You can find out whether AI engines cite you for free, and track it properly from $29 a month. This guide prices every budget route, from one-off graders to the entry plans of the dedicated trackers, with each figure read from the vendor's own pricing page on October 19, 2026. For the full field beyond the budget picks, see our eight-tool comparison.
Short version: run HubSpot's free grader first, start paid tracking with Otterly.AI at $29, and treat the suites as worthwhile only if you already pay for one.
Every budget option, cheapest first
| Tool and plan | Per month | What you get | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI Search Grader | Free | One-off brand score across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini | A snapshot, not tracking |
| Profound trial | Free for 7 days | 50 prompts run daily across ChatGPT, Gemini, and AI Overviews | No exports or support, and paid plans are custom enterprise contracts |
| Otterly.AI Lite | $29 ($25 annual) | 15 prompts checked daily across four engines | 15 prompts go fast, and API access starts at the $189 tier |
| HubSpot AEO | $50 | Ongoing AI visibility monitoring from the grader's maker | Thin public detail next to the dedicated trackers |
| Knowatoa Starter | $59 | ChatGPT, AI Overviews, and AI Mode, with citation and sentiment alerts | Covers 3 of its 7 supported services; API needs the $199 Growth plan |
| OGTool Starter | $100 | 30 tracked keywords with revenue attribution, plus content publishing and DR building | Verified wins bill outcome fees against an included $50 monthly credit |
| Ahrefs Lite | $129 | A full SEO suite with Brand Radar included | Custom prompt tracking is a separate product from $199 |
| Semrush SEO | $139 ($117.33 annual) | AI visibility built into the SEO plan | The AI features come only with the whole suite |
| SE Ranking Core + AI | $218 ($174.40 annual) | 200 AI prompts plus a complete SEO platform | The $89 add-on cannot be bought without a $129 base plan |
Free before you pay
HubSpot's AI Search Grader scores your brand across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini in about two minutes with no account. It answers the first question (do AI engines know you exist?) well enough to decide whether paid tracking is worth it. Otterly.AI and Knowatoa both offer free trials on their paid plans, and Profound's 7-day trial runs 50 prompts a day, generous enough to map your citation baseline before it ends.
Dedicated trackers under $60
Otterly.AI Lite at $29 is the cheapest daily tracking sold anywhere: 15 prompts across ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot, with unlimited team members. Fifteen prompts cover one brand and a handful of money questions, which is exactly the budget use case.
Knowatoa Starter at $59 trades two engines for alerting: citation tracking, brand sentiment alerts, competitor visibility gaps, and a weekly digest on ChatGPT, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. HubSpot AEO at $50 sits between them, though HubSpot publishes far less detail about what it includes.
The all-in-one math
Trackers measure; they leave the writing and link building to you. If that labor is the real cost, the all-in-one platforms replace it, and the price gaps are large: OGTool starts at $100 a month (30 keywords, content publishing, DR building, outcome fees against an included $50 credit), while Scrunch starts at $250 on annual billing and Athena at $295, and neither of those two publishes content or builds links. Disclosure: OGTool runs this site's publishing network. Athena's free tier is worth a look before any of them if you only need basic tracking.
The suite math
If you already pay for an SEO suite, check what you have before buying a tracker. Ahrefs includes Brand Radar in every plan from $129, Semrush builds AI visibility into plans from $139, and SE Ranking sells a clearly scoped add-on: $89 a month on a $129 Core plan for 200 tracked prompts. Buying a suite only for AI tracking is the expensive route; every dedicated tracker above undercuts it.
The cheapest path, step by step
- Run the free AI Search Grader to see where you stand today.
- If you need ongoing numbers, start with Otterly.AI Lite at $29 and 15 carefully chosen prompts.
- Outgrow 15 prompts? Compare Knowatoa's $59 Starter against Otterly's $189 Standard before upgrading.
- No writers or link budget? OGTool's $100 all-in-one replaces that labor, not just the measurement; compare it against the cost of doing the work yourself.
- On a suite already? Use its included AI features first, then add SE Ranking's $89 add-on math to any upgrade decision.
- Skip enterprise tools until citation volume justifies a sales conversation.
How we priced this
Prices checked on October 19, 2026, read from each vendor's own pricing page, linked in the table. Monthly billing unless marked annual. Peec AI is absent because its page renders prices in the browser and we could not verify a single figure; its tiers are covered in our three-way tracker comparison. Disclosure: OGTool runs this site's publishing network; no other vendor here has any relationship with aipedians, and nobody paid for placement.