Ahrefs spent a decade building one of the largest link and keyword indexes on the web. Brand Radar is its attempt to point that index at a new question: how often does a brand show up when someone asks an AI a question, and who shows up instead of you. This review covers what Brand Radar actually measures, what it costs, and whether an SEO-suite add-on is the right home for AI visibility work in 2026.
A quick disclosure before we start. Honeyb builds an AI visibility tool, so Ahrefs is a competitor to us. We have tried to weigh Brand Radar on its merits, cite Ahrefs' own pages for every feature and price, and flag where a general roundup would serve you better. For the wider market, see our best AI visibility tools guide and our AI visibility software pricing breakdown.
What Ahrefs Brand Radar is
Brand Radar is Ahrefs' AI visibility module. It tracks how often a brand is mentioned or cited inside AI answers, calculates an AI Share of Voice figure, and benchmarks that against competitors in the same category. Per Ahrefs' Brand Radar page, it also extends beyond chat answers into YouTube, TikTok and Reddit-in-Google surfaces, which is a deliberate nod to where AI systems pull their sources from.
The data does not come from a handful of hand-typed prompts. Per Ahrefs' Brand Radar methodology page, prompts are seeded from Google's People Also Ask corpus and Ahrefs' keyword database, then expanded with query fan-out, and run through the public web interfaces of each AI platform. Ahrefs' Brand Radar page describes the pool as 414M+ organic prompts. The pitch is that visibility is measured against what people actually search, not synthetic questions a marketer invented.
Who it is for
Brand Radar is aimed squarely at teams that already live inside Ahrefs. If you run keyword research, backlink audits and rank tracking in the tool every week, adding AI share of voice next to those reports is a low-friction way to start measuring the new surface. Agencies reporting to clients get an extra chart in a place clients already recognise.
It is a weaker fit if you do not use Ahrefs for SEO, or if AI visibility is the whole job rather than a line item. A dedicated platform will go deeper on prompt-level detail, sentiment and daily monitoring. If you are still scoping the category, start with how to monitor AI brand mentions and how to measure AI share of voice before committing to any single vendor.
The timing argument is real regardless of tool. Demand for AI optimisation terms is substantial but volatile, and the brands being named in answers today are compounding an advantage. That volatility is exactly why measurement stopped being optional.
Monthly searches (US)
Search demand for "ai search"
Pricing
Brand Radar is sold in two tiers. Per Ahrefs' Brand Radar page, Select Platforms is $398/month and covers AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Grok, with 2,500 custom-prompt checks a month. All Platforms is $699/month, marked as best value, and adds full access to the 414M+ organic prompt pool across every supported platform plus custom prompts. Both tiers currently include YouTube, TikTok and Reddit access, described as free while in beta.
Two caveats on cost. First, Brand Radar sits within the Ahrefs ecosystem, and several third-party reviews report that it assumes an active paid Ahrefs subscription underneath, which pushes the true monthly outlay higher than the add-on price alone. We could not confirm a single canonical bundled figure from Ahrefs' own page, so treat the base-plan requirement as likely but verify it for your account rather than trusting a round number. Second, prices change, so check Ahrefs' pricing page before you budget.
| Tier | Platforms covered | Reported price |
|---|---|---|
| Select Platforms | AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini, Grok, 2,500 custom-prompt checks/mo | $398/mo (per Ahrefs' Brand Radar page) |
| All Platforms | Full 414M+ organic prompt pool across supported platforms plus custom prompts | $699/mo (per Ahrefs' Brand Radar page) |
| YouTube, TikTok, Reddit | Additional social and Reddit-in-Google surfaces | Included, free while in beta (per Ahrefs' Brand Radar page) |
Features
The core metrics are AI Mentions, AI Citations and AI Share of Voice, per Ahrefs' Brand Radar page. On top of those, Brand Radar leans on assets Ahrefs already owns: the keyword database for prompt seeding, and the web index for the source-discovery view that tells you which pages are being cited in answers. That last point aligns with Ahrefs' own published finding that AI visibility correlates most with third-party mentions and video, not on-page work (Ahrefs), which is convenient given the tool surfaces exactly those signals.
| Capability | In Brand Radar | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| AI Share of Voice | Yes | Brand vs competitor visibility score across supported AI answers (per Ahrefs' Brand Radar page) |
| Platforms tracked | Yes | AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini, Grok (per Ahrefs' Brand Radar page) |
| Anthropic Claude | No | Not listed among supported platforms (per Ahrefs' Brand Radar page) |
| Citation and source discovery | Yes | Surfaces pages cited in AI answers, built on the Ahrefs web index (per Ahrefs' Brand Radar page) |
| Custom prompts | Yes | 2,500 checks/mo on Select; expanded on All Platforms (per Ahrefs' Brand Radar page) |
| YouTube, TikTok, Reddit | Yes | Video and social surfaces, beta access included (per Ahrefs' Brand Radar page) |
| Sentiment analysis | Not stated | Ahrefs' page centres on mentions, citations and share of voice, not tone scoring |
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Strengths
The index is the headline strength. Seeding prompts from real search data rather than a synthetic list is a genuine methodological edge, and it is one very few competitors can match. For teams that need breadth of prompt coverage, the 414M+ pool is a real number with real infrastructure behind it (per Ahrefs' Brand Radar page).
Coverage of YouTube and social sources is smarter than it first looks. Reddit is the single most-cited source in AI answers at 40.1% of all citations (Semrush), and video is one of the two signals Ahrefs itself ties to AI visibility. A tool that watches those surfaces is watching where the citations are actually formed, not just the final answer.
The last strength is workflow. If Ahrefs is already your reporting home, Brand Radar removes the friction of a separate login, a separate invoice and a separate export. For an SEO-led team, that consolidation has real value even before you look at the data.
Weaknesses
The first gap is Claude. Brand Radar does not list Anthropic Claude among its platforms (per Ahrefs' Brand Radar page), and Claude is one of the two engines that expose their citations consistently. ChatGPT and Gemini often hide citations while Perplexity and Claude expose theirs, with Perplexity shipping a numbered source list with every answer. Missing a source-transparent engine is a meaningful blind spot for anyone doing citation work.
The second is sentiment. Brand Radar's published framing is about mentions, citations and share of voice, not tone. Getting named is not the same as getting recommended, especially when 62% of AI citations never name the brand behind them (Semrush). If you need to know whether AI describes you well or badly, look at AI sentiment tracking platforms rather than assuming a visibility score covers it.
The third is volatility, which is a category problem Brand Radar inherits rather than causes. The same AI query changes roughly 70% of the time, and two identical queries return the same brand list under a 1-in-100 chance (SparkToro). Sources shift fast too: Reddit's share of ChatGPT citations fell from around 60% to around 10% in a fortnight in late 2025 (Semrush). Any index-based snapshot needs frequent refreshes to stay honest, so pay attention to how often your view actually updates.
Alternatives
Brand Radar is one option in a crowded field. The table below lists the main tools with pricing exactly as published, so you can weigh an SEO-suite add-on against purpose-built platforms. We build the first one, Honeyb, so read that row with appropriate scepticism and cross-check us against the best AI brand monitoring tools roundup.
| Tool | Starting price | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Honeyb (ours) | Free check, then paid | All four models (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity) daily, with sentiment, citations, competitor tracking and recommendations |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | $398/mo (Select), $699/mo (All) | AI share of voice and mentions across AI answers, YouTube and the web, on the Ahrefs index |
| Profound | From ~$399/mo, rising into the thousands | Deepest analytics, API and white-label; demo only |
| Otterly AI | From $29/mo | ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot; free trial |
| Peec AI | From ~$89/mo | Multilingual tracking; trial available |
| SE Ranking | From ~$55/mo | AI visibility inside an SEO suite; no-card trial |
| Semrush AI Visibility | Add-on to the Semrush suite | AI visibility with a free checker |
| AthenaHQ | From ~$295/mo | GEO workflows for teams; free 10-minute audit |
| Scrunch AI | Custom pricing | AEO-focused |
Where Honeyb differs from Brand Radar is scope and depth rather than index size. Honeyb checks all four major answer engines daily, including Claude, and adds sentiment, citation tracking, competitor benchmarking and specific recommendations, whereas Brand Radar concentrates on share of voice and mentions inside the Ahrefs ecosystem and does not list Claude. If you want to see the trade-off in detail against the enterprise end of the market, Honeyb vs Profound sets the extremes. Our Profound review uses the same review format if you want to compare tools like for like.
Verdict
Brand Radar is a strong choice for one specific buyer: an SEO team already invested in Ahrefs that wants a credible, index-backed view of AI share of voice without adding another vendor. The prompt-seeding methodology is genuinely good, the YouTube and Reddit coverage is well aimed given where AI citations come from, and the reporting lives where your team already works.
It is a weaker choice if AI visibility is the main event. The lack of Claude coverage, the focus on mentions over sentiment, and the pricing that likely assumes a paid Ahrefs plan underneath all point the same way: dedicated buyers will find deeper, cheaper or more complete options in the tables above. Is it worth it? Yes, if you are an Ahrefs shop measuring a new surface. Probably not, if you are shopping for AI visibility on its own terms.
Whichever way you lean, measure before you commit. Run a free AI visibility check to see how ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity describe your brand today, then decide which tool fits. Start your free check.
