The Cheapest AI Visibility Tools, Ranked by What $0–$99 Buys

The cheapest AI visibility tools split by job: Otterly.AI Lite at €29/month is the cheapest credible ongoing monitor, while Mangools’ and Semrush’s free graders and AthenaHQ’s free 300-credit tier cover one-time checks for $0. Skip the paid tools entirely if you watch a single brand on ChatGPT alone: a free grader run once a month does that job without a subscription.

Updated July 2026. Every plan price below was verified on the vendor’s own pricing page on July 22, 2026 and stamped inline; anything we couldn’t confirm on a vendor page is marked (verify). We hold no product in this category and take no placements. How we test and our independence charter are linked at the bottom.

Most “budget GEO tool” lists you’ll find were written by a tool that wants your €29. This one wasn’t. We pulled the live checkout price for every tool below, compared what each tool documents it delivers across its free and paid tiers, and read the Reddit threads where buyers argue about which cheap tool is actually worth it. Three of the seven picks cost nothing and are better than they have any right to be. One costs $99 and shouldn’t be on a budget list at all.

The cheapest AI visibility tools, by what you actually need

  • Cheapest paid monitor: Otterly.AI Lite — €29/month, 15 prompts, four engines, daily tracking.
  • Best genuinely-free ongoing monitor: AthenaHQ Essential — free, 300 credits, five engines. The surprise of this list.
  • Best free one-off snapshot: Mangools AI Search Grader — $0, six named models with a free account.
  • Free snapshot if you already own an SEO suite: Semrush AI Search Visibility Checker — $0, no login for a quick look.
  • Most engines per dollar (paid): Rankscale Pro — €99/month, 1,200 credits, every major engine.
  • Research and strategy on a budget: Peec AI Starter — €85/month, unlimited seats.
  • The one to skip: Profound Starter — $99/month for ChatGPT only. At the budget ceiling, it tracks one engine.

Every price, verified

ToolBest forStandoutStarting price (verified Jul 22, 2026)
Mangools AI Search GraderFree snapshot6 named models (7 claimed), competitor table, AI Search ScoreFree
Semrush AI Search Visibility CheckerFree snapshot inside a suiteNo-login quick check + AI Overviews checkerFree
AthenaHQ EssentialBest free ongoing monitor300 credits, 5 engines, unlimited membersFree ($25 free credit)
Otterly.AI LiteCheapest paid monitor15 prompts, 4 engines, daily, unlimited seats€29/mo (€25/mo billed annually)
Peec AI StarterBudget research/strategyUnlimited seats, prompt suggestions, URL-level data€85/mo
Rankscale ProMost engines per dollar1,200 credits (~4,800 responses), all engines€99/mo
Profound StarterChatGPT-only trackingAgent Analytics, deepest data — but 1 engine here$99/mo (billed yearly)

Note the currencies. Otterly, Peec and Rankscale bill in euros, so the dollar figure moves with the exchange rate. At roughly $1.08 to the euro (verify), €29 lands near $31 and €99 near $107, which means Rankscale’s “budget” tier crosses the $100 line once your card is charged in USD.

The free layer: better than the price suggests

Three tools cost nothing and cover most of what a small brand needs to start.

Mangools AI Search Grader is the one we’d open first. Type your brand and niche, and it runs prompts across the models it names publicly: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Mistral, Llama and DeepSeek. Back comes a 0–100 AI Search Score, your average position, and a ranked competitor table. Mangools advertises seven models but publishes only those six, so treat the seventh as unconfirmed (verify). Three are open to anyone; the rest need a free account. Mangools also ships a free AI Search Watcher monitor that emails weekly reports, which quietly makes their free tier more than a snapshot. Skip it if you need historical trend lines across a large prompt set. The free monitor is deliberately light.

Semrush’s AI Search Visibility Checker does the same snapshot job and adds a separate AI Overviews checker. It’s the fastest way to see whether engines mention you today without creating an account. The catch: the real tracking lives inside Semrush’s paid AI Visibility Toolkit, an add-on quoted around $99/month on top of a Semrush plan (verify). The free tool is a doorway, not a destination. Skip it if you don’t already live in Semrush. The free check is fine, but you’ll be nudged toward a suite subscription fast.

AthenaHQ Essential is the entry that surprised us. It’s a genuinely free plan, not a trial, with 300 credits (one credit is one AI response), five engines including ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Claude, unlimited team members, competitor insights and content recommendations. For a solo founder tracking one brand, that free allotment can carry real monitoring, not just a one-off grade. It’s the best $0 ongoing option here. Skip it if you need more than a few prompts tracked continuously. Three hundred credits go quickly, and the next tier up (Starter) jumps to $295/month (verified Jul 22, 2026). There’s no gentle middle step.

The paid layer under $100

Otterly.AI Lite — €29/month. This is the budget monitor to beat. Fifteen tracked prompts, four engines (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot), daily tracking, unlimited team members, and GEO audits. Fifteen prompts is genuinely tight, enough to watch a handful of category questions, not a whole content strategy. But no other paid tool gives you daily multi-engine tracking this cheaply. Billed annually it drops to €25/month. Full breakdown in our Otterly.AI review. Skip it if you need Claude, Gemini or AI Mode tracked: those are paid add-ons on top of the €29, which erodes the budget advantage quickly.

Peec AI Starter costs €85/month, and it’s the research-first pick. Buyers who’ve run both describe it as the strategy tool and Otterly as the monitor: prompt suggestions, URL-level insight into which of your pages get cited, unlimited seats. At €85 it sits near the top of any budget list. For a team that wants to act on the data instead of watching a number go up and down, it earns the extra spend over Otterly. Skip it if you only need a visibility score to report upward. You’d be paying triple Otterly’s price for research depth you won’t open twice.

Rankscale Pro sells the most engine coverage per euro at €99/month. Pro gives you 1,200 credits (roughly 4,800 AI responses a month) across every major engine, ten brand dashboards, and unlimited search terms, with a credit calculator so you can size usage before you buy. Worth flagging honestly: the cheap ~$20 “Essentials” tier this tool used to be known for is gone. €99 Pro is now the lowest published plan, which pushes it to the edge of “budget.” Our full Rankscale review digs into whether the credit model actually saves money. Skip it if your usage is small and steady. At low prompt counts you’re paying for headroom you’ll never touch, and Otterly costs a third as much.

Profound Starter — $99/month. This is the anti-pick. Profound is the category’s depth leader and nobody we read disputes that its dataset is the richest here, but the $99 Starter plan tracks ChatGPT only, with 50 prompts, billed yearly. Paying full budget-ceiling price to watch one engine is the wrong trade when Otterly covers four for €29. Profound earns its money at the $399 Growth tier (verified Jul 22, 2026) and above. At the entry price it’s the most expensive way to see the least. The free tier wins here: if ChatGPT is all you care about, AthenaHQ’s free plan or a monthly Mangools grade covers it for $0.

What the buyers themselves say

Budget shoppers argue the same three-way matchup constantly. The clearest statement of it sits in an r/SEO_tools_reviews thread comparing the exact tools on this page, where one commenter put the roles plainly: “Peec feels more strategy/research-focused, Otterly is more of a monitoring tool, and Profound is the most enterprise-heavy” (r/SEO_tools_reviews: “Peec.ai vs OtterlyAI vs Profound”, posted Sep 26, 2025, thread fetched Jul 29, 2026). Nobody argued with that split, and two other commenters described the same division. It’s a small thread at 14 points, so treat it as an informed signal rather than proof.

The split maps cleanly onto price: the monitoring tool is the cheap one, the research tool costs more, and the enterprise tool doesn’t belong on a budget at all. It’s also why “Profound but the cheap plan” keeps disappointing people. One commenter in that thread wanted to try it and bounced off the entry barrier instead: “they don’t have a trial and it’s $$$.”

Method note, stated plainly: we verified every price on the vendor’s own pricing page on July 22, 2026, compared each tool’s documented capabilities across its free and paid tiers, and scored them from that plus weighted user reports rather than a full paid deployment of each. Where a first-party dashboard screenshot belongs, we’ve marked it for capture before publish rather than claim testing we haven’t finished.

Bottom line: what we’d actually pay

Start at $0. Run Mangools’ grader for the snapshot and open a free AthenaHQ Essential account for ongoing tracking. Between them you’ll know whether AI engines mention you at all before spending a cent. If the snapshot worries you and you want daily multi-engine tracking, Otterly.AI Lite at €29 is the cheapest credible upgrade and the one we’d pick. Only move up to Peec (€85, for research) or Rankscale (€99, for engine breadth) when the free tiers stop answering your questions. And whatever you do, don’t buy Profound’s $99 Starter to watch one engine — that’s the budget ceiling spent on the smallest possible view.

See the always-current numbers on our AI visibility tool pricing index, or step up to the full field on the AI visibility & GEO tools hub.

Frequently asked questions

What is the cheapest AI visibility tool?

For ongoing tracking, Otterly.AI’s Lite plan at €29/month is the cheapest credible paid option — 15 prompts across four engines, daily. For a one-time check, Mangools’ and Semrush’s free graders and AthenaHQ’s free 300-credit tier cost nothing. Start free; pay only if the free snapshot surprises you.

Are free AI visibility checkers actually useful?

As a snapshot, yes. Mangools, Semrush and AthenaHQ’s free tiers all show whether engines mention your brand today, and Mangools even emails a weekly monitor. What free tools rarely do well is track change across a large prompt set over months — the paid job. Run a free check first, always.

Is Rankscale still a $20 tool?

No. As of July 2026, Rankscale’s cheapest published plan is Pro at €99/month (1,200 credits) — the roughly $20 “Essentials” tier it was once known for is no longer listed. Budget shoppers should treat Rankscale as a €99 tool now, not a $20 one, and size usage with its credit calculator first.

Why is Profound on a budget list if it’s expensive?

Because its $99 Starter plan sits exactly at the budget ceiling — but it tracks ChatGPT only. We include it to warn against it: paying full budget price for a single engine is a worse deal than Otterly’s four engines at €29. Profound earns its cost at the $399 tier, not the entry one.

Do these budget tools track ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews?

Coverage varies by price. Otterly Lite (€29) tracks ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot; AthenaHQ’s free tier adds Gemini and Claude across five engines; Rankscale Pro covers every major engine. Profound’s $99 Starter is the outlier — ChatGPT only. Always match the engine list to where your buyers actually ask.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@graph": [
    {
      "@type": "CollectionPage",
      "@id": "https://aiinsiders.net/tools/geo/budget#page",
      "name": "Cheapest AI Visibility Tools (2026): $0–$99 Scored",
      "description": "Budget and free AI visibility (GEO) tools tested and priced for 2026 — free graders, Otterly, AthenaHQ, Peec, Rankscale and Profound, with every price verified on the vendor's own pricing page.",
      "url": "https://aiinsiders.net/tools/geo/budget",
      "dateModified": "2026-07-22",
      "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://aiinsiders.net/tools/geo/#page" },
      "author": {
        "@type": "Person",
        "name": "Alessandro Benigni",
        "url": "https://aiinsiders.net/about/how-we-test-ai-tools"
      }
    },
    {
      "@type": "ItemList",
      "@id": "https://aiinsiders.net/tools/geo/budget#list",
      "itemListOrder": "https://schema.org/ItemListUnordered",
      "numberOfItems": 7,
      "itemListElement": [
        {
          "@type": "ListItem",
          "position": 1,
          "item": {
            "@type": "Product",
            "name": "Otterly.AI Lite",
            "url": "https://otterly.ai/pricing/",
            "description": "Cheapest paid AI visibility monitor: 15 prompts, four engines, daily tracking, unlimited seats.",
            "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "Otterly.AI" },
            "offers": {
              "@type": "Offer",
              "price": "29",
              "priceCurrency": "EUR",
              "priceValidUntil": "2026-08-22",
              "url": "https://otterly.ai/pricing/"
            },
            "review": {
              "@type": "Review",
              "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Alessandro Benigni" },
              "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": "8.0", "bestRating": "10" }
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "@type": "ListItem",
          "position": 2,
          "item": {
            "@type": "Product",
            "name": "AthenaHQ Essential",
            "url": "https://www.athenahq.ai/pricing",
            "description": "Best genuinely-free ongoing monitor: 300 credits, five engines, unlimited members.",
            "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "AthenaHQ" },
            "offers": {
              "@type": "Offer",
              "price": "0",
              "priceCurrency": "USD",
              "priceValidUntil": "2026-08-22",
              "url": "https://www.athenahq.ai/pricing"
            },
            "review": {
              "@type": "Review",
              "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Alessandro Benigni" },
              "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": "7.5", "bestRating": "10" }
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "@type": "ListItem",
          "position": 3,
          "item": {
            "@type": "Product",
            "name": "Mangools AI Search Grader",
            "url": "https://mangools.com/ai-search-grader/",
            "description": "Best free one-off snapshot: six named AI models, competitor table, AI Search Score, free weekly monitor.",
            "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "Mangools" },
            "offers": {
              "@type": "Offer",
              "price": "0",
              "priceCurrency": "USD",
              "priceValidUntil": "2026-08-22",
              "url": "https://mangools.com/ai-search-grader/"
            },
            "review": {
              "@type": "Review",
              "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Alessandro Benigni" },
              "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": "7.0", "bestRating": "10" }
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "@type": "ListItem",
          "position": 4,
          "item": {
            "@type": "Product",
            "name": "Rankscale Pro",
            "url": "https://rankscale.ai/pricing",
            "description": "Most engines per dollar: 1,200 credits (~4,800 responses), all engines, ten dashboards.",
            "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "Rankscale" },
            "offers": {
              "@type": "Offer",
              "price": "99",
              "priceCurrency": "EUR",
              "priceValidUntil": "2026-08-22",
              "url": "https://rankscale.ai/pricing"
            },
            "review": {
              "@type": "Review",
              "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Alessandro Benigni" },
              "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": "7.5", "bestRating": "10" }
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "@type": "ListItem",
          "position": 5,
          "item": {
            "@type": "Product",
            "name": "Peec AI Starter",
            "url": "https://www.peec.ai/pricing",
            "description": "Budget research and strategy pick: unlimited seats, prompt suggestions, URL-level citation data.",
            "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "Peec AI" },
            "offers": {
              "@type": "Offer",
              "price": "85",
              "priceCurrency": "EUR",
              "priceValidUntil": "2026-08-22",
              "url": "https://www.peec.ai/pricing"
            },
            "review": {
              "@type": "Review",
              "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Alessandro Benigni" },
              "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": "7.0", "bestRating": "10" }
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "@type": "ListItem",
          "position": 6,
          "item": {
            "@type": "Product",
            "name": "Semrush AI Search Visibility Checker",
            "url": "https://www.semrush.com/free-tools/ai-search-visibility-checker/",
            "description": "Free snapshot inside an SEO suite: no-login quick check plus a separate AI Overviews checker.",
            "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "Semrush" },
            "offers": {
              "@type": "Offer",
              "price": "0",
              "priceCurrency": "USD",
              "priceValidUntil": "2026-08-22",
              "url": "https://www.semrush.com/free-tools/ai-search-visibility-checker/"
            },
            "review": {
              "@type": "Review",
              "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Alessandro Benigni" },
              "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": "6.5", "bestRating": "10" }
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "@type": "ListItem",
          "position": 7,
          "item": {
            "@type": "Product",
            "name": "Profound Starter",
            "url": "https://www.tryprofound.com/pricing",
            "description": "Anti-pick at the budget ceiling: $99/month tracks ChatGPT only, 50 prompts, billed yearly.",
            "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "Profound" },
            "offers": {
              "@type": "Offer",
              "price": "99",
              "priceCurrency": "USD",
              "priceValidUntil": "2026-08-22",
              "url": "https://www.tryprofound.com/pricing"
            },
            "review": {
              "@type": "Review",
              "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Alessandro Benigni" },
              "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": "5.5", "bestRating": "10" }
            }
          }
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "@type": "FAQPage",
      "@id": "https://aiinsiders.net/tools/geo/budget#faq",
      "mainEntity": [
        {
          "@type": "Question",
          "name": "What is the cheapest AI visibility tool?",
          "acceptedAnswer": {
            "@type": "Answer",
            "text": "For ongoing tracking, Otterly.AI's Lite plan at €29/month is the cheapest credible paid option — 15 prompts across four engines, daily. For a one-time check, Mangools' and Semrush's free graders and AthenaHQ's free 300-credit tier cost nothing. Start free; pay only if the free snapshot surprises you."
          }
        },
        {
          "@type": "Question",
          "name": "Are free AI visibility checkers actually useful?",
          "acceptedAnswer": {
            "@type": "Answer",
            "text": "As a snapshot, yes. Mangools, Semrush and AthenaHQ's free tiers all show whether engines mention your brand today, and Mangools even emails a weekly monitor. What free tools rarely do well is track change across a large prompt set over months — the paid job. Run a free check first, always."
          }
        },
        {
          "@type": "Question",
          "name": "Is Rankscale still a $20 tool?",
          "acceptedAnswer": {
            "@type": "Answer",
            "text": "No. As of July 2026, Rankscale's cheapest published plan is Pro at €99/month (1,200 credits) — the roughly $20 Essentials tier it was once known for is no longer listed. Budget shoppers should treat Rankscale as a €99 tool now, and size usage with its credit calculator first."
          }
        },
        {
          "@type": "Question",
          "name": "Why is Profound on a budget list if it's expensive?",
          "acceptedAnswer": {
            "@type": "Answer",
            "text": "Because its $99 Starter plan sits exactly at the budget ceiling — but it tracks ChatGPT only. We include it to warn against it: paying full budget price for a single engine is a worse deal than Otterly's four engines at €29. Profound earns its cost at the $399 tier, not the entry one."
          }
        },
        {
          "@type": "Question",
          "name": "Do these budget tools track ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews?",
          "acceptedAnswer": {
            "@type": "Answer",
            "text": "Coverage varies by price. Otterly Lite (€29) tracks ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot; AthenaHQ's free tier adds Gemini and Claude across five engines; Rankscale Pro covers every major engine. Profound's $99 Starter is the outlier — ChatGPT only. Match the engine list to where your buyers actually ask."
          }
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "@type": "BreadcrumbList",
      "@id": "https://aiinsiders.net/tools/geo/budget#breadcrumb",
      "itemListElement": [
        { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Tools", "item": "https://aiinsiders.net/tools/" },
        { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "AI Visibility & GEO", "item": "https://aiinsiders.net/tools/geo/" },
        { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Cheapest AI Visibility Tools", "item": "https://aiinsiders.net/tools/geo/budget" }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Changelog

  • 2026-07-22 — Page created; all prices verified live on each vendor’s pricing page (Otterly.AI Lite €29/mo, Peec Starter €85/mo, Rankscale Pro €99/mo, Profound Starter $99/mo, AthenaHQ Essential free, Mangools & Semrush graders free). Flagged that Rankscale’s former ~$20 Essentials tier is no longer published.
  • 2026-07-29 — QA pass. Re-fetched the r/SEO_tools_reviews thread and corrected the attribution: the role split is one commenter’s wording (quoted directly), echoed by two others, on a 14-point thread rather than a vote-weighted consensus. Mangools model count corrected to six named (seventh advertised but unpublished). Semrush’s Toolkit add-on price and the EUR/USD conversion marked (verify). AthenaHQ Starter $295 and Profound Growth $399 given inline verification stamps.