Best AI Visibility Tools in 2026: 4 Platforms Compared
There is no single best AI visibility tool. Monroya is best for local-service businesses that want ranked jobs and buyer-stage detail, Profound for enterprise publishing teams, AthenaHQ for the widest assistant coverage, and Otterly for low-cost monitoring. Here is how the four compare on fit, price and assistant coverage.
Updated: October 2026
By Jeremy Unruh, Founder, Monroya · Reviewed October 2026
What are the best AI visibility tools in 2026?
The four platforms most often shortlisted in 2026 are Monroya, Profound, AthenaHQ and Otterly. They all measure the same underlying thing — whether AI assistants name your brand when buyers ask questions — and they differ on three points that decide whether you actually move the number: how many assistants they cover, whether results break down by buyer-journey stage, and whether they hand you the fix or only the chart.
| Tool | AI Search Visibility metric | Assistants covered | Journey-stage breakdown | Ranked fixes + drafts | Starting price (2026) | Self-serve signup |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monroya | Share of voice + citation rate by buyer stage, scored 0–100 | 4 (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) | Yes — Discovery / Evaluation / Decision | Yes — ranked opportunities with drafts inline | $79/mo (Starter), $199 (Growth), $299 (Intelligence) — all flat | Yes — free plan, no card |
| Profound | Answer-engine share of voice + citation analytics | Up to 6+ on Enterprise | Partial (segmentable via prompts) | Publishing workflows, not ranked fixes | Undisclosed (Enterprise sales-led) | No on Enterprise |
| AthenaHQ | Mention rate, share of voice, citation intelligence | Up to 8 (incl. Copilot, Grok) | No native stage view | Alerts + intelligence, no drafts | Credit-based, from ~$99/mo | Yes |
| Otterly | Brand mention count + link position trends | 3–4 (ChatGPT, Google AI, Perplexity) | No | No — monitoring only | From ~$29/mo | Yes |
Cross-checked against each vendor's public pricing and product pages, October 2026. AI Search Visibility (Share of Model) is the comparison metric throughout.
Every tool above measures a version of the same core metric — AI Search Visibility, also called Share of Model: how often, and how prominently, your brand shows up in answers from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode, and other AI assistants for the questions your buyers actually ask. Monroya runs every tracked prompt across 4 major AI providers with multiple runs per prompt per day, segments results by Discovery, Evaluation, and Decision stages, and surfaces ranked fixes with drafts inline. Every account starts from a measured baseline, and each completed fix is checked against a later scan, so the movement you see is your own. We do not publish an average improvement figure, because too few accounts have a confirmed before-and-after result for that number to be honest yet.
How much do AI visibility tools cost?
Entry pricing in this category runs from about $29/mo to $299/mo, with enterprise tiers quoted on a call. Otterly starts around $29/mo for monitoring only. Monroya is flat-rate at $79 (Starter), $199 (Growth) and $299 (Intelligence) per month, with a free plan and no card. AthenaHQ is credit-based from roughly $99/mo, so your real cost moves with prompt volume. Profound does not publish Enterprise pricing and routes buyers through a demo.
The number that matters is cost per point of movement, not the sticker price. A cheaper monitoring-only tool that never changes the score costs more per point than a platform that hands you the fix.
Which AI visibility tool moves your score fastest?
No vendor publishes results that can be compared side by side. Each tool asks a different set of buyer questions, on its own schedule, across different assistants, so a "+7 points" from one vendor and a "+2 points" from another are not the same measurement. We are not going to print competitor numbers we cannot verify. We also do not publish our own improvement average yet, because too few accounts have a confirmed before-and-after result for that number to mean anything.
What we do publish is measured, and it is ours: the Monroya benchmark reports the share-of-voice scores actually recorded for accounts using Monroya, from real scans rather than a marketing claim.
The honest test of any tool is your own baseline. Pick one platform, keep your question set stable, and watch whether your numbers move after you act on what it tells you. A tool that only charts the score, and never tells you what to change, has no way to move it.
How should you choose between them?
Start from what you will do with the data. If you only need to know whether your score is moving, a monitoring-only tool is enough and costs the least. If your job is to move the score this quarter, pick a tool that ranks fixes and drafts them. If you sell into a long committee-driven cycle, stage-segmented data matters more than a blended score, because a brand can be strong in discovery answers and invisible in decision ones.
The category is young enough that the right tool depends heavily on who you are. A platform that fits a global brand team will frustrate a single business owner. The ranking below is by fit for a local-service business that wants to know where AI assistants leave it out and what to fix first — not by size, funding, or brand awareness. If you're a different buyer, the order changes, and each tool's trade-offs say so explicitly.
The 4 tools, ranked, with honest trade-offs
Monroya
Best for local-service businesses that want clear jobs, not just a dashboard.
Built for local-service businesses. Buyer-journey view as the home screen, ranked jobs with drafts inline, a free plan and flat-rate paid plans, no sales call.
Best for — Owners and small teams at local-service businesses who want to see where AI assistants leave them out, and what to fix first.
- — Ranked opportunities with drafts inline
- — Buyer-journey matrix (Discovery / Evaluation / Decision)
- — Starts at $79/mo, scales to $199 or $299, free plan, no demo
- — Covers 6 AI surfaces including Google AI Overviews and AI Mode
- — Built for operators, not brand-monitoring agencies
Profound
Best for global brand teams with procurement and dedicated AEO headcount.
The most established Answer Engine Optimization platform. Broad assistant coverage on Enterprise, polished publishing and research, dedicated support and SSO/SOC 2 at the top tier.
Best for — Global brand teams and agencies running coordinated AEO with dedicated headcount and procurement requirements.
- — Broadest enterprise feature set in the category
- — SSO, SOC 2, dedicated support at Enterprise
- — Deep research and publishing workflows
- — Enterprise tier is sales-led — no self-serve signup
- — Overkill for a single operator or small team
AthenaHQ
Best for mid-market teams whose buyers span the long tail of assistants.
Broad assistant coverage (up to eight, including Copilot and Grok) on a credit-based model. Notable for impersonation detection and citation intelligence.
Best for — Mid-market marketing teams whose buyers span the long tail of AI assistants, with comfort around usage-based pricing.
- — Widest assistant coverage (up to 8)
- — Impersonation detection and citation intelligence
- — Credit-based pricing makes forecasting harder
- — Reporting-heavy — fewer inline actions
Otterly
Best for marketing teams that want clean AI-mention dashboards on a budget.
An affordable, polished AI search tracker. Strong dashboards for brand coverage, mention counts, and position trends. Low-cost entry tier with unlimited team seats.
Best for — Marketing teams that need clean reporting on AI mentions and are willing to do the interpretation and the follow-through work themselves.
- — Lowest-cost entry point in the category
- — Unlimited team seats on paid tiers
- — Polished dashboards for mentions and positions
- — Monitoring-only — no drafts, no ranked next moves
- — Interpretation and follow-through is on you
What separates these tools from each other?
Self-serve or sales-led? Profound's Enterprise tier requires a demo; Athena, Otterly, and Monroya let you start without a call. If you can't start free today, you can't compare AI Search Visibility scores honestly.
Dashboard or recommendation? Otterly is reporting-first. Monroya is action-first. The others sit in between. Decide which behavior you want your tool to reinforce — looking at the score or moving it.
Breadth or depth on the assistant set? Athena and Profound (Enterprise) cover more assistants. Monroya covers fewer and goes deeper on each, with journey-stage breakdown. Match the choice to where your buyers actually are.
Mentions or citations? Most tools count how often your brand is named. Fewer show which of your pages the assistant actually cited as its source. Mentions tell you where you stand; citations tell you what to publish next.
Otterly alternatives: a short list
If Otterly is the baseline, these are the tools people look at next. We rank by fit for local-service businesses, assistant coverage, competitor comparison, buyer-stage reporting, how answers are measured, and price. The order reflects who each tool is built for, not a tested performance ranking.
1. Monroya. Built for local-service businesses. Free plan with 10 questions checked weekly; paid plans at $79, $199 and $299 a month. Checks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI surfaces, and turns gaps into ranked jobs by buyer stage.
2. Peec AI. Self-serve tracking for SEO and content teams, with unlimited team users. Entry plan is around $95 a month; check current pricing on their site.
3. Scrunch. Core plan is $250 a month and covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot, with funnel-stage reporting. More assistants are on the Enterprise plan.
4. AthenaHQ. Credit-based pricing from roughly $99 a month, with wide assistant coverage. Check current limits on their site.
For the full head-to-head, see Monroya vs Otterly.
See where you stand before you buy anything
The fastest way to compare tools honestly is to know your own starting number. Monroya's free check runs a sample of buyer prompts across the major assistants and returns a score — no signup, no card.
Related reading
Frequently asked questions
- What is the best AI visibility tool in 2026?
- There is no single best tool for everyone. Monroya fits local-service businesses that want plain-language jobs and buyer-stage detail, Profound fits enterprise teams with publishing workflows, AthenaHQ fits teams who want the widest assistant coverage, and Otterly fits anyone who only needs low-cost monitoring.
- How do AI visibility tools differ from traditional SEO tools?
- Traditional SEO tools measure rankings on a results page. AI visibility tools run buyer questions through assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode and measure whether your brand is named in the answer and which sources the answer cites. The two overlap, but a page can rank well and still never be quoted.
- What is the difference between a mention and a citation?
- A mention is your brand name appearing in the text of an answer. A citation is a link the assistant credits as its source. Mentions build awareness; citations show which of your pages the model actually pulled from, which is what tells you where to publish next.
- How much do AI visibility tools cost?
- Entry pricing runs from about $29/mo for monitoring-only tools up to $79 to $299/mo for flat-rate platforms, with enterprise tiers quoted on a call. Credit-based pricing starts around $99/mo and varies with usage. Each vendor's pricing page is linked below so you see current numbers.
- Which AI engines should I track?
- Track the assistants your buyers actually use. For most businesses that means ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. Broader coverage including Copilot and Grok is available from some tools, but depth on the six that carry the most buyer traffic matters more than a longer list.
- Is there a free way to check my AI visibility?
- Yes. Monroya's free check runs a sample of buyer prompts and returns a score with no signup and no card. It is a snapshot rather than continuous tracking, but it tells you whether you have a problem worth paying to fix.
- Is it worth running two AI visibility tools at once?
- Usually not. Different tools use different prompt sets and scoring, so two scores will disagree and neither will be wrong. Pick one, keep the prompt set stable, and measure movement against your own baseline.
- Why are you including yourself in this list?
- We built Monroya because the existing tools left a gap for local-service businesses: they reported a score without saying which buyer question you were missing or what to change. The comparison is honest, and the trade-offs section for each tool, including ours, says plainly where it is the wrong choice.