LLM SEO tools in 2026: what each one actually tracks

The main LLM SEO tools in 2026 are Peec AI, Otterly.AI, AIclicks, SE Visible, LLMrefs, Profound, Semrush, Ahrefs Brand Radar and Surfer's AI tracker. Each asks AI models your buyers' questions and records which brands get named. They differ in which models, how often, and how the answer is read. Entry plans run from $29 to $199 a month (checked September 29, 2026).

We make one of these tools, Picked. It's not on the list below, and it's mentioned once near the end. Every fact about the others comes from their own pricing pages.

Two kinds of tool share the name

Search "LLM SEO tools" and you get two different things mixed together:

• Trackers ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and the rest a fixed set of prompts on a schedule and record who gets named and which pages get cited. This post compares these.
• Writing tools use an LLM to help you write or optimise pages. Several of the "best LLM SEO tools" lists are mostly these, which is why they run to 13 entries.

Some tools now do both: Surfer started in content optimisation and added a tracker, and AIclicks includes a few articles a month with its tracking plans.

LLM SEO tools compared

Entry plan, paid monthly, as listed on each vendor's pricing page on September 29, 2026. Prices change often in this category; check before you buy.

"Prompts" is the number of questions you can track. Multiply it by the models and the frequency and you get the number of answers you're paying for: 50 prompts on 3 models, daily, is about 4,500 answers a month.

What each tool tracks

Otterly.AI

Otterly.AI's Lite plan costs $29 a month (or $25 billed yearly) for 15 prompts, checked daily on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini are paid add-ons. Every plan has unlimited team members. The next plan up is $189 a month for 100 prompts. Otterly pricing

Best for: a cheap first look at a handful of prompts. Fifteen prompts is a small sample, so read it as a trend, not a verdict.

AIclicks

AIclicks' Starter plan costs $59 a month for 30 prompts, checked daily on 3 models: ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity by default, with AI Overviews, Claude, Copilot, AI Mode, Grok and others available. It includes 5 "AI-optimized articles" a month. Pro is $189 a month for 150 prompts on 4 models. AIclicks pricing

Best for: small teams who want tracking and some drafted content in one plan.

LLMrefs

LLMrefs has one plan at $79 a month: 500 prompts, every AI search engine it supports at no extra cost (it lists ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Copilot, Meta AI and DeepSeek), unlimited projects and team members, and CSV and API export. Its reports refresh weekly, not daily. LLMrefs pricing

Best for: the most prompts and models for the money, if a weekly view is enough.

Peec AI

Peec AI's Starter plan costs €85 a month 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 €205 a month for 150 prompts. Enterprise adds up to 13 models, and Peec's own table marks several of them, such as Claude, Grok and DeepSeek, as read through the API. Peec AI pricing

Best for: teams who want source analysis, AI crawler data and a clear note on how each model is read.

SE Visible (SE Ranking)

SE Visible, SE Ranking's AI visibility tool, starts at $99 a month ($79 billed yearly) for 200 prompts and 3 projects, on ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and AI Overviews. SE Ranking puts that at about 30,000 answers a month, which works out to roughly one check per prompt and model a day. SE Visible pricing

Best for: many prompts on the five models most buyers use, at a mid-range price.

Ahrefs Brand Radar

Ahrefs tracks AI answers two ways. Custom prompts come with paid Ahrefs plans, 5 on the $129-a-month Lite plan, and as an add-on from $50 a month (Ahrefs' example: 80 prompts daily on one platform), or $699 a month for all models. Separately, its AI Visibility index covers 448 million prompts modelled on real searches across AI Overviews, Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and AI Mode. Ahrefs Brand Radar

Best for: teams already on Ahrefs, and anyone who wants a market-wide view before picking their own prompts.

Surfer AI tracker

Surfer's AI Search Analytics plan costs €82 a month billed yearly for 50 prompts refreshed daily, across ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews "and other AI models". Surfer's writing plans include a smaller tracker: 25 prompts refreshed weekly on the Standard plan, €99 a month billed yearly. Surfer pricing

Best for: content teams already writing in Surfer.

Semrush

Semrush sells AI visibility inside its "SEO + AI Search" plans. Starter costs $199 a month for 50 prompts tracked daily for one domain, next to 5 websites and 500 keywords of regular SEO tracking. Pro+ is $299 for 100 prompts. The pricing page doesn't name the AI models covered. Semrush pricing

Best for: teams that want AI tracking in the same place as their existing SEO data.

Profound

Profound's public offer is a free trial: 50 prompts, run daily for 7 days, on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, with a prompt set it picks for your industry. Paid plans are custom Enterprise contracts with no public price, covering more engines, including Perplexity, Claude, Copilot and AI Mode. Profound pricing

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

What to check before you pay

Most comparison lists stop at features. These are the questions that decide whether the numbers mean anything.

1. Is it the real app or the API? The ChatGPT your buyers use searches the web and has its own instructions; the raw API model often doesn't. A tool that calls the API and labels it "ChatGPT" measures something your buyers never see. Peec says which of its models are API-read. Ask the others.
2. How often does it check? AI answers change from day to day. In our own tracking, fewer than half the pages ChatGPT cited for a question came back the next day (details in our ChatGPT citations post). A weekly check is a sample of that noise, not a trend.
3. How many answers do you actually get? Prompts × models × checks a month. 15 prompts on 4 models daily is 1,800 answers; 500 prompts weekly on 10 models is about 21,000. Compare that number, not the plan names.
4. Which models can you choose? Several plans let you pick 3 models. Make sure the three your buyers use are allowed on the plan you're buying, not only as an add-on.
5. Does it tell you what to do next? Knowing you're missing from an answer is half the job. Check whether the tool shows the pages the AI cited instead, and whether anything helps you write the page that would change it.
6. Who can log in? Otterly, LLMrefs and Peec list unlimited users. On others a seat can cost extra, which adds up for an agency.

For picks by use case, price per 1,000 answers and what ChatGPT itself recommends, see the best AI visibility tools, compared.

When you don't need an LLM SEO tool

If your buyers don't ask AI assistants for recommendations, skip it; a local trade business that sells by phone gets more from classic local SEO. If you only want to know what ChatGPT says today, ask it yourself, it's free. And no tool can promise a mention: 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. It asks your prompts every day on the AI models in your plan, records which brands and pages each answer names, and on Growth and Scale writes the article built to be the source they quote, delivered as a pull request. Seats are unlimited on every plan; prices are on the pricing page. To see where you stand before choosing any tool, run the free AI visibility checker.

How we checked

• Prices, prompts, models, frequency and seats: each vendor's own pricing page, read on September 29, 2026, monthly billing unless marked. Where a page didn't state something, the table says "Not stated".
• Which tools: the ones named most often in the top Google results for "llm seo tools" and in ChatGPT's answer to "What are the best LLM SEO tools?" on September 29, 2026, keeping only tools that track AI answers.
• Not tested: we didn't buy each plan and compare their answers side by side. This is a comparison of what each vendor states.

Frequently asked questions

Is there SEO for LLMs?

Yes, in the sense that AI assistants with web search pick sources, and you can make your pages easier to pick: let their crawlers in, answer questions directly, publish facts they can check. It's mostly SEO with a different scoreboard. LLM SEO tools measure that scoreboard: how often each model names you.

Are there free LLM SEO tools?

Mostly trials. Profound has a free 7-day trial, SE Visible 10 days, LLMrefs 7 days and AIclicks 3 days, each as stated on its site on September 29, 2026. For a one-off check, asking ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity yourself costs nothing but time.

How much do LLM SEO tools cost?

Entry plans ran from $29 a month (Otterly.AI, 15 prompts) to $199 a month (Semrush, 50 prompts with its SEO suite) on September 29, 2026. Enterprise plans such as Profound's are priced on request. Compare the number of answers you get, not the plan name.

What's the difference between an LLM rank tracker and an SEO rank tracker?

An SEO rank tracker records your position in Google's results for a keyword. An LLM rank tracker asks an AI model a question and records whether your brand is named, where in the answer, and which pages it cites. The answers change more from day to day, so frequency matters more.

Which AI models should I track?

The ones your buyers use. If you don't know yet, ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews are the two nearly every tool above covers, so they're the easiest place to start. Check which models a plan includes before you buy, since several entry plans cap you at three.