Best AEO Tools in 2026: 7 AI Visibility Trackers Compared

*Last verified: August 2026*

Quick answer: AEO tools (also called AI visibility, GEO, or LLM visibility tools) track whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews mention or cite your brand when people ask questions in your category. The best options in 2026 are Profound for enterprise teams, MentionBird for founders who want fixes rather than just dashboards, Peec AI for competitive share of voice, and Otterly.AI, AthenaHQ, Rankscale and Trakkr for self-serve budgets.

Below is a short, verified comparison. Every price was checked against the vendor's own pricing page in August 2026.

Comparison at a glance

1. Profound

Profound is the enterprise reference point in this category. It tracks brand mentions and citations across up to nine answer engines and adds "agent traffic" analytics, so you can see when AI agents, not just humans, are hitting your site. The catch for smaller teams is that the $99 Starter plan only tracks ChatGPT; you need Growth ($399/mo) for three engines and Enterprise for the full set.

Best for: brands with a global footprint and a budget to match.

2. MentionBird

MentionBird takes a different angle from most trackers: instead of stopping at "you were mentioned 12 times," it shows which sources ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude actually cite in your category, why competitors get recommended over you, and gives you a per-prompt plan to win the mention. That makes it one of the few tools in this list built around fixing visibility, not just measuring it.

Starter is $79/mo (100 daily prompt runs, ChatGPT and Gemini, 1 brand plus 5 competitors). Growth at $299/mo adds Perplexity and Claude and tracks 3 brands. All eight engines, including Google AI Overviews, Grok, Copilot and DeepSeek, come on the Custom plan. There is no free plan, but code TRY19 gets you the first month for $19, and MentionBird also offers three free no-login tools: an AI crawler accessibility checker, an AI content score checker and a keyword-to-prompt generator.

Best for: founders and lean marketing teams who want to know what to change, not just what happened.

3. Peec AI

Peec AI is built around competitive share of voice. You pick three models on the Starter, Pro and Advanced plans (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews are available), and track 50 to 350 prompts daily. Enterprise unlocks every model, including Claude, DeepSeek, Qwen and Mistral. Pricing starts around $95/mo and a free trial is available.

Best for: SEO teams that need a clean competitor benchmark.

4. Otterly.AI

Otterly.AI is the cheapest way to start tracking seriously. The $29/mo Lite plan covers ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot; Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode are paid add-ons. Its useful trick is turning your existing SEO keywords into prompts, so you do not have to write a prompt list from scratch. Standard ($189/mo) adds API and MCP access plus agent analytics.

Best for: solo marketers who already have a keyword list.

5. AthenaHQ

AthenaHQ is the only tool here with a real free plan. Essential gives you $25 of credit, tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Claude, and includes content recommendations and an AI agent. Starter is $295/mo for 3,600 credits and nine models.

Best for: teams that want monitoring and content suggestions in one place without paying upfront.

6. Rankscale

Rankscale starts at $20/mo and tracks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, DeepSeek, Mistral, Grok, Copilot and more on a credit system. Pro ($99/mo) comes with a 7-day free trial, and the Growth plan ($385/mo) adds white-label reporting for agencies.

Best for: indie makers and small agencies.

7. Trakkr

Trakkr keeps things simple: every plan tracks the same eight models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Grok, DeepSeek and Meta AI). Growth is $100/mo for one brand and 50 prompts; Scale is $500/mo for ten brands with API access and client portals. There is a 14-day free trial with no credit card.

Best for: anyone tracking several brands who wants predictable pricing.

How to choose an AEO tool

Start with your budget and the engines that matter for your customers. If most of your buyers use ChatGPT, a cheap plan that only tracks ChatGPT is fine. If you sell to developers, Claude and Perplexity coverage matters more. Then ask one question: do you want a dashboard, or do you want a to-do list? Profound, Peec and Trakkr are strongest on measurement; MentionBird and AthenaHQ are strongest on telling you what to fix.

A word of caution: this category is barely two years old and churns fast. Several "tools" that appear in other roundups are squatted domains or agencies, and at least one well-known tracker is often listed at the wrong URL (Nightwatch lives at nightwatch.io, not nightwatchapp.com). We only list tools we have verified.

FAQ

What is AI visibility?

AI visibility is how often, and how favourably, AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini mention or recommend your brand when users ask relevant questions. It is the AI-search equivalent of a Google ranking.

How do you track brand mentions in ChatGPT?

You run a fixed set of prompts through ChatGPT on a schedule, log whether your brand appears and which sources are cited, and compare against competitors. AEO tools automate this across multiple engines and show the trend over time.

Are AEO tools worth it for a small startup?

Yes, if AI answers already send you traffic or your competitors are getting recommended and you are not. At $20 to $80 a month for entry plans, the cost is lower than most SEO tools.

Is AEO the same as GEO?

Effectively yes. AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) both describe getting your brand cited in AI-generated answers. Vendors use the terms interchangeably.

Browse all tools in Maarket's directory, or read our primer on the best AI tools and agent-ready products in 2026.