I built one of these tools, so I'll be upfront about that. I'll do my best to be fair about what each one does well and where it falls short, including my own.
AEO tools track how AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity respond to prompts about your brand or category. The category has grown fast: a year ago there were a handful of products. Now there are more than a dozen. Most do roughly the same thing. The differences that matter are in pricing, how they handle multi-client agency work, and what they do with the data beyond just showing you a number.
Here's what's worth using in 2026.
Quick comparison
AEO Copilot — Best for agencies and freelancers
Full disclosure: I built this one. I'll be as honest as I can.
AEO Copilot is the only tool in this list built specifically for freelancers and agencies managing multiple client brands. Every other tool assumes you're tracking one brand for one company. AEO Copilot assumes you're tracking five or ten brands for five or ten different clients, and the workflow is designed around that.
What it tracks: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity. You define topics, set prompts, and the platform runs them on a schedule or manually. It reports on Visibility Score (how often the brand appears), Sentiment (positive/neutral/negative), Competitive Share (your brand's mention rate vs. named competitors), and Visibility Trend over time.
What makes it different: The free tier gives you one brand and real tracking with no credit card required. Paid plans are priced for freelancer and agency margins, not enterprise budgets. You can invite clients to view their results without a separate login process. The technical audit covers robots.txt, sitemap, llms.txt, schema markup, and crawlability, so you have a deliverable beyond just the monitoring data.
What it doesn't do well: It doesn't have the deep custom workflow builder that something like AirOps offers. If you're a large enterprise wanting to run hundreds of prompts daily across a custom set of AI models, there are more powerful tools. But for the agency delivering this as a service to 5 to 20 clients, it's the right fit.
Pricing: Free to start with 1 brand. Paid plans start at prices built for freelancers, not enterprise contracts.
Start free → | See the website audit → | AEO Copilot vs Peec.ai vs Profound: detailed comparison →
Profound — Best for enterprise
Profound is the most technically capable tool in this space. It handles large-scale prompt monitoring, integrates with enterprise data stacks, and is built for teams that need audit trails, advanced reporting, and custom data pipelines.
The trade-off is price and complexity. Profound starts at several hundred dollars a month and is designed for marketing teams at mid-size to large companies, not freelancers. If you're an agency trying to add AI visibility as a service line, Profound's pricing model makes it hard to build a margin on client work.
Best for: Enterprise in-house marketing teams, large agencies with dedicated data teams, brands running 100+ prompts monthly.
Peec.ai — Best for brand monitoring breadth
Peec covers a wide range of AI platforms and has solid reporting. The interface is clean and the data is easy to read. It's priced for company marketing teams, not agency resellers. There's no multi-client workflow, and the cost per brand makes it expensive to scale across client accounts.
Best for: Single-brand companies who want clean, reliable monitoring with a polished interface.
Otterly.ai — Light use, solo users
Otterly is the most accessible entry point in the paid tier. It's straightforward, covers the core platforms, and works fine for someone tracking one or two brands without a lot of complexity. It doesn't have the agency infrastructure (multi-client, team access, automated reporting) that makes a service line scalable.
Best for: Solo founders or marketers tracking one brand on a limited budget.
HubSpot AEO Grader — Free audit tool, not a tracking platform
HubSpot released an AEO Grader as a free tool. It's useful for a one-time snapshot of how AI-ready a page or site is. It doesn't do ongoing monitoring, doesn't track brand mentions across AI platforms, and doesn't give you competitive data.
Think of it like a Lighthouse audit for AEO: useful for a quick diagnostic, not a replacement for continuous monitoring.
Best for: One-time site audits, lead generation for HubSpot.
SE Ranking — SEO-first with AEO add-on
SE Ranking is primarily an SEO platform that has added AEO monitoring features. If you're already using SE Ranking for keyword tracking and backlinks, the AEO features are a natural extension. If you're looking for a dedicated AEO tool, it's not designed for that use case from the ground up.
Best for: SEO agencies already on SE Ranking who want basic AI visibility data in one platform.
Quattr — Content + AEO, enterprise pricing
Quattr combines content optimization with AI visibility tracking. It's strong on the content side and has added AEO features as the category has grown. Pricing is enterprise-tier, which makes it hard to justify for agencies building a service line on top of it.
Best for: Enterprise content teams that want AEO data alongside content scoring and optimization.
AirOps — LLM workflow builder, not a monitoring tool
AirOps is often listed alongside AEO tools but it's a different category. It's a platform for building custom LLM workflows, not for monitoring how AI systems respond to prompts about your brand. If you need to automate content generation or build custom AI pipelines, it's worth looking at. If you need to know whether ChatGPT mentions your brand when someone asks about project management software, it's not the right tool.
Best for: Teams building internal AI workflows, not brand monitoring.
How to choose
If you're a freelancer or agency managing multiple client brands: AEO Copilot is the only tool in this list built specifically for your workflow. The free tier lets you test before committing, and the agency pricing is designed to leave room for your margin.
If you're an enterprise with a dedicated marketing team and a significant budget: Profound or Quattr, depending on whether you need content features alongside the tracking.
If you want a free starting point to understand where you stand: the free audit or HubSpot's AEO Grader will give you a snapshot without any cost.
If you're new to AEO: the complete AEO guide for freelancers and agencies covers the full picture before you invest in any tool.
If you're already on SE Ranking: try the AEO features before paying for a separate platform.
What to look for in any AEO tool
Before buying anything, check these five things:
- Which AI platforms does it track? At minimum: ChatGPT and Perplexity. Better: plus Gemini and Claude. Some tools only cover one or two.
- How does it handle multiple clients or brands? If you're an agency, a per-brand pricing model at $200+/brand/month makes the service unsellable.
- What does it do with the data? A visibility score is useful. A visibility trend, sentiment breakdown, and competitive share is what you actually need for client reporting.
- Is there a technical audit component? Knowing your brand doesn't show up is only half the answer. Knowing why, and having a checklist to fix it, is the service.
- What's the free tier? Tools that don't offer a free trial or free tier are asking you to commit before you've seen the product.
FAQ
What is an AEO tool?
An AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) tool tracks how AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity respond to queries related to your brand or category. It measures whether your brand is mentioned, how it's described, and how your visibility changes over time.
Are AEO tools worth it for small agencies?
For agencies adding AI visibility as a service line, yes. The tool cost is built into the retainer price. At $400 to $700 per client per month, even two clients cover the tool cost with significant margin remaining.
How often should you run AEO tracking?
Weekly monitoring gives you enough data to spot trends without burning through credits. Monthly is the minimum for a useful trend line. Daily tracking is available on most paid plans but is only needed if you're in a competitive category where AI mentions shift frequently.
Can AEO tools tell you how to improve?
Better ones do. AEO Copilot includes a technical audit that flags specific issues affecting AI crawlability and citation likelihood. Other tools show you the score without the fix.
Is AEO the same as GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)?
They refer to the same practice under different names. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), and LLM SEO all describe optimizing for visibility in AI-generated answers. The terminology varies by author and platform.