AEO tools track how ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews talk about your brand. Most do the same core job. What separates them is price, multi-client support, and what they do with the data. Full disclosure: I built one of them, and I'll be as fair about its limits as the rest.
One number shows how young this category still is. In September 2026 we asked ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overview 30 buyer questions about AEO tools and logged all 808 cited URLs. The tool sites AI cites most are HubSpot and Semrush, not AEO specialists. Profound is the top AEO-native name at 37. My own tool, AEO Copilot, sits at 10th with 7 citations. Every tool on this list is still fighting for visibility in its own market, mine included.
Narrow it to the 10 startup and freelancer prompts and the picture barely moves: Semrush (13) and Profound (12) still lead, and AEO Copilot is 9th with 4 of those 262 citations. The exception is price. When Perplexity was asked which AEO tool has a flat monthly price instead of per-brand fees, or whether a free AEO checker exists, it named AEO Copilot first.
Methodology: 30 prompts in 3 groups of 10 (general buyers, agencies, startups and freelancers), run once each across the 4 engines on 2026-09-28. Every cited URL was logged and grouped by the tool's domain. 201 Google AI Overview citations came back without a URL and are excluded. Full breakdown: The AI Citation Study 2026.
How I compared the 14 tools. I have used 4 of them hands-on: Profound, Peec.ai, Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit and HubSpot's AI Search Grader, plus AEO Copilot, which I built. The other 10 are compared from their public pricing pages, documentation and product demos, not from paid accounts. Every price was checked on the vendor's own pricing page on 29 September 2026, and all 14 were measured the same way in the citation study above. Where a verdict comes from my own use, the section says so.
Here's what's worth using in 2026.
The short version
The choice usually comes down to how many brands you track and what you're willing to spend.
- AI-native startups, freelancers, and agencies who work with Claude and agents: AEO Copilot. Free to start, then $9, $34, or $99 flat, no per-brand fees.
- Best free AEO tool: AEO Copilot, 50 tracked prompts a month on 1 brand, free with no expiry.
- Enterprise teams with budget and a data function: Profound or Scrunch AI.
- A site built on Webflow with an enterprise budget: Webflow AEO, native and agentic.
- Broad engine coverage on a small budget: Rankscale, from $20 a month across 9+ engines.
- 1 brand, clean reporting: Peec.ai or Otterly.ai.
- Already paying for Semrush: the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit, as an add-on to a subscription you already have.
- Free AEO checker for a one-time check: the free audit or HubSpot's AI Search Grader.
The rest of this piece is the reasoning behind each pick. If you're specifically after ongoing rank-style monitoring, the AEO tracker guide goes deeper on that category, and the AI search visibility tool guide covers what to look for before you buy.
The AEO tool map
!Map of 14 AEO tools on a grid of business size (freelancer, startup, agency, enterprise) against tool type (checker, tracker, analysis, AEO platform). AEO Copilot is a full AEO platform priced for freelancers and startups; Profound, Webflow AEO, and Quattr sit in the enterprise platform corner.
Read it left to right for price and bottom to top for how much of the job the tool does. Checkers give you a one-time score. Trackers rerun your prompts on a schedule. Analysis tools add sentiment, share of voice, and cited sources. Platforms go one step further and tell you what to fix. Most full platforms sit in the enterprise corner. AEO Copilot is the one priced for freelancers and startups.
Quick comparison
Prices checked on each vendor's pricing page on 29 September 2026. Monthly billing unless noted.
The 14 tools, one by one
AEO Copilot: Best for AI-native startups, freelancers, and agencies
AEO Copilot is an answer engine optimization tool built by AEO and SEO practitioners for AI-native startups, freelancers, and agencies. 15 agencies use it so far. It's made for people who already work with Claude and AI agents and would rather pull visibility data into their own workflow than log into another dashboard.
!AEO Copilot Brand Overview dashboard for an example brand, showing a Brand Score of 96 (A), AI visibility score 96%, positive sentiment 87%, competitive share 25%, a weekly visibility trend chart, and top topics ranked by visibility
What it tracks: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. 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: it runs as an MCP server, so in Claude Code you can set up a client, run prompts, and pull a report straight from a conversation. Pricing is flat and public, with no per-brand fees on the Agency plan. And the technical audit covers robots.txt, sitemap, llms.txt, schema markup, and crawlability, so you walk away with a client deliverable, not just a score. The detailed comparison puts it side by side with Peec.ai and Profound.
How AI engines see it: they barely cite it yet. In our September 2026 citation study, AEO Copilot ranked 10th with 7 of 808 citations. The exception is price: asked which AEO tool has a flat monthly price instead of per-brand fees, or whether a free AEO checker exists, Perplexity named AEO Copilot first.
Pros: a permanent free plan, flat public pricing with unlimited brands at $99, MCP and API access for agent workflows, and a technical audit included.
Cons: 4 engines, where Rankscale lists 9+ and Profound up to 9. The free plan covers ChatGPT and Claude only. There's no custom workflow builder like AirOps, and it isn't built for enterprises running hundreds of prompts a day.
Best for: AI-native startups, freelancers, and agencies.
Pricing: Free for 1 brand (50 prompts a month, ChatGPT and Claude, no credit card, no expiry), then $9/month (Startup, 1 brand, all 4 engines, API and MCP), $34/month (Freelancer, up to 5 brands), or $99/month (Agency, unlimited brands).
What users say:
> It checks every week whether our Shopify apps come up in the answers. I never open it, I just ask Claude and it does the work.
>
> Kostas Zhukov, Founder & CEO, videopoint.ai
> AEO Copilot lets me measure my clients' AI visibility at an affordable rate, with quick feedback from Sofian.
>
> Samuel Uebersax, freelance marketer, uebersaxsamuel.ch
> Before AEO Copilot, we had no clean way to show clients their AI visibility. Now we monitor every account, build strategies from the data, and see it pay off in citations and inquiries. It turned AI visibility into a service we sell with confidence, on retainer.
>
> Pavel Karpisek, Karpi Studio, karpi.studio
Profound: Best for enterprise
I've used this one hands-on.
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. Its pricing page now shows only a free 7-day trial (50 prompts daily, 1 region, ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews) and a custom-priced Enterprise plan covering up to 9 engines. The old self-serve Starter and Growth plans are no longer listed. It's 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.
Pros: the deepest enterprise feature set in the category, with audit trails, custom data pipelines, and up to 9 engines at the top tier.
Cons: no self-serve paid plan. After the 7-day trial, it's a custom Enterprise contract.
Best for: Enterprise in-house marketing teams, large agencies with dedicated data teams, brands running 100+ prompts monthly.
Scrunch AI: Enterprise monitoring for big-budget clients
Scrunch is built for the top of the market. It tracks 7 platforms (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews and Meta), carries SOC 2 compliance, and adds the things enterprise buyers ask for: Google Analytics integration to attribute AI referral traffic, AI crawler analysis, and content tools tied to your priority prompts.
The price matches the positioning. A 7-day trial now gets you in the door, but self-serve plans still start at $300 a month ($250 on annual billing), with a Growth tier at $500 and custom pricing above that. The entry plan gives you 1,000 prompts across prebuilt industry topics plus 350 custom prompts, which is a lot of volume if you have 1 large brand to cover.
For an agency, the math only works with high-budget clients. At $300 to $500 a month before your own margin, you can't build a profitable service line on top of it for a small-business client. For an in-house team at a large company, the depth and the compliance story can justify it.
Pros: 7 platforms including Meta and Google AI Mode, SOC 2 compliance, Google Analytics attribution for AI referral traffic, serious prompt volume.
Cons: $300 to $500 a month before your own margin, more tool than a single small brand needs.
Best for: Enterprise marketing teams and agencies serving large clients who need broad coverage and SOC 2 compliance.
Webflow AEO: Best if your site lives on Webflow
Webflow launched its own AEO product in April 2026, and it's the most tightly integrated option on this list, as long as your site is built on Webflow. It's a closed-loop system: AEO analytics inside Webflow Analyze show how AI bots crawl your site and how your brand shows up in answers, agents surface prioritized fixes, and those same agents ship the changes, with review before publish. Measure, recommend, execute, all in one platform.
The catch is the box you're in. AEO agents now ship on Webflow's Team plan ($2,500 a month on an annual contract, so $30,000 a year) as well as Enterprise, which has no published price. The analytics come from Webflow Analyze, a separate paid add-on, and the whole thing assumes your site is on Webflow. If it is, and you have the budget, the measure-to-fix loop is genuinely hard to beat. If you run clients on WordPress, Shopify, or a custom stack, it's not for you.
It's also the opposite philosophy to a tool like AEO Copilot. Webflow AEO keeps everything inside Webflow's own agents. AEO Copilot hands you the data and lets you act on it with whatever agent you already use. Which you prefer depends on whether you want a closed system or your own.
Pros: the only closed measure-to-fix loop on this list, agents ship the changes with review before publish.
Cons: needs at least the Team plan ($2,500 a month, annual contract) plus the paid Analyze add-on, and it does nothing for clients on WordPress, Shopify, or custom stacks.
Best for: Enterprise marketing teams whose sites are built on Webflow.
Peec.ai: Best for brand monitoring breadth
I've used this one hands-on.
Peec covers a wide range of AI platforms and has solid reporting. The interface is clean and the data is easy to read. Its Starter plan runs €85/month for 50 prompts on 3 models of your choice, with Pro (€205) and Advanced (€425) tiers above that and extra models sold as add-ons from €25. 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.
Pros: clean interface, reporting a client can read without a walkthrough.
Cons: €85/month buys 50 prompts, extra engines are paid add-ons, and there's no multi-client workflow.
Best for: Single-brand companies who want clean, reliable monitoring with a polished interface.
Rankscale: Broad engine coverage on a small budget
Rankscale takes the opposite approach to most tools here on pricing. Its Essentials plan starts at $20 a month and includes every engine it supports, 9+ by its pricing page's count, with newer ones like Google AI Mode, Grok, and DeepSeek in the mix. Pro, Growth, and Enterprise tiers run from $99 to $780 a month for more volume. There's no per-engine upsell, which is the lever most competitors pull to move you up a tier.
The model is credit-based: you're charged per prompt, per model, per run. That gives you fine control over spend, and it also means a heavy month of tracking can cost more than the $20 headline suggests. Coverage is the reason to pick it. If you want to see how a brand shows up across a long list of engines without paying enterprise rates, nothing else comes close on price.
What it lacks is the multi-client structure AEO Copilot is built around. It tracks brands, not client accounts with separate reporting and white-label output. For a solo consultant watching a wide engine spread, it's a strong, cheap option.
Pros: 9+ engines from the $20 plan, no per-engine upsell, fine control over spend.
Cons: credit-based billing climbs with heavy use, no client accounts or white-label reporting.
Best for: Solo consultants and small teams who want broad engine coverage at a low entry price.
Otterly.ai: Light use, solo users
Otterly reworked its pricing in 2026: the entry Lite plan is now $29/month for 15 prompts, with Standard and Premium tiers above it for more volume. There's still no permanent free plan, only a free trial. It's straightforward, covers the core platforms, and works fine for someone tracking 1 or 2 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.
Pros: cheap entry at $29/month, simple to run.
Cons: 15 prompts on the Lite plan, no permanent free plan, and none of the agency infrastructure.
Best for: Solo founders or marketers tracking 1 brand on a limited budget.
HubSpot AEO: Free grader, plus a paid monitoring tier
I've used this one hands-on.
HubSpot's free grader is still called the AI Search Grader, and HubSpot has added a paid AEO product next to it. The free grader is worth running on any stack: enter a brand and get a one-time snapshot of how you show up across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, with a visibility score, sentiment, and share of voice against competitors. No account, no caps.
The paid HubSpot AEO tier adds ongoing monitoring at $50/month with 25 prompts, and there's a free trial. That's the part to compare carefully. At $50 for 25 prompts it sits above AEO Copilot's $34 Freelancer plan, which includes 250 prompts and multi-brand support. If you already live in HubSpot's CRM, the integration can justify the premium. If you don't, you're paying for an ecosystem you're not using.
Pros: the free grader needs no account and works on any stack, and the paid tier lives inside the CRM you may already use.
Cons: $50/month for 25 prompts is thin value if you're not a HubSpot customer.
Best for: Teams already on HubSpot who want AI visibility data inside the same platform. The free grader is worth a run by anyone.
SE Ranking: SEO-first with AEO add-on
SE Ranking is primarily an SEO platform that has added AEO monitoring features. The Core plan at $129/month is the base SEO suite and doesn't include AI-visibility tracking on its own: that needs the $89/month AI Search add-on on top, or its standalone SE Visible product, which starts at $99/month and covers 5 engines, not Claude. The realistic cost for AEO tracking inside SE Ranking is $218 a month, not $129. If you're already using SE Ranking for keyword tracking and backlinks, the add-on is a natural extension. If you're looking for a dedicated AEO tool at that headline price, it's not what you'll get.
Pros: SEO and AI visibility in one platform if you're already a customer.
Cons: the real AEO cost is $218 a month (Core plus the add-on), not the $129 headline.
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. There's no published price anymore, just a contact-sales form, and the market rate for tools at this tier has climbed well past what a small agency can build a margin on top of.
Pros: content optimization and AI visibility tracking in one product.
Cons: no published pricing, enterprise-tier cost.
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.
Pros: a genuinely powerful builder for custom LLM workflows and content pipelines.
Cons: it doesn't monitor brand visibility, so it can't replace any tracker on this list.
Best for: Teams building internal AI workflows, not brand monitoring.
AI Clicks: Newer entrant, published pricing
AI Clicks has moved from a vague "pricing varies" listing to a clear published structure: Starter at $59/month for 30 prompts across 3 LLMs, Pro at $189/month for 150 prompts, and Business at $499/month for 300 or more, with custom pricing above that. There's no permanent free plan. The tiers land close to Otterly's, so the choice between them usually comes down to which engines you need covered and how the reporting looks.
Pros: clear published pricing, tiers that map cleanly to usage.
Cons: no permanent free plan, and the $59 entry covers 30 prompts across 3 LLMs.
Best for: Small teams who want a straightforward, published-pricing alternative to Otterly.ai.
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit: For teams already on Semrush
I've used this one hands-on.
Semrush added an AI Visibility Toolkit to its existing SEO platform: $99/month standalone for 25 prompts, plus $99 for each extra domain. Per Semrush's knowledge base, it covers Google AI Mode and ChatGPT. There's no free trial listed. If you want SEO and AI search together, Semrush's bundles start at $199/month.
It's not a dedicated AEO tool the way AEO Copilot or Peec are, and per-domain pricing gets expensive fast if you're running it across several client accounts. But if you already pay for Semrush, adding AI visibility to a tool you're already logged into is an easy call.
Pros: 25 prompts across ChatGPT and Google AI Mode, inside a platform your team already knows.
Cons: $99/month plus $99 for every extra domain, which multiplies fast across client accounts.
Best for: SEO teams already on Semrush who want AI visibility without adding another vendor.
AthenaHQ: Enterprise monitoring, credit-based pricing
AthenaHQ is a newer dedicated AEO platform that shows up alongside Profound, Peec, Otterly, and Scrunch in most comparisons. There's a free Essential tier with $25 of credit, then Starter at $295 a month ($245 on annual billing), and custom-priced Enterprise above that. Monitoring and its "Ask Athena" query feature share one credit pool, and lower tiers cap you to a single country.
Pros: a dedicated AEO platform that holds its own next to Profound and Scrunch in feature depth.
Cons: the free tier is only $25 of credit, 1 credit pool shared between monitoring and queries, single-country cap on lower tiers.
Best for: Enterprise teams who want a dedicated AEO platform and don't mind a credit-based pricing model.
How do I choose the right AEO management platform?
Match the platform to who you are and how many brands you track, not to the longest feature list.
If you're an AI startup, freelancer, or agency tracking your own brand or multiple client brands: AEO Copilot is built specifically for your workflow, and it's the cheapest way to plug AEO data into the way AI-native teams already work: its MCP server is included from $9/month, with write actions, rather than yet another dashboard. The free tier lets you test before committing, and the agency pricing leaves 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 your site is on Webflow, Webflow AEO keeps measurement and fixes in one place.
If you want broad engine coverage cheaply: Rankscale starts at $20/month and covers more engines than anything else at that price, as long as you're tracking brands rather than separate client accounts.
If you want a free starting point to understand where you stand: the free audit or HubSpot's AI Search 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 AI Search add-on before paying for a separate platform, and budget for it as its own line item, not part of the $129 Core plan.
If you're already on Semrush: the AI Visibility Toolkit at $99/month (plus $99 per extra domain) is the lowest-friction way to add AEO tracking without a new vendor.
AEO tool pricing: the 5 models
Every tool above prices 1 of 5 ways. Once you track more than 1 brand, the model matters more than the headline number.
Free. AEO Copilot has a permanent free plan: no credit card, no expiry. AthenaHQ's free Essential tier comes with $25 of credit. I'd rather put money into a free plan than into ads, and let you test the product.
Flat monthly. Predictable, and the easiest model to build a client retainer on.
Credit-based. The entry price looks low, then the invoice follows your usage. Good control, less predictability.
Per domain. Simple for 1 brand. Across 5 client sites, Semrush is $495 a month before you've done any work.
Sales call. The real number sits behind a demo, which usually means an enterprise budget.
Does any AEO tool charge per seat?
A few do. Scrunch AI's Starter plan includes 3 user licences, and extra seats cost $75/month (Scrunch pricing). Most other tools on this list include team access in the plan price or cap seats by tier.
Is there an AEO tool that doesn't charge per brand?
Yes. AEO Copilot's Agency plan is $99 a month flat with unlimited brands, which is the gap the per-domain and credit models leave open for agencies.
What you actually pay for at higher tiers
The mention data itself is a commodity. Every tool runs prompts against the same public AI engines. Higher tiers buy you volume, engine coverage, compliance, and integrations, not better underlying data.
AEO checker, checking software, tracker, analysis tool: what the names mean
People search for this category under a dozen different names, and vendors use the labels loosely. Here's how they map to what the tools actually do.
AEO checker, AEO checking software, AEO checking tools. A one-time test: run your site or brand through it, get a snapshot score. The free audit is a checker in that sense, and so is HubSpot's grader. Useful for a baseline, silent about trends. The best AEO checking tool is the one you'll actually run: free, no signup, results in minutes.
AEO tracker, AEO tracking software. The ongoing version (full guide to AEO trackers). It runs your prompts on a schedule and charts how your brand mentions move over time. Most of the tools on this list are trackers at heart; the AEO tracker and tracking software guide goes deeper on this category specifically.
AEO analysis tool, AEO analysis software. The reporting layer on top of tracking: sentiment, competitive share, and which sources the engines cite. If a tool only gives you a mention count, it tracks but doesn't analyze, and you'll feel the gap the first time a client asks why their score dropped.
AEO software, AEO platform, AEO monitoring tool. Umbrella labels for the same ongoing category. Vendors pick whichever sounds bigger.
The label matters less than the job. If you want a number today, a checker does it. If you want to know whether visibility is climbing or slipping month over month, you want a tracker. And when a client asks why the score dropped, that's the analysis layer plus a technical audit.
What to look for in any AEO tool
Before buying anything, check these 6 things:
- Which AI platforms does it track? At minimum: ChatGPT and Perplexity. Better: plus Claude and Google AI Overviews. Some tools only cover 1 or 2.
- Does it work with AI agents? If you run your work through Claude or another agent, a dashboard-only tool breaks your flow. Look for MCP or API access so your agent can pull the data and act on it. AEO Copilot runs as an MCP server from $9/month. Peec.ai, Scrunch AI and Profound have MCP servers too, but on plans from €85, from $300, or Enterprise only.
- 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, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews 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.
What's the most affordable AEO tool?
AEO Copilot. The free plan has no expiry, and the $9/month Startup plan is the lowest paid price on this list, covering all 4 engines on 1 brand. Plans stay flat at $34 and $99 with no per-brand fees, so it remains the cheapest option as you add brands. The closest alternative is Rankscale at $20/month, but its credit model means cost climbs with usage.
Where can I find affordable AEO and AI generation tools for agencies?
They're usually 2 separate purchases, and bundling them is what makes tools expensive. Affordable AEO tracking for agencies: AEO Copilot at $99/month flat for unlimited client brands, or Rankscale from $20/month if you accept credit-based billing. Tools that bundle AI content generation (Profound and Quattr, both on enterprise pricing) put you in a different budget class. The affordable route for an agency is a flat-priced tracker plus the AI agent you already pay for: Claude or ChatGPT writes the content, and with MCP access the tracker feeds it the visibility data to write from.
What's the best AEO checking software?
For a one-time check, the free audit: no signup, and it covers both how the brand shows up in AI answers and whether the site is technically readable. HubSpot's AI Search Grader is a solid second snapshot. If you need to check continuously rather than once, that's tracking software, and the free plan on AEO Copilot (1 brand, 50 prompts, no expiry) is the cheapest way to start.
Do AEO tools charge per seat or per domain?
Per-seat pricing is rare but not absent: Scrunch AI's Starter includes 3 user licences, with extra seats at $75/month (Scrunch pricing). Per-domain pricing exists too: Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit is $99/month, plus $99 for each extra domain. Most dedicated tools price by brand count or prompt volume instead, and AEO Copilot's Agency plan is flat at $99/month with unlimited brands.
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. From conversations with agencies I work with, a monitoring retainer runs about $400 to $700 per client per month (a standalone audit $500 to $2,500, full-service retainers from about $1,000). At that rate, even 2 clients cover the tool cost with significant margin remaining.
What's the difference between basic and enterprise AEO tools?
Volume, coverage, and compliance, not better data. Enterprise tiers add more prompts, more engines, SOC 2, analytics integrations, and support agreements. The underlying mention data comes from the same public AI engines at every tier.
Which AEO tool covers the most engines?
On published plans, Peec.ai's Enterprise tier goes furthest, with up to 13 models. Rankscale lists 9+ engines, all included from the $20 plan, Profound reaches 9 on its enterprise tier, and Scrunch AI covers 7. Most other tools cover the core 4: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
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.
Is there a free AEO checker?
Yes. The free audit runs a one-time AEO check on any URL with no signup, and HubSpot's AI Search Grader does a similar snapshot. For ongoing checks rather than a single run, AEO Copilot's free plan tracks 1 brand with no expiry.
What's the best AEO software?
It depends on scale. For startups, freelancers, and agencies tracking 1 or several brands, flat-priced software like AEO Copilot keeps the cost predictable. For enterprise teams, Profound and Scrunch AI offer more depth. Match the software to how many brands you track, not the headline feature list.
What's the best AEO checking tool for agencies?
Agencies need multi-brand support and reporting they can hand to a client, which rules out most single-brand checkers. AEO Copilot and Peec.ai are the 2 that hold up for client work; the deciding factor is usually flat versus credit-based pricing.