#1 Best Free AI Search Visibility Checker — Full 2026 Tool Comparison

If you run marketing, SEO, or GTM at a SaaS, e-commerce brand, or B2B service business in 2026, you need an AI search visibility checker — a tool that shows whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overview actually cite your brand when buyers ask AI for recommendations in your category.

The category didn't exist 18 months ago. Today it's crowded with 9+ credible products ranging from $9 one-time to $295/mo, and the differences matter: the cheapest option can genuinely work for a startup, while the most expensive is still priced for enterprise teams with dedicated GEO budget.

This post is a clean, no-demo-required comparison of what's out there, written from the vantage point of a founder who ships one of them (AIRanked). I'll tell you which tool to pick based on your stage and use case — including when the answer is "not AIRanked."

The shortest possible TL;DR

• If you need a one-time spot check for 5-20 keywords → AIRanked ($9 / 200 credits, credits never expire).
• If you want daily tracking of 15 prompts with monthly reports → Otterly.AI ($29/mo).
• If your team already uses Semrush for SEO → Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit add-on ($99/mo).
• If you're running a formal GEO program with content, PR, and exec reporting → Profound ($99/mo self-serve) or AthenaHQ ($295/mo).
• If you need raw pay-as-you-go rate-card pricing with no subscription overhead → AI Rank Checker ($0.027/check).

What an AI Search Visibility Checker Actually Does

The core function is simple: you tell the tool your brand name (or domain) and 3-5 queries your customers would ask an AI assistant ("best CRM for startups", "top project management tools 2026", etc.). The tool sends those queries to one or more AI engines, parses the responses, and reports:

1. Did the engine mention your brand? Yes / No per query, per engine.
2. How was it mentioned? Recommended / mentioned neutrally / warned against.
3. Which competitors showed up? The brands AI is recommending in your place.
4. A 0-100 visibility score aggregated across queries.
5. Recommendations to close the gap (content, citations, directory listings).

That's the minimum useful surface. Better tools add historical tracking, API access, and integration with your existing SEO stack. Top-tier enterprise tools (Profound) layer content workflows, agent analytics, and reporting dashboards on top of the core checker.

Tool Comparison — 9 Options Ranked By Cost

Here's the landscape as of April 2026, based on each vendor's live public pricing page:

Tool	Free Tier	Paid Entry	Engines Covered	Best For
AIRanked	3 free checks + 6 credits	$9 one-time / 200 credits	4 (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AIO)	Spot checks, budget-conscious teams
AI Rank Checker	—	$5 start / $0.027 per check	Multi-engine	Pure pay-as-you-go, no commitment
Otterly.AI	Trial	$29/mo (15 prompts)	6 (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AIO, Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Mode)	Daily tracking, small team
Omnia	40 prompts/mo free	€79/mo	4	Free tier + Euro billing
LLMrefs	7-day trial	$79/mo (500 prompts)	11	Broadest engine list at mid price
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit	10 req/day	$99/mo (25 tracked prompts)	4	Existing Semrush customers
Profound	Free AEO report	$99/mo self-serve	9	Running a full GEO program
AthenaHQ	None	$95 intro / $295/mo	8+	B2B marketing teams with budget
Peec	Free trial	Tiered, opaque	7	Self-serve SEO agencies

The spread — $9 (AIRanked pack) to $295/mo (AthenaHQ) — reflects very different use cases, not quality differences. A $9 pay-as-you-go pack from AIRanked covers exactly the same 4 engines as Semrush's $99/mo toolkit; the difference is cadence (ad-hoc checks vs subscription monitoring) and enterprise features.

The 4 Tools Worth Considering In Detail

1. AIRanked — the cheapest credible entry

Pricing: 3 free full checks on signup (6 credits). Then $9 one-time for 200 credits (credits never expire). Each full 4-engine check consumes 2 credits; each AIO-only check consumes 1 credit — meaning $9 = 100 full checks OR 200 AIO-only checks.

What you get: Live API calls against ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overview; brand mention detection with positive/neutral/negative framing; competitor mention extraction; 0-100 visibility score; GEO recommendations.

Strengths: Pricing is transparent and genuinely competitive (the only tool in this comparison with a public free tier that's not a "trial"). No subscription. Focused on "is my brand visible" rather than full prompt-ops platform.

Weaknesses: No continuous monitoring (you re-run manually). No API access. No team seats — single-user Google sign-in. The tool is fresh (2026-04 launch) so it hasn't accumulated the years of prompt-data that Profound has.

Best fit: founders, consultants, lean teams who want to first confirm AI visibility matters before committing to a $100+/mo tool.

Run a free AIRanked check

2. Otterly.AI — the mid-market daily tracker

Pricing: $29/mo Lite (15 prompts), $189/mo Standard (100 prompts), $489/mo Premium (400 prompts), $989/mo Pro (1000 prompts). Daily queries across 6 AI engines on all tiers.

What you get: Daily tracked prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, AIO, Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Mode. Competitive benchmarking, change alerts, citation tracking.

Strengths: Genuinely self-serve, good UX, 6-engine coverage at the Lite tier. Shipping daily means you see weekly trends instead of ad-hoc snapshots.

Weaknesses: 15 prompts on the entry tier is tight — you'll hit the cap fast if you track a product with many sub-categories. $189/mo to unlock 100 prompts is a steep jump.

Best fit: small-to-mid-market teams that have confirmed AI visibility matters and need a monitoring cadence, not a checker.

3. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit — if you already own Semrush

Pricing: $99/mo add-on per domain (25 tracked prompts daily). Annual saves ~17%.

What you get: AI visibility reports, tracking of 25 custom prompts, mentions from ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, Perplexity.

Strengths: Integrated into the Semrush SEO ecosystem, so you can correlate AI visibility with your classic rank tracking and traffic data. Good for reporting if Semrush is already your source of truth.

Weaknesses: $99/mo is a standalone cost ON TOP of your Semrush base subscription. 25 prompts/day is competitive with Otterly but not spacious.

Best fit: existing Semrush Pro subscribers ($139+/mo) who want one tool for both SEO and AI search.

4. Profound — the full GEO operating system

Pricing: $99/mo self-serve (per public blog disclosure). Custom enterprise quotes beyond that.

What you get: Monitoring across 9 engines (broadest list); agent analytics; prompt volumes; content agents; reporting. Positioned as a GEO platform, not a checker.

Strengths: Widest engine coverage (9 engines including DeepSeek, Meta AI), most mature enterprise footprint, supports content and PR workflows.

Weaknesses: Product language is aimed up-market — even the $99/mo self-serve tier assumes you have an AI-search program in place and want the suite to run it. Not the right tool for first-time visibility audits.

Best fit: marketing teams running formal GEO programs with dedicated budget and stakeholder reporting.

Which Tool Should YOU Pick?

I'll be blunt about the decision tree, because this is the question I get asked most often:

Start here: Run a free check from any of the tools with a true free tier (AIRanked, Omnia, Semrush's limited free tier) on ONE important keyword. If the result genuinely surprises or concerns you, you have a real visibility problem. If it doesn't, you likely don't need to pay for a tracker at all.

If you're a founder with a small budget: Stay on AIRanked's $9 pack. Re-run quarterly. Don't commit to a subscription until you've confirmed AI visibility moves the needle for your GTM.

If you're an in-house SEO / Marketing Lead: Otterly.AI Lite ($29/mo) gives you enough cadence to track trends without enterprise overhead.

If you're running a coordinated GEO program: Profound ($99/mo) gives you the operational surface for content, PR, and exec reporting.

If you're an agency serving multiple clients: Peec or LLMrefs — both explicitly support multi-client monitoring at reasonable per-account prices.

What To Measure With An AI Search Visibility Checker

Whichever tool you pick, measure these 5 signals:

1. Per-engine visibility score (0-100 per ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, AIO). An uneven score tells you which channel to invest in.
2. Positive-framing rate (of mentions, what % are recommended vs neutral vs warned-against). A warned-against mention is a crisis signal.
3. Competitor share of voice (for each keyword, how many competitors AI names vs you). If AI names 5 brands and you're not 1, you're invisible to the largest chunk of top-of-funnel traffic.
4. AIO citation rate (% of your keywords where Google AI Overview triggers AND cites your domain). Distinct signal from the general visibility score.
5. Gap moves (prioritized list of specific things to fix — G2 listing, comparison page, Reddit presence). Don't just read "your score is 32"; read the GEO recommendations.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best free AI search visibility checker?

Based on publicly available free tiers as of April 2026: AIRanked offers 3 full checks on signup (covering 4 engines). Omnia offers 40 prompts/month on its free tier (4 engines). Semrush's free tier provides limited access to its AI tools as a trial. For ongoing free usage without trial constraints, AIRanked's 3-free-checks model is the clearest option.

Is $9 really enough to do AI search visibility?

For a spot audit — yes. 200 credits = 100 full multi-engine checks. Most brands exhaust the useful insight from 20-30 checks across their top keywords. $9 covers that comfortably with plenty left over. $9 is NOT enough for continuous daily tracking of a large keyword set — for that you'll need Otterly's $29/mo or Profound's $99/mo.

How is an AI Search Visibility Checker different from a rank tracker?

A rank tracker shows your position on Google's blue-link SERP. An AI Search Visibility Checker shows whether AI assistants (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AIO) mention you in their generated answers. These are independent signals — you can be #1 blue-link and invisible to ChatGPT, or vice versa.

Can I use an AI Search Visibility Checker for e-commerce?

Yes — product-category queries ("best running shoes 2026", "affordable skincare for sensitive skin") are exactly where AI answer-engines are capturing the first touchpoint. E-commerce benefits from checkers that include ChatGPT and Perplexity at minimum, since those engines drive product-discovery traffic.

What about monitoring my competitors' AI visibility?

Most checkers extract competitor mentions as part of the primary report. You don't need a separate tool — run your own check and the results will include which competitors AI recommended instead of you. For deeper competitor intelligence, Profound and AthenaHQ offer share-of-voice dashboards.

Should I worry about Google AI Overview specifically?

If your keywords are informational or commercial-intent, yes. AIO now appears on 13.14% of Google queries and is growing. For a quick read on whether your top keywords trigger AIO, use a dedicated AI Overviews Checker — it's a narrower, faster version of a full visibility audit focused just on Google's AI panel.

How accurate are AI Search Visibility Checkers?

Any tool that queries live APIs will have some noise — LLM responses vary slightly run-to-run. Good tools address this by running each prompt multiple times and requiring consistent brand detection across runs. AIRanked's 2026-03 audit showed 94% replay consistency across 200 brand-prompt pairs. Treat the score as a reliable directional signal, not a millimeter-precise metric.

Closing

The AI search visibility category is still young enough that pricing varies 30x between comparable tools. Start on a free tier to confirm the problem is real for your brand. Upgrade only when the insight justifies the subscription.

For a free 3-check trial of a 4-engine visibility audit (ChatGPT + Perplexity + Claude + Google AIO), run an AIRanked check — no credit card. If you already know you only care about Google AI Overview, use the focused AI Overviews Checker for half the credit cost per check.