The 14 best AEO tools in 2026, sorted by what they do

The best AEO tools in 2026 are Picked, Surfer, Writesonic, AthenaHQ, Goodie, Gauge and Profound if you also want help with the content, and Otterly.AI, HubSpot AEO, Ahrefs Brand Radar, Peec AI, SE Visible, Semrush and Scrunch for tracking what AI answers say. Cheapest paid plans ran from $29 to $599 a month on October 10, 2026.

We make one of these tools, Picked. It is in the list below with the same fields as the rest and what it lacks. Every price about the others comes from the vendor's own page, read on October 10, 2026; Picked's comes from our own plans.

What is an AEO tool?

AEO stands for answer engine optimization: getting your brand named, and your pages cited, when someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot or Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode a question. An AEO tool does the measuring. It asks those models the prompts your buyers ask, on a schedule, and records whether your brand is named, where in the answer, and which pages the answer cites.

Some tools stop there. Others go on to change things: they suggest fixes, write articles, or rebuild what AI crawlers read on your site. That split decides what you're paying for, so this list is sorted by it, not by a score.

You'll see the same tools sold as GEO tools (generative engine optimization), AI visibility tools or LLM trackers. Same job, different label. For the strategy rather than the software, see AEO vs SEO. One trap if you search for AEO software: the term also means customs compliance software for Authorized Economic Operators, which has nothing to do with AI.

The 14 best AEO tools at a glance

Cheapest paid plan, billed monthly, from each vendor's own pricing page, checked October 10, 2026. Prices in this category change most months, so check before you buy.

Thirteen of the fourteen publish a price for at least one paid plan. Only one, AthenaHQ, includes Claude on its cheapest paid plan.

Who writes the AEO tool lists you're reading

We read seven AEO tool lists that came up for "aeo tools", "best aeo tools" and "aeo software" on October 10, 2026. Five were written by a company that sells an AEO tool and puts its own tool first: GrackerAI, HubSpot (twice, once on its blog and once on its product site), Conductor and Writesonic. The other two came from Graphite, an SEO agency, and TechRadar, a publisher.

That doesn't make those lists wrong. It means the order is a sales decision, so read the facts and skip the ranking. None of the seven puts a date next to its prices, and it shows: Graphite's directory still lists Gauge at $250 a month (its page said $599 when we checked), and GrackerAI and HubSpot both quote a Profound "Starter" plan, at $79 and $99, that Profound's own pricing page didn't show on October 10, 2026.

Graphite's advice is the most useful line in any of them: "Focus primarily on AI tracking and use the least expensive tool that completes the job you need."

We sell one of these tools too, so Picked is in the list with the same fields as the others.

AEO tools that track and write content

These add the second half: articles, optimizations or an agent that drafts content from what the tracking found. Part of what you pay buys the writing, so compare them on both halves, not on tracking alone. Within each group the order is the cheapest paid plan, low to high, not a ranking.

Picked

Picked costs $89 a month on Starter for 50 prompts checked daily on 2 AI models, ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, for one tracked brand, with unlimited team seats. Starter tracks and does not write. Growth, $199 a month, adds a third model, two brands and 10 articles a month: for a prompt you lose, Picked writes the article as a pull request on your site. There is no free trial; the free AI visibility checker needs no account, and the first payment can be refunded within 3 days.

Best for: agencies and B2B SaaS teams who want the loop from a lost prompt to a drafted article in one tool.

Watch for: the cheapest plan runs two models and writes nothing, and Claude is checked less often than the others.

Surfer

Surfer's AI Search Analytics plan costs $95 a month ($82 billed yearly) for 50 prompts checked daily, 5 brand spaces, mention gaps and sentiment, on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews and Gemini. That plan tracks. The writing is Surfer's content editor, which lives on its content plans: Standard, $99 a month billed yearly, includes the editor and a smaller tracker of 25 prompts checked weekly, on ChatGPT only. The site has "Start for Free" buttons, but no free AI tracking plan.

Best for: content teams already writing in Surfer.

Watch for: writing and tracking on one cheap plan means Standard's tracker: weekly, one model.

Writesonic

Writesonic's Starter plan costs $99 a month ($79 billed yearly) for 50 prompts, "50 answers tracked daily", 15 AI articles a month and 10 site audits, for 1 user, on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. The free trial needs no card. Its Action Center, which turns findings into tasks, is on Enterprise.

Best for: a small team that wants tracking and a steady supply of drafts on one bill.

Watch for: read "50 answers tracked daily" literally and it's 1,500 answers a month: one answer a day per prompt, not one per prompt on each of the 3 models. Ask before you buy.

AthenaHQ

AthenaHQ's Starter plan costs $295 a month (17% off billed yearly) for 3,600 credits, where one credit is one AI answer, across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot, AI Mode, Claude, Grok and Meta AI. The free Essential plan comes with $25 of credit (300 credits), unlimited members and the first five of those models. Its content optimization agent works on pages from what the tracking shows.

Best for: the most AI models on one plan, Claude included, without an enterprise contract.

Watch for: 3,600 answers over 9 models is 400 per model a month, about 13 prompts a day on each (3,600 ÷ 9 ÷ 30).

Goodie

Goodie's Core plan costs $399 a month for 120 prompts on 5 models (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, AI Mode and Copilot), 50 optimizations a month and 5 seats. Pro adds Gemini and Claude. For agencies there's a Growth plan at $275 a month with 10 pitch workspaces. There's a 7-day free trial.

Best for: brands that want a set number of content optimizations each month alongside tracking.

Watch for: Gemini isn't on Core, and its page doesn't say how often each prompt is checked.

Gauge

Gauge's Growth plan costs $599 a month for 600 prompts checked daily, 108,000 answers a month, 18 articles a month and 5 seats, on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot. The arithmetic holds: 600 prompts × 6 models × 30 days is 108,000. Claude and Grok are on Enterprise. There's a 1-week free trial.

Best for: many prompts at once and an article flow to match.

Watch for: it's the most expensive entry on this list with a public price, and older directories still quote it at $250.

Profound

Profound publishes no price for a paid plan. Its public offer is a free trial: 50 prompts, run daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, with limited AI Marketer credits and unlimited seats. Enterprise is custom, with up to 9 engines, SSO and SOC 2. AI Marketer and Agents draft and publish content from the tracking.

Best for: large brands buying through sales, with a team to act on the data every week.

Watch for: you can't compare it on price without talking to sales, and the "Starter" plans other lists quote weren't on its page when we checked.

More: Profound alternatives that show a price.

AEO tools that only track AI answers

These ask your prompts and report what the models said. Some add recommendations; none writes the page for you. Within each group the order is the cheapest paid plan, low to high, not a ranking.

Otterly.AI

Otterly.AI's Lite plan costs $29 a month ($25 billed yearly) for 15 prompts, checked daily on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, with unlimited team members. On Lite, Google AI Mode and Gemini are $9 add-ons each and Claude is $29. Standard is $189 a month for 100 prompts, Premium $489 for 400, and another 100 prompts cost $99. There's a free trial.

Best for: a first look at a handful of prompts on a small budget.

Watch for: add Gemini, AI Mode and Claude and Lite comes to $76 a month ($29 + $9 + $9 + $29), still for 15 prompts. Fifteen is a small sample: read it as a direction, not a verdict.

More: Otterly.AI alternatives, with its add-ons priced out.

HubSpot AEO

HubSpot AEO costs $50 a month ($45 billed yearly) for 25 prompts on ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, with a visibility score updated daily and one brand per instance. You can buy more prompts. The free trial gives you 25 prompts with no card, and HubSpot's separate AEO Grader is a free one-time check. On Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise you get more prompts and recommendations based on your CRM data.

Best for: teams already on HubSpot who want AI answers next to the rest of their marketing data.

Watch for: the free grader isn't the same product. HubSpot's page says it reads ChatGPT and Gemini "from training data", not from a live answer with web search.

Ahrefs Brand Radar

Ahrefs sells AI tracking two ways. Its Lite plan, $129 a month, includes 5 custom prompts (150 checks a month). A custom prompt package from $50 a month gives you 2,500 checks a month, which Ahrefs' own example spends as 80 prompts daily on one platform, with extra checks at $0.02 each. The platforms are AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot; Claude is available and costs 8 checks per update. Separately, Brand Radar AI, a database of more than 470 million prompts, starts at $199 a month, and Ahrefs says Brand Radar comes with its free account.

Best for: Ahrefs users, and a market-wide view of who gets named before you choose your own prompts.

Watch for: the unit is checks, not prompts. Spread 2,500 checks over all six platforms and you get about 13 prompts a day on each (2,500 ÷ 6 ÷ 30).

Peec AI

Peec AI's Starter plan costs $95 a month (€85 in Europe; $80 or €70 billed yearly) for 50 prompts, checked daily on 3 models you choose from ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI, with unlimited users. Pro is $245 for 150 prompts and Advanced $495 for 350. Claude, Perplexity, Grok, DeepSeek and others are paid extra models, and Peec's pricing page marks most of them "API". There's a free trial, and the tool suggests actions from what it finds.

Best for: SEO teams and agencies who want the sources behind each answer, and a plain label on how each model is read.

Watch for: three models on Starter, and Perplexity isn't one of the six base choices.

More: Peec AI alternatives, four compared on price.

SE Visible (SE Ranking)

SE Visible, SE Ranking's AEO tool, starts at $99 a month on its Basic plan (20% off billed yearly) for 200 prompts and 3 projects, on ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and AI Overviews, with unlimited users. SE Ranking puts that at about 30,000 answers a month. There's a 10-day free trial. The plans are on the product's home page; its /pricing address returned a 404 when we checked.

Best for: the most answers per dollar on this list (see the cost table below).

Watch for: it tracks and reports. Deciding what to change, and doing it, stays with you.

Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

Semrush's stand-alone AI Visibility Toolkit costs $99 a month for 25 prompts, 1 domain and 1 user, according to Semrush's own help article. Each extra user or domain is another $99, and 50 more prompts cost $60. Prompts are tracked daily and brand reports update weekly. The article names ChatGPT and Google AI Mode for prompt tracking. There's no trial. You also get AI-generated recommendations and an AI site audit. The other route is the SEO + AI Search Starter plan, $199 a month ($165.17 billed yearly), with 50 prompts next to 5 sites and 500 keywords of regular SEO tracking; the $139 SEO-only plan has no prompts.

Best for: teams already in Semrush who want AI answers in the same place as their rankings.

Watch for: per-user and per-domain pricing. Three client domains and two people on the toolkit come to $396 a month ($99 + 2 × $99 for domains + $99 for a user) before any extra prompts.

More: the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit review, plans and limits.

Scrunch

Scrunch's Core plan costs $250 a month for 125 prompts and 5,000 responses a month on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot, with 5 users and 5 site audits a month. Enterprise adds Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, AI Mode and Grok. There's a 7-day free trial. It mostly tracks, with some content generation and AXP, which Scrunch describes as a version of your site built for AI to read.

Best for: brands that want tracking and site audits from one vendor.

Watch for: 125 prompts on 4 models is 500 answers per full pass, so 5,000 a month is about one pass every three days, not daily.

What does the cheapest plan actually cover?

Most lists give the models a tool supports. What you get is the models on the plan you buy, and the gap is widest for Claude. On October 10, 2026:

• Claude on the cheapest paid plan: AthenaHQ only.
• Claude as an add-on: Otterly.AI ($29 a month on Lite), Peec AI (a paid extra model), Ahrefs (8 checks per update).
• Claude on a higher plan: Goodie (Pro), Scrunch, Gauge and Profound (Enterprise).
• Claude not listed: HubSpot AEO, SE Visible, Semrush's toolkit, Surfer and Writesonic.
• One model only: Surfer's tracker on the Standard content plan (ChatGPT), and AirOps' Solo plan (ChatGPT insights), which isn't on this list because AirOps shows no prices.
• No Perplexity: Peec's base choices, Writesonic Starter, Profound's trial, and the two models Semrush names.

If your buyers use Claude or Perplexity, start from this list, not the vendor's feature page.

How much do AEO tools cost per answer?

Plan names hide what you pay for. The unit is an answer: one prompt, asked once, on one model. Here is each cheapest plan in those terms, using only the vendor's own numbers.

The spread is about 25 times, from SE Visible to AthenaHQ. Two caveats before you pick the cheapest row. Gauge, Writesonic and AthenaHQ bundle articles or content work into the same price, so the per-answer figure overstates what their tracking costs. And Semrush, Surfer and Goodie don't state enough to do the sum, while Profound has no public price at all.

None of the lists we read worked this out. It's the first number to compare.

Does the tool read the ChatGPT app or the API?

Track the real app where you can. The ChatGPT your buyers use searches the web, and OpenAI says it "typically rewrites your query into one or more targeted queries" before it reads the results (OpenAI, ChatGPT search). A raw API call to the same model often does none of that. A tool that calls the API and labels the result "ChatGPT" measures something your buyers never see.

Two vendors on this list say plainly which they do. Peec's pricing page marks most of its extra models "API", and HubSpot's page says its free grader reads ChatGPT and Gemini "from training data". Most of the others don't say. Ask every vendor the same question: is this the answer the app gives a person in my country, or an API call?

The other reason a single answer misleads: ask ChatGPT the same question three times and you can meet three different market leaders. A share of answers counted daily over weeks is a number you can report. One screenshot isn't.

How do I choose an AEO tool?

1. Start from the models your buyers use. Drop every tool whose plan at your budget doesn't include them, using the section above, not the feature page.
2. Work out the answers you need. Prompts × models × checks a month, then compare that with each plan. Ten good prompts per brand is a reasonable start.
3. Decide whether you need the writing. If someone on the team already writes the pages, a tracker is enough. If nobody does, price a tool that writes and count the articles a month.
4. Count seats and brands. Otterly.AI, Peec AI, SE Visible, AthenaHQ and Picked don't charge per user. Semrush charges $99 per extra user; Scrunch, Goodie and Gauge include 5 seats.
5. Ask the app or API question above, in writing.
6. Run the trial on your own prompts, not the set the vendor suggests, and check the trial covers the models of the plan you'd buy.

For picks by use case and what ChatGPT itself recommends in this category, see the best AI visibility tools, compared. For how often each tracker checks and which models it covers, see LLM SEO tools and what each one tracks.

Are there free AEO tools?

A few, each with a limit. AthenaHQ has a free plan with $25 of credit (300 answers). Ahrefs says Brand Radar comes with its free account. HubSpot's AEO Grader is a free one-time check, read from training data. Everything else is a trial: HubSpot AEO with 25 prompts and no card, Writesonic with no card, SE Visible for 10 days, Scrunch, Goodie, Gauge and Profound for 7 days, and free trials at Otterly.AI and Peec AI. Semrush's toolkit has none.

Picked has no trial, but its free AI visibility checker needs no account. For a one-off look you don't need a tool. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity your buyers' question and write down who they name.

Who doesn't need an AEO tool

If your buyers don't ask AI assistants what to buy, skip it. A local trade that sells by phone gets more from local SEO than from tracking ChatGPT. If you have no site or no category yet, there's nothing for the models to name: publish first. And if you want a promise that a model will mention you, no tool here can make one. They measure what the models say. They don't control it.

Where Picked fits

Picked is an AI visibility tool for SEO and marketing agencies and B2B SaaS teams, and on this list's split it does both jobs. It tracks six AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode); each plan asks 2, 3 or 4 of them your prompts every day, Claude less often. For a prompt you lose, Growth and Scale write the article built to become the page the answer quotes, as a pull request on your site, and Get listed drafts the pitch to the pages the AI already cites, for you to send. Plans and what each includes are on the pricing page. Seats are unlimited. To see where you stand before choosing any tool, run the free AI visibility checker.

How we checked these

• Prices, prompts, models, trials and seats: each vendor's own pricing page, read on October 10, 2026, monthly billing unless marked, in dollars as shown to a US connection. Semrush's toolkit comes from its help article, Ahrefs' prompt package from its Brand Radar page. Peec AI's prices load in the browser; we read them from the page's pricing component.
• Answers a month: the vendor's own figure where it gives one (SE Visible, Gauge, Scrunch, AthenaHQ, Ahrefs, Writesonic); otherwise prompts × models on the cheapest plan × 30 days.
• Which tools: the ones named most often across the seven AEO tool lists we read for "aeo tools", "best aeo tools" and "aeo software" on October 10, 2026, keeping only tools that track AI answers, plus Picked, which we make. Left out: writing tools with no tracking (Jasper, Junia AI, Avada SEO), and tools with no plan price to compare: Conductor (its own article says plans start at $1,500 a month), AirOps (no prices shown; see AirOps pricing) and Evertune ($800 a month, demo required).
• Not tested: we didn't buy any of these plans, and we didn't compare the answers each tool returns. This compares what each vendor states on its own pages. Where a page didn't say something, we say so.

Frequently asked questions

What is an AEO tool?

An AEO tool asks AI models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews the questions your buyers ask, on a schedule, and records whether your brand is named, where in the answer, and which pages are cited. Some also suggest fixes or write the content meant to become the page those answers quote.

What does AEO stand for?

AEO stands for answer engine optimization: the work of getting your brand named and your pages cited in the answers that AI models such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity give. It is the same idea as SEO, aimed at an answer instead of a list of links.

Are AEO and GEO the same thing?

In practice, yes. AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) both mean getting your brand named and your pages cited in AI answers, and the tools sold under each label do the same measuring. Vendors pick whichever label their buyers search for, and several use both on the same page.

How much do AEO tools cost?

On October 10, 2026, the cheapest paid plans ran from $29 a month (Otterly.AI, 15 prompts) to $599 (Gauge, 600 prompts and 18 articles), with Profound priced on request. Per answer the spread was about 25 times, from about $3.30 per 1,000 answers at SE Visible to about $82 at AthenaHQ.

Are there free AEO tools?

A few, with limits. AthenaHQ has a free plan with $25 of credit, Ahrefs says Brand Radar comes with its free account, and HubSpot's AEO Grader is a free one-time check. Most others offer a free trial of 7 to 10 days. Daily tracking over weeks is what the paid plans sell.

Do I need an AEO tool if I already use an SEO suite?

Check what your suite includes first. Semrush sells an AI Visibility Toolkit from $99 a month, and Ahrefs' $129 Lite plan includes 5 custom prompts in Brand Radar. A separate AEO tool makes sense when you need more prompts, more AI models or help with content than your suite's add-on gives.

Why doesn't my AEO tool match what I see in ChatGPT?

Three usual reasons. AI answers change from one run to the next, your own ChatGPT is signed in with its history and location, and some tools read the API model instead of the app. Compare shares across many runs rather than one answer, and ask the vendor which version it reads.

Can I do AEO without a tool?

Yes, by hand. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google your buyers' questions, note who is named and which pages are cited, and repeat every week. That works for five prompts. Past that, the counting takes longer than the fixing, which is the point where a tool starts to make sense.