Best AI visibility tracking tools for software companies in 2026

By Roshan, founder of SearchMaxx - Oct 14, 2026 - updated Oct 18, 2026 - 7 min read

For most software companies, the best AI visibility tracker is Ahrefs Brand Radar if you already pay for Ahrefs, Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit if you already pay for Semrush, and Otterly.AI if you want a cheap standalone tool. Profound and Peec AI suit larger teams that need more engines and reporting. If you have no budget, a fixed list of 20 prompts asked by hand each week, logged in a spreadsheet, tells you most of what you need.

What these tools actually measure

Every tool here does the same basic job. You give it a list of prompts, such as "best invoicing app for freelancers". It asks one or more AI engines those prompts on a schedule, saves the answers, and counts how often your brand and your competitors appear. Most also record which web pages the engine cited.

Two things to know before you pay for one:

• Answers change from run to run. In a study by SparkToro and Gumshoe.ai, the same brand-recommendation prompt run 60 to 100 times gave the same list less than 1 time in 100 on ChatGPT and Google's AI. The same list in the same order came up less than 0.1% of the time. How often a brand appeared across many runs was far more stable than its position. (Search Engine Journal on the SparkToro study) So track the share of answers that name you, not your "rank".
• More prompts beat more features. A tool that checks 100 prompts once a week tells you more than one that checks 5 prompts every day.

The tools compared

Prices are as of October 2026, from each vendor's own pricing page.

Ahrefs Brand Radar

What it is. An add-on to Ahrefs that tracks brand mentions across AI answers, YouTube and Reddit. It covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and ChatGPT, with Claude also available. (Ahrefs Brand Radar)

Best for. Teams that already use Ahrefs for SEO and want AI mentions in the same place as backlinks and rankings.

Price. The Brand Radar AI add-on starts at $199 a month. Custom prompt packages are $50, $100 and $250 a month. You need a paid Ahrefs plan, which starts at $129 a month for Lite. (Ahrefs pricing)

Downsides. It is the most expensive way in if you do not already pay for Ahrefs. Checks are metered: each prompt counts once per engine per update, so 5 prompts on 1 engine updated daily uses 150 checks a month. Claude checks cost more than others. (Ahrefs Brand Radar)

Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

What it is. A Semrush toolkit that shows how your brand appears in AI answers. It includes visibility and competitor reports, prompt research, prompt tracking and an AI search site audit. Semrush's own help page names two engines for tracking: ChatGPT and Google AI Mode. (Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit)

Best for. Teams already working in Semrush who mostly care about ChatGPT and Google.

Price. $99 a month. Each extra domain for brand reports is $99 a month, and 50 extra tracked prompts are $60 a month. Each extra team member needs their own $99 license. There is no free trial. (Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit)

Downsides. Only two engines are named, so Perplexity, Claude and Copilot are not covered by the tracking. Per-seat pricing adds up for a team.

Otterly.AI

What it is. A standalone AI search monitoring tool. Base plans cover ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini are paid add-ons. (Otterly.AI pricing)

Best for. Small software companies that want automated tracking without buying a full SEO suite.

Price. The pricing page shows two prices per plan, most likely monthly and annual billing. Lite is $25 or $29 a month for 15 prompts. Standard is $160 or $189 for 100 prompts. Premium is $422 or $489 for 400 prompts. There is a free trial; the page does not say how long. (Otterly.AI pricing)

Downsides. 15 prompts on the Lite plan is a small sample, given how much answers vary. Claude and Gemini cost extra.

Profound

What it is. An AI visibility platform aimed at larger teams. Its enterprise plan tracks up to 9 engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Exa Search. It adds agent analytics, API access, SSO and SOC 2 compliance. (Profound pricing)

Best for. Marketing teams at companies big enough to need many engines, many regions, and security reviews.

Price. A free trial runs 50 prompts daily for 7 days across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Enterprise pricing is custom. (Profound pricing)

Downsides. No public price beyond the trial, so you will be talking to sales. More than most early-stage companies need.

Peec AI

What it is. An AI search analytics tool for SEO and marketing teams. Its pricing page lists Starter, Pro, Advanced and Enterprise plans and names ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, with a separate AI Mode tracker. It counts usage as tracked prompts times active models times tracking frequency. (Peec AI pricing)

Best for. Mid-size teams that track several projects or countries.

Price. The pricing page did not show prices or prompt limits when we checked in October 2026. Enterprise is custom and billed annually. (Peec AI pricing)

Downsides. You cannot compare cost per prompt without signing up or contacting sales.

Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance

What it is. A report inside Bing Webmaster Tools, launched as a public preview on February 10, 2026. It shows how often your pages are cited as sources in Microsoft Copilot, AI summaries in Bing and some partner integrations. You see total citations, cited pages per day, page-level counts and a sample of the queries the AI used to find your content. (Bing Webmaster blog)

Best for. Everyone. It is first-party data, not a simulation, so verify your site and turn it on.

Price. Microsoft's announcement lists no price.

Downsides. It covers Microsoft's surfaces only, and it counts citations of your pages, not mentions of your brand on other sites.

Do it yourself for free

You can get a useful number with a spreadsheet and an hour a week. The method:

1. Write 20 prompts a buyer would type. Mix category prompts ("best invoicing app for freelancers"), problem prompts ("how do I get clients to pay invoices on time") and comparison prompts ("is Paidwick better than a spreadsheet for invoicing"). Do not include your brand name in more than a few.
2. Freeze the list. Use the exact same wording every week. Changing prompts makes weeks impossible to compare.
3. Ask each engine in a clean session. Use a logged-out or temporary chat where you can, so your history does not shape the answer.
4. Log one row per answer. Columns: date, engine, prompt, named us (yes/no), position, competitors named, URLs cited.
5. Report one number per engine: the share of answers that named you.

Copy this header row into a sheet:

date,engine,prompt,named_us,position,competitors_named,urls_cited

How many answers you need

Because answers vary, a small sample gives a noisy number. The standard margin of error for a percentage, at 95% confidence, is about 1.96 × √(p × (1 − p) / n). At the worst case of p = 50%:

So with 60 answers a week, a move from 30% to 38% is probably noise. Look for changes that hold for three or more weeks, or pool four weeks together before you compare. If you report per engine, the margin applies to each engine's own count, which is smaller.

This is the same method we use to count how often AI engines name SearchMaxx in our public experiment.

How to choose

• Already pay for Ahrefs or Semrush: start with its add-on. One login, one bill.
• No SEO suite, small budget: Otterly.AI, or the manual log until you know which prompts matter.
• Need many engines, regions and SSO: Profound or Peec AI.
• Everyone: turn on Bing's AI Performance report. It is the only first-party citation data on this list.

A tracker only tells you whether you are named. If the number is low, the first thing to check is whether AI crawlers can read your site at all. Run the free check to see in about 10 seconds.

Want this done for your site?

Every day we make one change to your website that helps AI engines name you, and a person checks each one. Email me your website and the question your buyers ask AI.

Email Roshan to get started

Or check your site free: