. Keep the sheet in the same format every month so you can filter and compare later. A common pitfall is only logging the good results; verify you are being honest by recording every absence too, since the absences are what tell you where the real gaps sit.

Step 4: Cross-check GA4 and Search Console for the same month

Look at the Search Console reports described above, including the Generative AI performance report if your property has data yet, and your GA4 AI-referral channel, described below, for the same period you ran the prompts. A citation that shows up in your manual log but never appears as an impression or a session is still worth recording, since not every citation produces measurable data downstream. The common pitfall is expecting every logged mention to show matching numbers; verify by treating all three sources as separate signals, not one number that must reconcile.

Step 5: Compare the sheet month to month and act on the pattern

Look at the trend across two or three months, not any single month, before deciding anything changed. A prompt that was absent in July and present in September is a real signal; a prompt that flips between mentioned and absent every few weeks is normal noise from how these engines sample sources. Verify a pattern is real by checking it holds for at least two consecutive months before you credit any specific change on your site for it.

3. GA4: a custom channel for AI referral traffic

By default, GA4 files a visit from an AI engine's citation link under the generic "Referral" channel, mixed in with every other external link pointing at your site. Google's own help documentation on custom channel groups explains how to build a rule-based channel instead: create a new channel, match the source dimension against a pattern that covers chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and similar domains, then reorder it above the default Referral rule so AI traffic gets claimed first. Once it is set up, this channel needs no further maintenance beyond adding a new domain if a new AI engine becomes relevant. My guide to tracking AI traffic in GA4 walks through the same setup with more detail on each field.

4. Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools is worth setting up even if most of your traffic comes from Google, because Bing's index has fed several AI products beyond Microsoft's own Copilot at different points, and it is free to use once you verify your site. Submit your sitemap, then check the Search Performance report there the same way you would in Google Search Console, comparing query and click trends over time. My Bing Webmaster Tools guide walks through the full setup.

My own free website SEO checker is worth running alongside these four, though it only scores basic on-page factors like titles, headings and meta tags. It does not track AI citations, and I am not counting it as one of the seven tools in this guide, only as a useful on-page sanity check before you start measuring anything else.

Paid AI-visibility trackers: what they add over the free stack

A paid tracker buys you automated, larger-scale prompt sampling, competitor benchmarking, and a dashboard instead of a spreadsheet you fill in by hand. None of that changes what the free stack already tells you in principle; it mostly saves time once you are checking AI visibility for more than a handful of prompts or clients. Prices below are what each vendor's own page showed at the time of writing (September 2026); verify current pricing directly, since these products change plans often.

Every paid tool below works by sampling prompts and estimating from the responses, the same fundamental method as the free manual log, just automated and run at a larger scale. Treat any vendor's sales pitch with that limit in mind. Google's own guide to optimizing for its AI features warns site owners to be wary of exactly this kind of claim, stating plainly that "No third-party tool has access to our internal ranking or AI systems." None of the three tools below claim otherwise in their own marketing; they sample and estimate, which is still useful, just not what an overeager sales page might imply.

5. Otterly.AI

Otterly.AI tracks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, checking a fixed number of prompts on a daily schedule and reporting visibility, citations and competitor comparisons. Its own pricing page lists a Lite plan from around 29 US dollars a month for 15 prompts, a Standard plan from around 189 US dollars a month for 100 prompts with API access, and a Premium plan above that, with Google AI Mode and Gemini tracking sold as add-ons on top of the base plans. It suits a solo marketer or a small team that wants a real dashboard without an enterprise contract.

6. Ahrefs Brand Radar

Ahrefs Brand Radar tracks AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, ChatGPT and Copilot, and sits inside the same account as Ahrefs' regular SEO tools if you already use them. Its own product page lists a Custom Prompts tier from around 50 US dollars a month, available on paid Ahrefs plans, and a separate AI Visibility Index tier from around 199 US dollars a month with a larger daily prompt allowance. It suits a business or agency that already pays for Ahrefs and wants AI tracking added to an existing workflow rather than a second subscription.

7. Profound

Profound positions itself as a dedicated AI-search visibility platform tracking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and several other engines, aimed at larger marketing teams and agencies. Its own pricing page lists only a free trial tier with specific numbers attached and an Enterprise tier marked "Custom," reachable through a demo request rather than a published price. Check the site directly for current numbers before assuming a cost; for most small Indian businesses, this is the tool to consider only after outgrowing Otterly.AI or Brand Radar, not a starting point.

A worked example: checking AI visibility for a Pune business

Say an interior designer in Kothrud wants to know whether AI assistants mention her studio when someone asks for a local recommendation, with no budget yet for a paid tool. She starts with the free stack alone.

She writes five prompts, including "best interior designer in Kothrud for a 2BHK renovation" and "affordable home interior design Pune," and runs each one in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode on the first of the month. Two of five prompts mention her by name in that first run; the rest do not, and neither the dedicated Generative AI performance report nor her GA4 channel shows anything yet, since the sample size is still too small to register.

She logs the result in her sheet anyway and checks back the following month. Three months in, after she rewrites her homepage to open with a direct answer and adds a proper author bio, four of five prompts mention her, and Search Console finally shows a handful of impressions in the dedicated report. That improvement tracks with the checks she fixed using the AEO audit in between, not with anything the free stack itself did, since tracking only measures a change; it never causes one. Building a few independent mentions beyond her own website, covered in my guide on brand mentions and SEO, would be the logical next step once the on-site checks all pass.

None of the seven tools and methods in this guide are the only AI tools worth knowing either; they are specifically for visibility tracking. For the wider set of AI tools useful in marketing generally, see my roundup of 15 AI tools for marketing in 2026.

How to choose based on budget

If your budget is genuinely Rs 0, set up all four free methods and give the manual log a full quarter before deciding you need more. Most small businesses in Pune and across India I talk to have not even started the free stack, so a paid tool would be solving a problem they have not confirmed they have yet.

If you are ready to pay and want the cheapest real specialist tool, Otterly.AI's entry plan is the lowest published price among the paid options here. If you already pay for Ahrefs for regular SEO work, try Brand Radar's custom prompts tier before adding a second, unrelated subscription. Reach for Profound only once you are managing AI visibility across multiple brands or a large content team, since its pricing model is built for that scale, not a single local business.

Common mistakes when tracking AI visibility

The first mistake is checking once and concluding the work is not working. A single snapshot cannot separate a real trend from normal sampling noise, since the same prompt can return a different mix of sources on back-to-back runs. Give any method at least two or three monthly checks before drawing a conclusion.

The second mistake is assuming a traffic bump proves a citation, or that a lack of one disproves it. AI referral traffic is still difficult to attribute cleanly, and plenty of real citations never produce a click at all, since a reader can get their full answer without visiting the source.

The third mistake is paying for a specialist tool before the free stack is even running. A dashboard cannot fix a robots.txt block, a missing GA4 channel, or a Search Console property nobody checks, and every paid tool here assumes those basics are already in place.

Honest limits of every AI-visibility tool

Every tool on this list, including the free ones, works from a sample of prompts, not a full record of what any AI engine actually returns to every user. A prompt you never test could be citing you constantly, and one you do test is not guaranteed to represent how the engine answers a slightly different phrasing of the same question.

I am not claiming that this site or any client of mine has a confirmed citation inside ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Mode. I have not tracked that consistently enough to state it as fact, and any AEO tool that claims a guaranteed citation for a client is overstating what the technology can currently show anyone.

Treat every number from every tool here, free or paid, as a directional signal to act on over months, not a scoreboard to check daily. The businesses that get the most from AEO tracking are the ones that pair it with the actual fixes from an AEO audit, not the ones that just watch the dashboard.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best free AEO tools?

The strongest free combination is a manual prompt-test log alongside GA4, Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. None of these were built specifically to track AI citations, but together they cover what matters: whether you show up when someone asks an AI a real question, and whether that visibility sends any measurable traffic back to your site. This combination costs nothing and is enough for most small businesses before a paid tool is worth considering.

How much do paid AI-visibility trackers cost?

Prices vary by vendor and change often, so check the current page before deciding. At the time of writing (September 2026), Otterly.AI starts around $29 a month for a small prompt allowance, Ahrefs Brand Radar starts around $50 a month for custom prompt tracking, and Profound does not publish prices at all, requiring a sales conversation for anything beyond its free trial tier. None of these figures are guaranteed to still be current by the time you read this.

Can an AEO tool guarantee my business gets cited by ChatGPT?

No tool, free or paid, can guarantee a citation. Every AI-visibility tool only measures whether a citation happened across a sample of prompts, and none of them can make an AI engine choose your page over a competitor's. The tool shows you the current state and the trend, while the actual work of becoming citable still happens on your website through clear answers, credible evidence and technical access, not inside the tracking dashboard itself.

What is the difference between AEO tools and regular SEO rank trackers?

A regular SEO rank tracker reads Google's search results directly, so the position it reports is close to exact. An AEO tool samples a limited set of prompts across AI engines and estimates visibility from those responses, because there is no public, queryable index of every AI answer to check against. That makes AEO numbers inherently softer than a Google rank tracker's figures, even when both come from the same vendor.

How often should I check my AI visibility?

Monthly is enough for most small businesses, using the same fixed set of prompts each time so the results are comparable. Checking daily or weekly rarely shows a meaningful change, since AI engines can return a different mix of sources on separate runs of the identical prompt, and that noise is easy to mistake for a real trend if you look too often.

Related guides

• AEO audit checklist: 25 pass or fail checks
• Best free SEO tools for small business
• 15 best AI tools for marketing in 2026
• Google Search Console for beginners
• Bing Webmaster Tools guide
• How to track AI traffic in GA4
• What is AEO (answer engine optimization)?
• Brand mentions and SEO

Your next step

Set up the free stack this week, starting with the manual prompt-test log since it needs no signup. Once you have a month of data, run the AEO audit checklist to fix what is actually blocking citations, or get in touch if you want help reading the results.