The best AEO and GEO tools in 2026: an honest comparison

More people now ask an AI assistant before they ask Google. Those assistants answer with a short list of brands. If your brand is not on that list, the buyer may never see you. A new group of tools has grown up to measure this. This guide compares the main ones, with prices as listed on each vendor's own site on October 8, 2026.

Ripplix publishes this guide, and Ripplix is one of the tools in it. So this guide gives no scores or rankings. Where a rival does something better than Ripplix, we say so.

What AEO and GEO mean, and why the tool you pick matters

AEO stands for answer engine optimization. GEO stands for generative engine optimization. Both mean the same practical job: helping your brand show up, and show up well, in answers written by AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode.

A few terms come up again and again in this guide:

• Prompt: the question someone types into an AI tool, such as "best CRM for a small sales team".
• Mention: your brand's name appears in the AI's answer.
• Citation: the AI links to a web page as a source for its answer. That page might be yours, a competitor's, or a review site.
• Share of voice: how often your brand appears compared with your competitors, across the same set of prompts.
• Engine: one AI product you track, such as ChatGPT or Perplexity.

The audience for these answers is now large:

Search has not disappeared. A Gartner survey found that only about one-third of consumers say AI chatbots are as good as search engines for learning about something, and 82% had noticed AI Overviews.⁵ So most brands now need to be found in both places.

That's why the tool choice matters. The tools in this space measure very different things. Some run your own questions every day. Some show a big pre-built sample of questions instead. Some stop at a chart. Others try to tell you what to fix. A tool that does not fit your team will give you numbers you can't use.

How to choose an AEO tool

Before you look at any vendor, decide what you need. These seven questions cover most of the difference between tools.

1. Which AI engines does the plan you can afford actually include? Many vendors list a long engine list, but the entry plan often covers only three or four. The rest are add-ons or on Enterprise plans. Check the plan, not the homepage logo strip.
2. Does it track your own prompts, or a fixed database? Some tools let you enter the exact questions your buyers ask. Others show results from a large pre-built set of questions. A pre-built set is good for market research and history. Your own prompts are better for tracking your specific buyers.
3. How does it handle run-to-run variance? AI answers change every time you ask. A SparkToro study with about 600 volunteers found less than a 1 in 100 chance of getting the same list of brands twice for the same prompt.⁶ Some brands still showed up in 60% to 90% of answers. This means a single check tells you very little. Look for daily tracking and a visibility percentage over many runs. We explain how many checks you need in our guide to AI answer volatility.
4. Does it show citations and sources? Knowing that you were mentioned is step one. Knowing which pages the AI used as sources tells you where to work.
5. Does it help you diagnose and act? A chart that says "visibility fell 12%" is a start. The useful part is the next step: why it fell, which page won instead, and what to change. Ask each vendor to show you this live.
6. Does it fit an agency or a multi-brand team? Check how many brands, seats and client workspaces each plan includes. Check whether reports can be shared with clients.
7. What is the price per tracked prompt? Divide the monthly price by the number of prompts. Then check how many engines that covers. A cheap plan with few prompts or few engines can cost more per useful answer than it first looks.

The tools at a glance

Prices below are the lowest paid plan, per month, as listed on each vendor's own pricing page on October 8, 2026. "Contact sales" means the vendor does not publish a price. Engines are those included on the entry plan without add-ons.

A quick look at cost per prompt

Price alone can mislead. So here is our own arithmetic, from the entry plans above, as listed on October 8, 2026. We divide the monthly price by the number of tracked prompts.

This is not an apples-to-apples ranking. The number of engines differs. So does what you get beyond tracking. For example, SE Visible and Scrunch are cheaper per prompt than Ripplix, while Searchable and Trakkr include more engines on their entry plans. Use the table to ask better questions, not to pick a winner.

Dedicated AI visibility platforms

These tools were built for AI search from the start. Most of them track your prompts, show mentions and citations, and compare you with competitors. They differ in price, engines and how far they go past the numbers.

Ripplix

What it is. Ripplix is an AI search visibility platform built by the team behind a growth consulting business. Its founders spent years answering AI-visibility questions for clients by hand. Ripplix turns that work into software. The product follows one path: Monitor, Compare, Understand, Diagnose, Act.⁷

What it tracks. Visibility, share of voice, mentions and sentiment, average position, citations and sources, topics, prompt analytics and AI referral traffic. It also shows fan-out queries, which are the related questions an AI model explores while it writes an answer. All plans track daily and capture the citations behind your visibility.⁸

What it does after the numbers. This is where Ripplix puts most of its effort:

• Win/Loss Analysis compares your page with the page the AI cited instead. It scores both on signals such as structured data, freshness, depth, technical basics, authority and answer clarity. Then it explains why you lost the citation and gives an action plan. More on this in our Win/Loss Analysis guide.⁷
• "Why visibility changed" is a timeline that explains turning points, such as a guide that started gaining citations.
• Discussions finds the Reddit, Hacker News, Quora and forum threads that shape AI answers, with sentiment for you and your competitors.
• Content Optimization gives each page an AI-readiness score and lists fixes. Crawler Access checks whether the main AI crawlers can reach your site.
• Prompt Discovery finds real buyer questions from Reddit, Quora, People Also Ask and AI fan-out queries, and groups them into themes. See our Prompt Discovery guide.

Here is a short illustrative example, with an invented brand. Say "PipeTrack" sees its ChatGPT visibility drop for "best CRM for small teams". The timeline shows the drop started when a competitor published a new comparison guide. Win/Loss Analysis puts the two pages side by side. It shows the rival page is fresher and has a clear pricing table, while PipeTrack's page still lists last year's prices. The action plan says to update pricing, add a comparison table and add structured data. Discussions then points to a Reddit thread where PipeTrack is mentioned with mixed sentiment.

Pricing (as listed on ripplix.io/pricing on October 8, 2026, USD, excluding tax):⁸

Honest gaps. Ripplix is newer, smaller and bootstrapped. Its site does not list a public API, BI connectors or SOC 2, and SSO is only mentioned as an Enterprise option. Self-serve plans cover three or four engines, and Claude, Copilot, Grok and DeepSeek are on Enterprise only. Starter does not include Prompt Discovery or Crawler Access. You can start a self-serve plan without a credit card and see your first snapshot before you commit.⁸ There is also a free AI Visibility Report. And it is not an SEO suite, so there is no keyword database or backlink data.

"What stood out was that Ripplix goes beyond telling us whether we're mentioned. It helps us understand why." Harmeet Kaur, Snr Manager Marketing, MakeMyTrip

Profound

What it is. Profound calls itself an AI marketing platform. It tracks how brands appear in AI answers and adds AI agents that act on that data, including an "AI Marketer" agent.⁹ It raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation in September 2026 and says it works with over 1,000 enterprise brands.⁹

Best for. Large enterprises and agencies with a procurement process and a need for many engines, regions and integrations.

Pricing. The pricing page shows a free 7-day trial and a custom Enterprise plan with no published price. The trial covers 50 prompts on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Enterprise covers up to 9 engines and adds SSO, SOC 2 and API access.¹⁰

Watch-out. There is no self-serve paid plan for brands on the pricing page. Trial prompts are a recommended set that cannot be customized, per Profound's own FAQ.¹⁰ Read our full Ripplix vs Profound comparison.

Peec AI

What it is. Peec AI is a Berlin-based AI search analytics tool for marketing teams. It raised a $21 million Series A in November 2025.¹¹

Best for. Lean teams and agencies that want quick setup, daily tracking and unlimited seats.

Pricing. Starter includes 50 prompts, Pro 150 and Advanced 350. Each self-serve plan lets you choose 3 models, with more models sold as add-ons. Enterprise is custom and covers up to 13 models.¹² Peec's own comparison pages quote Starter at $95 a month.¹³ The pricing page itself shows no dollar figures, so confirm the current price with Peec.

Watch-out. Peec's own launch post for its Actions feature says it "doesn't write content for you". The same post lists measuring impact after you ship as a feature still to come.¹⁴ See Ripplix vs Peec AI.

Scrunch

What it is. Scrunch monitors brand visibility in AI search and offers AXP, a system that serves a machine-readable version of your site to AI agents. Sitecore announced it had acquired Scrunch on June 3, 2026.¹⁵

Best for. Brands that want prompt tracking plus bot-side content delivery, and Sitecore customers.

Pricing. The pricing page lists Starter at $300 a month, or $250 billed annually, with 350 custom prompts, 3 seats and a 7-day trial with no card. Growth is $500 a month. Enterprise is custom.¹⁶

Watch-out. Scrunch's own FAQ describes a different "Core" plan at $250 a month with 125 prompts and 4 AI platforms.¹⁷ Ask which plan you are buying. See Ripplix vs Scrunch.

Otterly.AI

What it is. A low-cost AI search monitoring tool with a brand visibility index, citation analysis and a GEO audit.¹⁸

Best for. Solo marketers and small businesses testing the waters. It also runs an agency partner program.

Pricing. Lite is $29 a month for 15 prompts. Standard is $189 for 100 prompts, and Premium is $489 for 400. Every plan has unlimited seats and daily tracking.¹⁸

Watch-out. Google AI Mode, Gemini and Claude are paid add-ons, not part of the base plan.¹⁸

Evertune

What it is. An "AI discovery" platform that measures brand visibility using a panel of more than 150 million prompts, sampling each prompt 100 times per model. It also includes a content studio and an ads agent.¹⁹

Best for. Advertisers, agencies and large brands. It shows WPP and Roku among its logos.¹⁹

Pricing. Pro is $800 a month and includes 100,000 tracked prompts. Enterprise is custom.²⁰

Watch-out. The $800 entry price is high for a small team. The panel approach also works differently from tracking your own short prompt list, so ask how your buyer questions map to it.

Searchable

What it is. An AI visibility platform that bundles tracking with content and site audit tools.²¹

Best for. Growth teams that want broad engine coverage and content tools in one place.

Pricing. Professional is $125 a month for 100 prompts, with a 14-day free trial and no card required. Scale is $400 a month for 500 prompts. Both cover ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini, Grok and DeepSeek.²¹

Watch-out. The trial is listed for Professional only. Check prompt limits if you track several products or markets, since 100 prompts fills up quickly.

Rankscale

What it is. A credit-based AI rank and visibility tracker with brand dashboards, page audits and prompt research.²²

Best for. Budget-conscious teams who want many engines, and agencies (its Growth plan offers white-label).

Pricing. Essentials is $17 a month, billed yearly only. Pro is $99 a month for 1,200 credits, with a 7-day trial. Engines include ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini, DeepSeek, Mistral, Claude, Copilot and Grok.²²

Watch-out. Credits make it harder to work out your true cost per prompt. Work through your own prompt count and engine count before you buy.

Trakkr

What it is. An AI visibility tracker covering citations, perception and site optimization.²³

Best for. Small teams who want many engines early, and agencies (Scale adds white-label client portals).

Pricing. Growth is $100 a month. Scale is $500 a month. All paid plans include 8 engines. There is a 14-day trial, and a card is required.²³

Watch-out. Trakkr's own review page lists 50 prompts on Growth and says crawler data is a paid add-on.²⁴

Knowatoa

What it is. An AI search monitoring tool with competitor gaps, citation tracking, sentiment alerts and weekly digests.²⁵

Best for. Small brand teams and agencies that report in Looker Studio or NinjaCat.

Pricing. Starter is $59 a month and covers ChatGPT, AI Overviews and AI Mode. Growth is $199 a month and adds Claude, Gemini, Meta AI and Perplexity.²⁵

Watch-out. The pricing page does not state prompt limits for each plan, so ask before you compare costs.

Goodie

What it is. An end-to-end AEO platform covering research, optimization, revenue attribution and product-level visibility in shopping assistants.²⁶

Best for. Brands that want a strategist included, and retailers who care about commerce assistants.

Pricing. Core is $399 a month for 120 prompts on 5 engines. Pro is $999 for 250 prompts on 8 engines, adding Gemini, Amazon Alexa and Walmart Sparky. For agencies, Agency Growth is $275 a month for pitch workspaces, and client workspaces are an add-on from $399 a month.²⁶

Watch-out. Claude and Gemini are not on Core.²⁶

Gauge

What it is. An AI visibility platform with an Action Center, a content engine and GA4, Search Console and DataForSEO integrations.²⁷

Best for. Brands that want to track a large number of prompts daily.

Pricing. Growth is $599 a month for 600 prompts run daily, 5 seats and 6 engines. Enterprise is custom. There is a 1-week trial.²⁷

Watch-out. Growth covers a single location. Claude and Grok need Enterprise, or your own API key.²⁷

OptimizeGEO

What it is. A GEO platform with prompt tracking, recommendations and a content writing tool.²⁸

Best for. Teams that want recommendations and content help, and can commit for a year.

Pricing. Standard is $499 a month for 75 prompts on 3 engines. Pro is $1,999 a month. All plans need a 12-month minimum.²⁸

Watch-out. Standard tracks prompts weekly, not daily, which matters given how much AI answers vary.²⁸

Bluefish

What it is. An "agentic marketing platform" that monitors and influences how large brands appear in AI answers. It raised a $43 million Series B in April 2026.²⁹

Best for. Large enterprise brand and marketing teams. Bluefish says about 10% of the Fortune 500 use it.²⁹

Pricing. Contact sales. No public price.

Watch-out. With no public plans, small teams cannot compare it on price.

Hall, now part of Tracksuit

Hall was an AI brand visibility tool. On July 21, 2026, it announced that it is "now part of Tracksuit", a brand tracking company. Its site now shows a waitlist for Tracksuit's AI visibility product.³⁰ So it is not a standalone option to buy today.

Also in the category. You will see other names in 2026 roundups, including AthenaHQ, Topify, Brandi AI, Adobe LLM Optimizer and HubSpot's AEO tool. Check each vendor's own pricing page, as packaging changes often.

SEO suites with AI visibility add-ons

These are established SEO platforms that added AI tracking. Their big strength is everything else they do: keyword research, backlinks, site audits and rank tracking. If your team lives in one of them, the add-on can be the simplest start.

Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

What it is. Semrush's AI visibility add-on. Semrush is now "an Adobe company". Adobe completed the acquisition on April 28, 2026.³¹

Best for. Teams that already use Semrush and want AI data next to their SEO data.

Pricing. $99 a month, with 25 tracked prompts. A paid subscription is required, and there is no free trial. Extra prompts cost $60 per 50, and each extra user or domain is $99 a month.³² Prompt tracking covers ChatGPT Search, Google AI Mode and Gemini.³³

Watch-out. Costs stack quickly for teams, because each teammate needs their own license.³² See Ripplix vs Semrush.

Ahrefs Brand Radar

What it is. Ahrefs' AI visibility tool. Its main feature is a pre-built index of more than 462 million prompts across AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and AI Mode. You can also track your own custom prompts.³⁴

Best for. Market research, competitor research and history, especially for teams already on Ahrefs.

Pricing. Brand Radar AI starts at $199 a month.³⁵ Ahrefs' help center lists $199 a month per AI index, and $699 a month for all platforms, including 2,500 custom prompt checks.³⁶ Custom prompt packs start at $50 a month for 2,500 checks.³⁵

Watch-out. Ahrefs says chatbot data in the index refreshes once a month.³⁶ The index is built partly from People Also Ask questions, and Ahrefs notes that long-tail prompts may be missing.³⁷ See Ripplix vs Ahrefs Brand Radar.

SE Visible (SE Ranking)

What it is. SE Ranking's standalone AI visibility platform. It tracks mentions, sentiment, competitors and cited sources, and collects answers through the browser interface rather than APIs.³⁸

Best for. Teams that want a lot of prompts for the money, and agencies that need an API and unlimited users.

Pricing. Basic is $99 a month for 200 prompts. Core is $189 for 450, and Plus is $355 for 1,000. There is a 10-day trial.³⁸

Watch-out. It covers Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity and ChatGPT. Claude is listed as planned, not live.³⁸

Conductor

What it is. An enterprise SEO and AEO platform. Its AI Search Performance module tracks mentions, citations, sentiment and AI bot crawls, and links AI visibility to referral conversions.³⁹

Best for. Large, security-conscious brands with many sites.

Pricing. Contact sales. A 3-week free trial is offered with no card required.⁴⁰

Watch-out. No plan limits are published, so you can't compare cost per prompt without a quote.

BrightEdge AI Catalyst

What it is. The AI search layer inside BrightEdge's enterprise SEO platform. It offers dashboards for presence and sentiment across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity, plus prompt suggestions.⁴¹

Best for. Existing BrightEdge customers.

Pricing. Contact sales.

Watch-out. The launch post's dashboards name three AI engines. Ask which others are covered before you buy.

Content and workflow tools

These tools focus on producing or refreshing content. Tracking is part of the package, but the main job is getting pages written and updated.

AirOps

What it is. A content platform for AI search. It combines visibility data with agents and workflows that create and refresh content, with human review steps.⁴²

Best for. Content teams publishing at volume.

Pricing. No public dollar prices. Solo and Pro plans "start for free" and are priced by task volume. Enterprise is custom.⁴²

Watch-out. Solo tracks ChatGPT only. Pro covers 7+ answer engines.⁴²

Writesonic

What it is. An AI writing and SEO suite with a GEO layer: AI visibility tracking, an Action Center, site audits and AI articles.⁴³

Best for. Teams that want content creation and AI tracking in one subscription.

Pricing. Starter is $79 a month billed annually, with 50 prompts. Enterprise is custom.⁴³

Watch-out. Starter to Growth cover only ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews. Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Copilot and AI Mode are Enterprise only. Sentiment starts on the Growth plan.⁴³

Which tool fits which team

Many teams end up with two tools. A common pair is an SEO suite for search data plus a dedicated AI visibility tool for prompt tracking and diagnosis.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between AEO and GEO?

In practice, very little. Both describe work that helps your brand appear in answers written by AI tools. AEO (answer engine optimization) is the older term. GEO (generative engine optimization) became popular with tools like ChatGPT. Most vendors use the two terms to mean the same thing.

Do I still need an SEO tool if I buy an AEO tool?

Usually, yes. AI answers often draw on pages that rank well in search. A dedicated AEO tool like Ripplix does not include keyword databases, backlink data or rank tracking. SEO suites like Semrush and Ahrefs do.

How many prompts should I track?

Start with the questions real buyers ask at each stage, from "what is" to "best X for Y" to "X vs Y". For many single-brand teams, 50 to 150 prompts is a workable start. The bigger point is to run them often. AI answers vary from run to run, so daily tracking over many runs gives a far more reliable picture than a single check.⁶

Which AI engines should I track?

Track the ones your buyers use. For most brands that means ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, given their size.³⁴ Add Gemini, Perplexity, Claude or Copilot if your audience uses them. Then check which engines are actually on the plan you can afford.

Why do tool prices vary so much?

Vendors price on different things: number of prompts, number of engines, credits, seats, brands, or content features. Some publish no prices at all. Divide the price by the number of prompts, then check the engine count, to compare fairly.

Is there a free way to start?

Yes. Several vendors offer trials, including Profound, Scrunch, Searchable, Rankscale, Trakkr and Gauge, as listed on their pricing pages. Ripplix lets you start a self-serve plan without a credit card and see your first snapshot before you commit. It also offers a free AI Visibility Report with no credit card required. It benchmarks you against up to four competitors.

Have any of these companies been acquired?

Yes. Adobe completed its acquisition of Semrush on April 28, 2026.³¹ Sitecore announced it had acquired Scrunch on June 3, 2026.¹⁵ Hall announced it is now part of Tracksuit on July 21, 2026.³⁰

Which tool tells me what to do next?

Several now try. Profound has AI agents, Gauge has an Action Center, OptimizeGEO lists recommendations on every plan, and Peec AI has an Actions feature in beta. Ripplix's approach is page-level diagnosis: Win/Loss Analysis shows which page won the citation and why, then gives an action plan. Ask every vendor to show you this step on your own data.

See where your brand stands before you pick a tool

The best way to judge any of these tools is to see your own numbers. Ripplix's free AI Visibility Report shows how AI answer engines see your brand, benchmarks you against up to four competitors, and lists the opportunities to work on first. No credit card is needed. You can also compare Ripplix plans.

Get your free AI Visibility Report →