The short answer
Otterly.AI is the cheapest AEO checking tool at $29 a month, tracking 20 prompts across 7 AI engines. Profound is the best fit for teams that want content generation alongside tracking, from $99 a month for 50 prompts. Peec AI sits between them at $95 a month for 50 prompts, with unlimited team seats.
Key takeaways
- Otterly.AI Lite costs $29 a month for 20 prompts, or 2,000 credits a month, across 7 AI engines.
- Profound Starter costs $99 a month for 50 prompts on ChatGPT, with Growth at $399 a month for 100 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.
- Peec AI Starter costs $95 a month for 50 prompts across 3 models, with daily tracking and unlimited users.
- Scrunch Core costs $250 a month for 125 unique prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot.
- AthenaHQ's self-serve plan is listed at $295 a month in comparison pages; its own pricing was not publicly shown on 14 November 2026.
AEO Checking Tools Compared at a glance
| Pick | Best for | Starting price | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly.AI | Cheapest AEO checks for small teams | From $29 a month (Lite, 20 prompts) | Yes, free tier; 7-day free trial |
| Profound | Tracking plus AI content generation | From $99 a month (Starter, 50 prompts) | No |
| Peec AI | Daily tracking with unlimited seats | From $95 a month (Starter, 50 prompts) | No |
| Scrunch | Monitoring plus site audits and fixes | From $250 a month (Core, 125 prompts) | No, 7-day free trial |
| AthenaHQ | Credit-based tracking with content tools | $295 a month (self-serve, as reported in comparison pages) | No, free audit and discounted first month |
How we chose
An AEO checking tool earns its place here by answering one question reliably: when someone asks an AI engine about your market, does your brand show up, and is it cited? Each pick was checked for its starting price, how many prompts that price covers, which engines it tracks, and whether the price is published at all. Prices and limits come from each vendor's pricing page or published pricing documentation, checked on 14 November 2026. No hands-on testing was done, so this post compares published pricing and documentation, checked on 14 November 2026. One vendor publishes no price on its own site, and this post says so rather than presenting a competitor's figure as a list price.
1. Otterly.AI: best for cheapest AEO checks for small teams
Otterly.AI is the lowest-priced entry point in this category by a wide margin. Lite costs $29 a month for 20 prompts, or 2,000 credits a month, across 7 AI engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Claude. Standard costs $189 a month for 160 prompts, and Premium costs $489 a month for 535 prompts. A free tier and a 7-day trial are available, annual billing saves 15%, and every plan includes all 7 engines, so you choose how many prompts to track rather than which engines to drop.
Otterly.AI fits a small team or solo marketer taking a first serious look at AI search. The price is low enough to run for a quarter and learn which prompts matter, and the credit model is transparent: one credit is one prompt checked once on one engine, and Claude counts as three. The weakness is the prompt cap. Twenty prompts covers a focused niche and little else, and the step to Standard at $189 a month is a sixfold jump for 160 prompts.
Skip Otterly.AI if you need more than 20 prompts and your budget is under $189 a month. Peec AI covers 50 prompts for $95 a month instead.
2. Profound: best for tracking plus AI content generation
Profound is the best-known name in AI visibility, and its pricing now starts far lower than its enterprise reputation suggests. Starter costs $99 a month and tracks 50 prompts on ChatGPT, with sentiment tracking and citation checks. Growth costs $399 a month for 100 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, plus AI content generation and optimization. Enterprise is custom-priced and tracks a custom number of prompts across 10 AI engines, including ChatGPT Shopping support.
Profound fits a team that wants tracking and fixing in one place. Growth adds content generation and optimization, so the same tool that shows you are missing from an answer can draft the content meant to earn the citation. Agent Analytics connects to your CDN provider to show how AI agents crawl your site, which pages they visit and where they stop. The weakness is the engine limit on Starter: one engine, ChatGPT, means a brand that also needs Perplexity and Google AI Overviews must pay $399 a month for Growth.
Skip Profound if you only track ChatGPT and your budget is under $99 a month. Otterly.AI covers 7 engines for $29 a month.
3. Peec AI: best for daily tracking with unlimited seats
Peec AI is the value pick at the 50-prompt level. Starter costs $95 a month for 50 prompts across 3 models, with daily tracking, 1 project and unlimited users. Pro costs $245 a month for 150 prompts and 2 projects, and Advanced costs $495 a month for 350 prompts and 5 projects. All tiers cover ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and Gemini by default, and additional models are available as an add-on. Agency plans start at $245 a month.
Peec AI fits a marketing team that wants daily tracking without counting seats. Unlimited users on every plan means the whole team can read the same dashboard without a per-seat charge, and daily tracking catches fast-moving changes in AI answers. The weakness is the project limit. Starter covers one project, so an agency or a company with several brands needs Pro at $245 a month, and tracking more than 50 prompts means the same jump.
Skip Peec AI if you need more than 50 prompts and your budget is under $245 a month. Scrunch covers 125 prompts for $250 a month.
4. Scrunch: best for monitoring plus site audits and fixes
Scrunch goes further than monitoring: it is an Agent Experience Platform that also diagnoses, optimizes and delivers content to AI agents. Core costs $250 a month for 125 unique prompts, 5,000 responses a month and 5 site audits a month, across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot. Enterprise is custom-priced and covers 9 AI platforms, full site audits and custom response volumes. A 7-day free trial of Core is available.
Scrunch fits a brand that wants the fix, not just the score. Its site audit finds rendering issues that stop AI engines citing a page, and its agent experience layer serves an optimized version of your content to AI traffic. The Runpod case study on Scrunch's own site reports a fourfold increase in new paying customers a month from ChatGPT after switching to Scrunch, alongside a large cost cut, though that is the vendor's own account of one customer. The weakness is the price. At $250 a month, Core costs more than Profound Starter and Peec AI Starter combined, and it covers only four engines.
Skip Scrunch if your budget is under $250 a month. Otterly.AI covers 7 engines for $29 a month, and Peec AI covers 50 prompts for $95.
5. AthenaHQ: best for credit-based tracking with content tools
AthenaHQ is the hardest pick on this list to price, and that is part of the review. Its self-serve plan is listed at $295 a month in comparison pages from Profound and Scrunch, with 3,500 credits a month, and its Enterprise plan is custom-priced. AthenaHQ uses a credit-based system: one credit is spent each time you take an action, such as analysing an AI prompt response for a specific model or drafting content. It also offers AI-generated content capabilities for drafting briefs, outlines and full articles, plus a free audit and a discounted first month at $95.
AthenaHQ fits a team that wants monitoring, auditing, optimization and content drafting in one platform, and that is comfortable with credits rather than a prompt count. The content tools are the difference: where most tools on this list only report, AthenaHQ also drafts. The weakness is transparency. AthenaHQ's own pricing was not publicly shown on 14 November 2026, so the $295 figure comes from comparison pages, not the vendor, and credit-based pricing makes the real monthly cost hard to predict before you start spending credits.
Skip AthenaHQ if you need a published price on the vendor's own site before buying. Profound and Peec AI both publish theirs.
What 50 prompts cost in a year
| Tool | Yearly cost at about 50 prompts | What the money buys |
|---|---|---|
| Otterly.AI Lite | $348 | 20 prompts, 7 engines, free tier available |
| Peec AI Starter | $1,140 | 50 prompts, 3 models, daily tracking, unlimited seats |
| Profound Starter | $1,188 | 50 prompts, ChatGPT only, sentiment and citations |
| Scrunch Core | $3,000 | 125 prompts, 4 engines, 5 site audits a month |
| AthenaHQ self-serve | About $3,540 as reported | 3,500 credits a month, content drafting tools |
The cheapest way to track 50 prompts is Peec AI at $95 a month, and the cheapest way to start at all is Otterly.AI at $29 a month for 20 prompts. The gap between Peec AI and Scrunch is about $1,860 a year, and the difference is site audits and agent content delivery, not more prompts.
How to pick the right AEO checking tool
- A first look at AI search on the smallest budget: Otterly.AI Lite at $29 a month for 20 prompts across 7 engines.
- Tracking plus content generation in one tool: Profound Growth at $399 a month, or Starter at $99 a month for ChatGPT only.
- Daily tracking for a whole team with no seat charges: Peec AI Starter at $95 a month for 50 prompts.
- Monitoring plus audits and fixes for AI traffic: Scrunch Core at $250 a month for 125 prompts.
- Credit-based tracking with built-in content drafting: AthenaHQ self-serve, listed at $295 a month in comparison pages.
Mistakes to avoid with AEO checking tools
- Tracking hundreds of prompts before acting on twenty. Pick the buying questions in your market first, track those, and fix what you find. A dashboard full of prompts nobody acts on is an expensive report.
- Comparing prompt counts without checking the engines. Profound Starter covers 50 prompts on one engine, while Otterly.AI Lite covers 20 prompts on seven. The count means little until you know which engines are included.
- Ignoring the credit model. AthenaHQ charges credits per action, and Otterly.AI counts Claude as three credits per check. A prompt list that looks cheap can cost more once the engine mix is counted.
- Treating an AI mention as a ranking. An AI answer can mention your brand without citing you, and a citation does not guarantee traffic. Track mentions, citations and the traffic that follows, not just one number.
Five AEO terms worth knowing
- AEO: answer engine optimization, the work of making sure AI answer engines represent your brand accurately and cite your pages.
- Prompt: a question you ask an AI engine to track, such as "best scheduling software for clinics", chosen to match real buying questions.
- Citation: a link or source reference inside an AI answer, which is the closest thing to a ranking in AI search.
- Share of voice: how often your brand appears in AI answers for your tracked prompts, compared with competitors.
- Agent analytics: tracking how AI agents and crawlers move through your site, which pages they visit and where they stop.
To understand the concept behind these tools, see what AEO stands for and the best AI search checking tool. The Google Search Console vs Google Analytics post covers how to measure the traffic AI citations send you, and the SEO vs Google Ads guide puts AI search in the context of your wider acquisition mix. Adziq's SEO services cover strategy and execution for teams that want it done for them.
Common questions
What is an AEO checking tool?
An AEO checking tool tracks how often your brand appears in answers from AI engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. It runs your chosen prompts through those engines, records whether your brand is mentioned or cited, and shows how that changes over time.
What is the cheapest AEO checking tool?
Otterly.AI is the cheapest here at $29 a month for 20 prompts across 7 AI engines, with a free tier and a 7-day trial. Peec AI follows at $95 a month and Profound at $99 a month, both for 50 prompts.
How many prompts should I track?
Start with 20 to 50 prompts that match real buying questions in your market. Otterly.AI Lite covers 20 prompts, while Profound and Peec AI start at 50. Tracking hundreds of prompts before you act on the first 20 wastes credits.
Do AEO tools replace SEO tools?
No. AEO tools track AI answers, while SEO tools track Google rankings, backlinks and technical health. The two overlap on content quality, but neither replaces the other, and most teams need both.
What does AEO stand for?
AEO stands for answer engine optimization: making sure AI answer engines represent your brand accurately and cite your pages when they answer questions in your market.
Sources
Adziq sells marketing services and does not accept payment for placement in its articles. See our editorial policy.