AEO Tools: What They Do, What They Cost, How to Pick

What an AEO tool is

An AEO tool is software that runs a fixed list of prompts through answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, then reports where your brand is mentioned, cited, recommended, or ignored. AEO stands for answer engine optimisation. The tool does not write your content for you, and it does not change what the engines say. It measures the result, so you can see which prompts already work, which competitors win, and which pages the engines cite when they do mention you.

A prompt is a question a buyer might ask, written the way a person would ask it: "best CRM for a small team", "how much does project management software cost", "which email tool has the best deliverability". The tool runs each prompt daily or weekly, records the answer, and tracks three things over time: visibility (how often your brand is named), position (whether you appear early or late in the answer), and citations (which pages the answer links to). Some tools add sentiment, share of voice against competitors, and recommendations for pages to fix.

How AEO tools work, step by step

1. You write a prompt list. Start with your brand name, your product names, and the questions buyers ask before they buy. A list of 15 to 50 prompts fits every entry plan on this page.
2. You name competitors. The tool runs the same prompts for them, so you can see who wins each question and by how much.
3. The tool runs the prompts daily. Each run produces an answer from each engine you pay for. Most tools check daily; some check weekly on cheaper plans.
4. You read the visibility report. It shows, per prompt, whether your brand was named, whether it was cited, and which pages were cited instead of yours.
5. You fix the cited pages. The pages AI answers cite are usually pages that answer the question directly, with a clear definition, a number, or a comparison table. Rewrite those pages first.
6. You re-check weekly. Visibility moves slowly. A weekly check shows whether the fixes worked; a daily check shows noise.

What AEO tools cost

Prices below come from each vendor's pricing page as reported in October and November 2026, checked on 14 November 2026. AEO pricing changes often, and several vendors have changed plan names this year, so confirm the live page before you buy.

Three notes on the table. First, Profound no longer publishes self-serve prices: older reports list a $499 Lite tier, and more recent reports list Starter at $99 and Growth at $399 a month, but the live pricing page (checked 14 November 2026) lists only a free trial and custom Enterprise pricing. Ask Profound for a written quote before budgeting. Second, Scrunch's plan names have also changed: older listings show a Core plan at $250 with 125 prompts, while current listings show Starter at $250 billed annually with 350 prompts. Third, Otterly charges extra for Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Mode as add-ons, so the $29 plan covers four engines, not seven.

A worked example: what a 30-prompt setup costs on each tool

Take a small business that tracks 30 prompts about its own brand and products, across the engines each entry plan includes. The arithmetic shows why the cheapest headline price is not always the cheapest setup.

• Otterly Lite at $29 a month covers 15 prompts, so 30 prompts need the Standard plan at $189 a month. The $29 plan is too small for this list.
• Peec Starter at $95 a month covers 50 prompts, so 30 prompts fit. Annual billing brings it to $80 a month, or $960 a year.
• Profound publishes no entry price, so 30 prompts cannot be priced from the page: the free trial covers 50 prompts a day for 7 days, and paid pricing is custom — ask for a written quote before budgeting.
• Scrunch Starter at $250 a month billed annually covers 350 prompts, so 30 prompts fit with room to grow, but the plan costs $3,000 a year.
• AthenaHQ Starter at $295 a month is credit-based, not prompt-based: 3,600 credits a month covers 30 prompts run daily on 4 engines (30 x 4 x 30 = 3,600 responses), exactly the monthly allowance.

For this 30-prompt list, Peec at $95 a month is the cheapest plan that actually fits. Otterly looks cheapest at $29, but the prompt cap forces the $189 upgrade. The lesson is to count your prompts before you compare prices, not after.

Which AEO tool fits which buyer

• A solo marketer taking a first look: Otterly Lite at $29 a month, if 15 prompts are enough. It is the cheapest credible entry, with daily tracking and unlimited team members on every tier.
• A small team that wants a published price and room to grow: Peec Starter at $95 a month. Fifty prompts, three engines of your choice, and a clear upgrade path to Pro at $245.
• A team that only cares about ChatGPT: Profound, with the deepest analytics in the category — but it publishes no entry price, so ask for a written quote first; the free trial covers 50 prompts a day for 7 days.
• A brand that wants many prompts and page audits: Scrunch Starter at $250 a month billed annually. Three hundred and fifty prompts and five page audits a month, built for teams that also want agent traffic data.
• A team that wants tracking plus content recommendations: AthenaHQ Starter at $295 a month. Eleven models and content agents that suggest on-page and off-page fixes, with a free Essential tier to test first.

AEO terms worth knowing

• Prompt: a question you ask an AI assistant, written the way a buyer would ask it. Your prompt list is the core asset of any AEO programme.
• Visibility: how often an AI answer names your brand across your tracked prompts.
• Citation: a link or source an AI answer points to. Citations usually go to pages that answer the question directly.
• Share of voice: your share of brand mentions across a prompt set, compared with competitors.
• Sentiment: whether the answer describes your brand positively, neutrally, or negatively.
• GEO: generative engine optimisation, a near-synonym for AEO used by some vendors. The two terms describe the same work.
• Agent traffic: visits to your site from AI crawlers and AI assistants, rather than from human browsers. Scrunch tracks this; most cheaper tools do not.

Mistakes to avoid with AEO tools

• Tracking 200 prompts on day one. A list that big costs a fortune and produces a report nobody reads. Start with 15 to 50 prompts and add more only when you act on the first set.
• Buying the tool before fixing the pages. If AI answers cite a competitor's page, the fix is your page, not a bigger plan. Rewrite the cited pages first, then buy the tracking to measure the change.
• Counting engines instead of prompts. A tool that covers nine engines with 15 prompts shows you less than a tool that covers three engines with 50 prompts. Prompts are the limiting factor on every entry plan.
• Ignoring the add-ons. Otterly charges extra for Gemini and Google AI Mode, Peec charges extra for additional models, and AthenaHQ charges extra for API access and credits. Ask for the total before you sign.
• Checking daily and reacting daily. Visibility moves slowly. A daily check shows noise; a weekly review shows whether your fixes worked. The what does AEO stand for post explains the concept in more depth, and the best AI search checking tool comparison covers tools that check AI visibility from a different angle.

A 4-week plan for starting with an AEO tool

Week 1: build the prompt list. Write 30 prompts: your brand name, your product names, and the questions buyers ask before they buy. Add five competitor prompts. Pick the tool whose entry plan fits that count, using the worked example above.

Week 2: run the baseline. Let the tool run for a full week without changing anything. Record which prompts mention you, which cite you, and which pages get cited instead. This baseline is the number every later change is measured against.

Week 3: fix the top five pages. Take the five prompts where you lose most often, open the pages the engines cite instead of yours, and rewrite your matching pages to answer the question more directly: a definition in the first sentence, a number, a comparison table. Do not rewrite fifty pages; fix five.

Week 4: review and decide. Compare week 4 with week 1. If visibility moved, keep the plan and add ten more prompts. If nothing moved, the problem is the pages, not the tool, and a bigger plan will not fix it. For the wider search picture, the Google Search Console vs Google Analytics comparison shows how to measure what search sends you, and Adziq's SEO service page explains how AEO work fits into a wider search programme.

Common questions

Sources

• Otterly.AI pricing
• Peec AI pricing
• Profound pricing
• Scrunch pricing
• AthenaHQ pricing

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