AI visibility tools all promise the same read: whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude mention your brand when someone asks. The prices for that read span two orders of magnitude, from a free checker to enterprise contracts in the thousands per month. This piece is a single pricing reference for the nine tools buyers shortlist most in 2026, what sits behind each number, and how to avoid paying for a precision that the AI answers themselves will not hold still for.
Honeyb is our own product, so we list it first and say so plainly. Every price below is drawn from the vendors' public plans and pages, and every data figure is cited to its source.
If you are still building a shortlist rather than comparing prices, start with the best AI visibility tools and the best AI brand monitoring tools. This page assumes you already know roughly what these tools do and want to know what they cost.
The 2026 AI visibility pricing table
Nine tools, one table. "Starting price" is the entry paid plan where a vendor publishes one; some sell only through a demo or a custom quote, and that is noted rather than guessed.
| Tool | Starting price | Free entry | Billing / access model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Honeyb (ours) | Free check, then paid plans | Free check, no card | Self-serve; all four models daily, sentiment, citations, competitor tracking, recommendations |
| Profound | Pricing on request | Free trial | Custom Enterprise; deepest analytics, API access, white-label; backed by $155M funding |
| Otterly AI | From $29/mo | Free trial | Self-serve; Gartner Cool Vendor, 4.9 on G2 |
| Peec AI | From $95/mo | Trial | Self-serve; multilingual |
| SE Ranking | From $129/mo | No-card trial | AI visibility inside a broader SEO suite |
| Semrush AI Visibility | From $199/mo (SEO + AI Search Starter) | Free plan | AI prompt tracking inside Semrush's SEO + AI Search plans |
| AthenaHQ | From $295/mo | Free plan | Self-serve; GEO workflows built for teams |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | From $199/mo | Custom Prompts free on paid Ahrefs plans | AI share of voice and mentions; Lite from $129/mo |
| Scrunch AI | From $250/mo (Core) | 7-day trial | Self-serve Core; AEO-focused |
Two patterns fall out of the table. Self-serve tools publish a number you can act on in an afternoon, and they cluster between $29 and $295 a month, Scrunch AI's $250 Core included. Profound is the exception: it publishes no price, so after a free trial it routes you through a conversation about custom Enterprise terms instead of a checkout, and you cannot compare it on price until you have a quote.
Monthly searches (US)
Search demand for AI optimisation terms (US)
The market is priced against real demand. Search interest in optimising for AI answers is substantial, if volatile, which is why nine credible vendors now compete for the same buyers. It also means new plans and repackaged tiers appear often, so treat any single number as a starting point rather than a fixed quote.
What you are actually paying for
Underneath the pricing sits one real cost driver: how many AI models a tool queries, how often, and whether it can show you the sources behind an answer. Querying ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude on a daily cadence is more expensive to run than a weekly check against one model, and pricing reflects that. When you compare two plans at similar prices, the model coverage and refresh frequency usually explain the gap better than the feature list does.
Citations are the other line item worth scrutinising. ChatGPT and Gemini often hide the sources behind their answers, while Perplexity and Claude expose theirs consistently (Semrush). A tool that reconstructs citations across all four models is doing harder work than one that simply reports a mention count, and that work is a large part of what separates a $29 plan from a $295 one. It matters because 62% of AI citations never name the brand behind them (Semrush), so a mention count alone can miss most of your actual influence. For the method behind that number, see how to monitor AI brand mentions.
The higher tiers add analytics depth, API access and white-label output rather than more models. Profound sits at that end, with the deepest analytics and white-label delivery among the nine. If those specific capabilities are not on your requirements list, you are unlikely to get value from the price step up to reach them.
The free ways to start
You do not need a paid contract to get a first reading. Five of the nine tools offer a genuine free entry point: Honeyb runs a free AI visibility check with no card, Semrush AI Visibility includes a free checker, AthenaHQ offers a free 10-minute audit, and Otterly AI, Peec AI and SE Ranking all run trials (SE Ranking's needs no card). That is enough to establish a baseline across the four models and decide whether a recurring spend is justified before you commit to one. If you are testing purely against ChatGPT to start, the ChatGPT brand monitoring tools roundup narrows it further.
Want to get recommended by AI?
Check your AI search visibility, then let the Honeyb agent write, fix, and earn what gets you recommended. Free to start.
Price by who you are
| Buyer | Typical monthly spend | Tools that fit | What you are optimising for |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMB / solo | $0 to ~$100 | Honeyb free check, Otterly ($29), Peec ($95) | A reliable baseline across models at the lowest cost |
| Mid-market / in-house | ~$100 to ~$300 | SE Ranking ($129), Semrush SEO + AI Search ($199), Ahrefs Brand Radar (from $199), Scrunch AI ($250), AthenaHQ ($295) | Workflows and share-of-voice tracking your team acts on |
| Enterprise | Custom quote | Profound (pricing on request) | API, white-label, deepest analytics |
| Agency | Varies by tool | Profound for white-label, exports from others | Reporting you can put a client's name on |
SMB and solo operators should start free and stay cheap. A single-model manual spot check is nearly worthless here because the same AI query changes roughly 70% of the time (SparkToro), so you need a tool that queries repeatedly rather than a bigger budget. Honeyb's free check, Otterly at $29 and Peec at $95 all give you a repeatable baseline under $100 a month; SE Ranking's $129 Core adds 100 daily-tracked prompts if you also want an SEO suite.
Mid-market and in-house teams are buying a workflow, not just a number. AthenaHQ from $295 is built around GEO workflows for teams, Semrush's SEO + AI Search plans (from $199) suit anyone already inside that suite, and Ahrefs Brand Radar makes sense if you hold an Ahrefs plan and want AI share of voice alongside your existing link and keyword data. If measuring that share of voice is the core job, how to measure AI share of voice covers the method that these tools automate.
Enterprise is where the price leaves the page. Profound publishes no price: after a free trial it sells custom Enterprise terms, in exchange for the deepest analytics of the nine, API access and white-label delivery, backed by $155M in funding. If you are weighing that spend, Honeyb vs Profound sets the two side by side. Agencies are a distinct case again: the deciding factor is white-label output and multi-brand reporting rather than the headline price, since you are reselling the read to clients.
We cover the agency setup in more depth on the agencies page, and brand mention tracking tools and AI sentiment tracking platforms both matter when the deliverable is a client report.
Do not overpay: the answers keep moving
The strongest argument against buying the most expensive plan is that AI answers are volatile enough to blunt fine-grained precision. Two identical queries return the same brand list under a 1-in-100 chance (SparkToro), and the sources themselves churn hard: Reddit's share of ChatGPT citations fell from around 60% to roughly 10% in a fortnight in late 2025 (Semrush). Even Reddit, the single most-cited source across AI at 40.1% of all citations (Semrush), is not a fixed target. Paying enterprise money to measure a moving object to three decimal places is rarely worth it for a smaller brand.
The practical takeaway: buy the cheapest tier that queries all four models on a regular cadence, and spend the difference on the inputs that actually move the needle. AI visibility correlates most with third-party mentions and video, not on-page work (Ahrefs), so the money is often better placed on earned coverage than on a premium dashboard. Upgrade only when a specific capability, API access, white-label reporting or genuinely deeper analytics, maps to a job you can name. If API access is that job, a usage-priced AI visibility API at $0.08 per answer, with no subscription, is an alternative to climbing to an enterprise tier for it. To pressure-test how a plan reports competitors before you commit, the AI search competitive analysis tools roundup shows what good looks like.
Start with a free check
Before you compare quotes, get a baseline. Run a free AI visibility check across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude, no card required, and see where your brand actually stands. That number tells you far more about which price tier you need than any pricing page will.
