Best AEO Tools in 2026: 12 Answer Engine Optimization Tools Compared

The best AEO tools in 2026, also called answer engine optimization tools, depend on what you need after the data arrives. For the cheapest daily tracking, Otterly.AI starts at $29 a month. For more prompts and engines per dollar, look at SE Visible, Peec AI and Scrunch. If you already pay for HubSpot, Semrush or Ahrefs, their AEO add-ons are the easy first step. Large brands that need many engines, SSO and a sales contract go to Profound. If you want a tool that acts on the gaps by writing and publishing content, look at Frase, Bottally and Writesonic.

Prices checked October 2026 on each vendor's own pricing page, in US dollars unless stated. Bottally publishes this blog and appears in the last group. Tools are grouped by use case and ordered within each group by the price of the entry paid plan on monthly billing, lowest first, with ties in alphabetical order.

What are AEO tools?

AEO stands for answer engine optimization: getting your brand named and cited in the answers that ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode give. An AEO tool puts a set of buyer questions (prompts) to those engines on a schedule and records whether your brand is mentioned, whether your pages are cited as sources, and which competitors appear instead.

Most AEO tools are trackers. They tell you where you stand and stop there. A smaller group also suggests or writes the content that could change the answer. Knowing which kind you are buying is the most useful decision you can make before comparing prices.

Is AEO different from SEO?

Less than the marketing suggests. Google's own guide to optimizing for generative AI says AI Overviews and AI Mode are "rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems," and that "optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO." ChatGPT and Perplexity also search the web before they answer, so pages that rank and answer a question clearly tend to be the ones they read.

What is different is measurement. A ranking is a position on a page. An AI answer names a few brands, and it changes from one run to the next. That is why AEO tools exist: you need repeated checks across engines to see a pattern.

What are the best AEO tools for 2026?

Entry tier, monthly billing, as of October 2026:

Otterly.AI: $29 a month. 15 prompts, 4 engines included, daily.
Peec AI: $95 a month. 50 prompts, pick 3 models, daily.
SE Visible: $99 a month. 200 prompts, 5 engines, daily.
Scrunch: $250 a month. 125 prompts, 4 engines.
AthenaHQ: free tier; Starter $295 a month. Credits, 11 models on Starter.
HubSpot AEO: $50 a month. 25 prompts, 3 engines.
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit: $99 a month per domain. 25 prompts, daily.
Ahrefs Brand Radar: from $199 a month per AI platform; custom prompts from $50 a month.
Profound: custom pricing via demo; free 7-day trial for brands.
Frase: $49 a month. 50 prompts on 2 engines, plus 10 articles.
Bottally: $99 a month. 30 questions on 4 engines, weekly, plus one article a day.
Writesonic: $99 a month. 50 prompts on 3 engines, daily, plus 15 articles.

Divide price by prompts and the entry tiers range from about 50 cents a tracked prompt (SE Visible) to about $4 (Semrush) a month. That is before you account for how many engines each prompt runs on, how often it refreshes, and whether the tool does anything with the result.

Dedicated AEO trackers

These tools exist to measure AI visibility. They track deeper than the add-ons and leave the content work to you.

Otterly.AI

Otterly.AI tracks brand mentions and cited sources daily and adds a GEO audit that tests 19 AI crawlers against your robots.txt and server.

Price: Lite $29 a month, or $25 a month billed annually. Standard $189, Premium $489. 7-day free trial, no card.
Tracks: 15 prompts on Lite across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Google AI Mode and Gemini are $9 a month each on Lite; Claude is $29.
Best for: consultants and small businesses that want daily tracking for a handful of questions at the lowest price.
Limitation: Lite's 15 prompts cannot be extended, and AI Mode, Gemini and Claude cost extra on every tier.

Peec AI

Peec AI tracks daily, with unlimited users on every plan. Its newer Actions feature ranks opportunities and opens existing pages in an editor with suggested changes.

Price: Starter $95 a month, or $80 a month billed annually. Pro $245, Advanced $495. Free trial.
Tracks: 50 prompts on Starter, on 3 models you choose from ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini and others. Extra models are $35 a month each on Starter. Includes a crawlability audit for 40+ bots.
Best for: marketing teams that want share-of-voice data the whole team can open.
Limitation: three models on the entry tier, and each extra one adds to the bill. Our Peec AI alternatives page compares it with tools that also publish.

SE Visible

SE Visible is SE Ranking's AI visibility product. It collects answers through a real browser rather than an API and refreshes them daily.

Price: Basic $99 a month, or $79 a month billed annually. Core $189, Plus $355. 10-day free trial.
Tracks: 200 prompts on Basic across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and AI Overviews, in up to 7 countries.
Best for: teams that want the most prompts and engines for an entry price.
Limitation: no Claude or Copilot yet, and reporting and extra user seats are listed as coming soon.

Scrunch

Scrunch tracks prompts by persona and country and adds site audits and AI bot traffic data.

Price: Core $250 a month. 7-day free trial.
Tracks: 125 prompts and 5,000 responses a month across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot, with 5 user licenses and 5 site audits a month.
Best for: mid-size brands that want persona-level tracking and audits in one place.
Limitation: Gemini, Google AI Mode and Claude are Enterprise only.

AthenaHQ

AthenaHQ prices by credits, where one credit is one AI response, rather than by prompt.

Price: Essential is free with 300 credits. Starter $295 a month, or $245 a month billed annually, with 3,600 credits a month.
Tracks: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot on the free tier; 11 models on Starter, adding AI Mode, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral. Starter includes unlimited prompts and seats and a content optimization agent.
Best for: teams that want the widest model list and a free tier to try it on.
Limitation: usage is capped by credits, and API access and extra credits are billed on top.

AEO in tools you may already pay for

If your team lives in one of these platforms, its AEO module keeps everything in one login.

HubSpot AEO

HubSpot AEO adds a visibility score, share of voice, citation analysis and recommendations. It does not need a HubSpot subscription.

Price: $50 a month, or $45 a month billed annually. Included with Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise. You can track 25 prompts free, no card.
Tracks: 25 prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
Best for: HubSpot customers who want AI visibility next to their CRM data.
Limitation: it is labeled beta, covers three engines, and does not track Google AI Overviews or AI Mode.

Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

The Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit adds daily prompt tracking, prompt research and an AI-readiness site audit to Semrush.

Price: $99 a month per domain. 50 extra prompts cost $60 a month. Semrush says the toolkit has no free trial; a free checker allows three checks a day.
Tracks: 25 custom prompts daily, with mentions from ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity according to Semrush's pricing page.
Best for: Semrush users who want AI and classic SEO data side by side.
Limitation: at about $4 a tracked prompt, it is the most expensive per prompt in this list, though the price also covers prompt research and a site audit.

Ahrefs Brand Radar

Ahrefs Brand Radar works from a database of more than 489 million prompts, so you can see your visibility without writing prompts yourself.

Price: the AI Visibility Index starts at $199 a month per platform, or $699 a month for all. Custom prompt tracking starts at $50 a month for 2,500 checks. Paid Ahrefs plans from $129 a month include 5 tracked prompts.
Tracks: AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot; custom prompts can add Claude.
Best for: brands and agencies that want to benchmark against competitors across a large prompt set.
Limitation: the index is priced per platform, and Ahrefs notes it may have limited coverage for brands with little search volume.

Enterprise AEO platforms

Profound

Profound covers up to nine engines on Enterprise, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, Claude and AI Overviews, and adds credit-based agents that write new articles and refresh existing ones.

Price: custom/demo for brands. A free 7-day trial runs 50 prompts daily on ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews. Agencies can self-serve from $99 a month.
Tracks: up to 9 engines on Enterprise, plus agent analytics and prompt volumes.
Best for: enterprise brands that need many engines, SSO and SOC 2, and a vendor that runs content workflows too.
Limitation: brands cannot buy a paid plan without a demo, and trial users cannot customize their prompts. If that rules it out, see our Profound alternatives.

AEO tools that act on what they track

These three track AI answers and also produce the content meant to change them.

Frase

Frase researches, drafts, scores pages for SEO and GEO, publishes, and tracks AI visibility.

Price: Starter $49 a month, or $39 a month billed yearly. 7-day free trial, no card.
Tracks: 50 prompts on ChatGPT and Google AI on Starter, with 10 articles a month. Perplexity is added on Professional at $129 a month.
Best for: writers and small content teams who want tracking and an editor in one tool.
Limitation: two engines on Starter, and Frase says its AI visibility tracking "does not auto-fix."

Bottally

Bottally asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode up to 30 buyer questions every week and records whether your brand is named or cited, and who is named instead. Questions where you are missing become articles. Each week it researches keywords, audits your site, writes seven articles and publishes one a day to your CMS. It also runs an opt-in backlink network.

Price: Pro $99 a month for one site. The Free plan does not track AI engines or publish.
Tracks: 30 questions on 4 engines, re-run weekly.
Best for: founders and small teams who want the tracking and the work that follows it in one plan.
Limitation: it is not a deep enterprise analytics suite. One site, 30 questions, four engines and weekly runs. Teams that need hundreds of prompts, many regions, or Claude and Gemini coverage should use a dedicated tracker above.

Writesonic

Writesonic combines AI visibility tracking with content agents, site audits and AI crawler analytics.

Price: Starter $79 a month billed annually; self-serve from $99 a month on monthly billing. 7-day refund policy.
Tracks: 50 prompts daily on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, plus 15 AI articles and 10 site audits a month.
Best for: marketing teams who want tracking, content and AI bot analytics from one vendor.
Limitation: Perplexity, Claude and AI Mode are tracked only on Enterprise, and the full Action Center is Enterprise only.

How to choose an answer engine optimization tool

Check the engines on your tier, not the brochure. Several tools list nine or more engines but include three or four on the entry plan. If your buyers use Google, make sure AI Overviews and AI Mode are on the plan you will pay for.
Count prompts honestly. Write down the 20 to 50 questions a buyer asks before choosing you. If the entry tier holds fewer, you will pay for the next tier.
Look at refresh rate and collection method. Daily runs catch more variation than weekly ones. Some tools collect answers through a real browser, some through APIs, and the two can differ.
Separate mentions from citations. A mention means the answer names you. A citation means it links to your page as a source. Good tools report both.
Decide what happens next. If nobody on your team will write the pages a tracker points to, a tracker alone will show you the same gaps every week.
Prefer monthly terms at first. This category is young, and several vendors changed their plans during 2026. Avoid annual contracts until you know which data you use.

Can you do AEO for free?

You can get a baseline without paying:

Bottally's AI visibility checker puts your buyer questions to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode and shows whether you are named or cited, and who is named instead. The AI Overview checker shows whether Google shows an AI Overview for a query and which sites it cites.
Ahrefs and Semrush both offer free one-off checkers; Semrush's allows three checks a day without an account.
HubSpot lets you track 25 prompts free, and AthenaHQ's free tier includes 300 credits.
Google Search Console now has a generative AI performance report for AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Bing Webmaster Tools has an AI Performance report for Copilot citations. Our guide to the best GEO tools covers both.

Free checks are snapshots. AI answers vary between runs, so a pattern needs repeated checks over weeks.

How to implement AEO

List the questions buyers ask before they choose a product like yours.
Check which of them AI engines answer without naming you.
Make sure AI crawlers and Google can reach and index your pages.
Publish a clear, specific page for each gap, with the answer near the top.
Earn mentions on the sites engines already cite for your topic.
Re-check every week and adjust.

Steps 3 and 4 are where most of the work is, and they are the same work as good SEO.

What are AEO services?

AEO services are agencies or consultants who run that process for you: they pick the questions, track answers, write or rework pages, and pursue mentions. They cost far more than a tool and bring judgment a tool does not. If you are weighing the two, see AI SEO agent vs SEO agency.

Is SEO dead now with AI?

No. Google's AI features are built on its Search index and ranking systems, and ChatGPT and Perplexity read web pages to answer. Ranking still matters; what changed is that being ranked is no longer the whole result, so you also need to know whether the answer names you.

Can any AEO tool guarantee that ChatGPT mentions you?

No. No tool controls what an AI engine says. Google's advice about SEOs who guarantee first place is to "find someone else", and the same rule fits any promise of guaranteed AI mentions.

Start with your own baseline

Start with the AI visibility checker on your site and see which buyer questions go to competitors. If you want those questions tracked every week and answered with a new article each day, Bottally Pro is $99 a month.