Best AI Search Checking Tool: 7 Picks Compared

How we chose

The shortlist came from the tools that publish a price and state which AI engines they check, how often prompts run and what the entry plan leaves out. Each vendor pricing page was read on 13 November 2026, and the ranking below follows fit for the job in the title: checking where a brand appears in AI search, not general SEO. No hands-on testing was done, so every claim here rests on published pricing and documentation, checked on 13 November 2026.

An AI search checking tool is software that runs prompts through AI engines and records whether your brand is named or cited in the answers. The engines that matter most are ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Microsoft Copilot.

1. SE Ranking: best for teams wanting SEO plus AI checks

SE Ranking Core costs $129 a month billed monthly, or $103.20 a month billed annually. The plan covers 10 projects, 2,000 keywords tracked daily and 250,000 audit pages a month, with AI visibility tracking for 25 prompts a day across 5 AI engines. A 14-day free trial is available.

The strength here is breadth. You get rank tracking, site audits, keyword research and AI visibility in one subscription, so a small team avoids paying for two tools. The AI Search add-on starts at $71 a month on annual billing and raises the prompt allowance, with tiers at 75, 200 and 1,000 prompts.

The limit to note is the entry prompt count. Twenty-five prompts a day covers one brand and a handful of topics, but a team tracking several products or markets will need the add-on. History on Core runs to six months, so long trend lines need Growth.

Skip SE Ranking when you only want AI checks and already have an SEO suite you like. In that case a dedicated checker below gives you more engines for less money. If you need help judging the SEO side too, read the guide to best SEO rank tracking software and the comparison of Google Search Console vs Google Analytics.

2. Peec AI: best for daily AI visibility reporting

Peec AI Starter costs $95 a month for 50 prompts, 3 chosen models, daily tracking, 1 project and 1 country, with unlimited users. Pro costs $245 a month for 150 prompts, 2 projects and 3 countries, and Advanced costs $495 a month for 350 prompts and 5 projects. Annual billing takes 15% off the monthly rates.

Peec AI counts usage in AI answers: prompts times active models times tracking days. Starter therefore produces about 4,500 AI answers a month. The models on self-serve plans come from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Naver AI and others listed on the pricing page, and an extra model costs $30 a month on Starter, $70 on Pro and $140 on Advanced.

The reporting is the reason to pick Peec AI. Visibility, position, sentiment and share of voice sit beside the domains and URLs the answers cite, plus gap analysis and recommended actions.

Skip Peec AI when your budget is under $95 a month or you track fewer than 50 prompts. The entry plan is a poor fit for a single-location business that only wants to know whether it appears at all.

3. Otterly.AI: best for low-cost daily AI monitoring

Otterly.AI Lite costs $29 a month for 16 prompts, equal to 2,000 credits a month, tracked daily on 4 of 7 AI engines. Standard costs $189 a month for 120 prompts and 15,000 credits, and Premium costs $489 a month for 403 prompts and 50,000 credits. Annual billing takes 15% off. Enterprise is custom, from 1,000 prompts.

The credit model needs a careful read. One credit is one prompt checked once on one engine, and a prompt tracked daily on one engine uses 31 credits a month. Claude answers count as 3 credits each. Every plan can track all 7 engines — ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode, Gemini and Claude — and you switch engines per workspace at any time.

Lite covers 1 workspace and 3 recommendations a week, with no API or MCP access. Standard adds unlimited workspaces, API and MCP access, and unlimited recommendations. A 7-day free trial is available.

Skip Otterly.AI Lite when you need more than 16 prompts or an API feed into your own reports. The jump to Standard at $189 a month is steep, so count your prompts before you commit.

4. LLMrefs: best for flat-price tracking across engines

LLMrefs sells one plan, All in One, at $79 a month, marked limited time only on its pricing page. It tracks 500 prompts for brand mentions, sources and fan-out queries, with access to all listed AI engines at no extra fee, unlimited projects and team members, CSV export and API access. A 7-day free trial is available, with no credit card required.

LLMrefs tracks keywords rather than single prompts. You give it a keyword, and it builds fan-out prompts from real conversations users have with AI chatbots, then aggregates the answers. The engines named in its FAQ are ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Copilot, Meta AI and DeepSeek.

The trade-off is refresh speed. Reports refresh weekly, not daily, so LLMrefs suits trend tracking rather than daily alerts. The single price also means no cheaper tier for a brand that only needs 50 prompts.

Skip LLMrefs when you need daily checks, or when you want to watch a product launch day by day. Weekly data will leave you waiting for the next refresh. For daily needs, Peec AI or Otterly.AI fit better.

5. Rankscale: best for budget buyers wanting many engines

Rankscale Essentials costs $17 a month, billed yearly only, with 120 credits a month, up to 480 answers from AI engines, 2 brand dashboards and 10 page audits a month. Pro costs $99 a month, or $84 billed annually, with 1,200 credits and 10 dashboards. Higher tiers run to $780 a month for Enterprise.

Rankscale covers 17 or more AI engines on every plan, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Mistral, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. Scheduling runs from hourly to monthly, so you can check a small prompt set often or a large set rarely, and unused credits roll over up to twice the monthly allowance from Pro upward.

Essentials has real limits. It is yearly only, with no credit rollover, no team workspaces and no data exports, and sentiment analysis is not included. The 120-credit allowance is small: a prompt checked daily on one engine uses about 31 credits a month, so 120 credits covers only a handful of daily prompts.

Skip Rankscale Essentials when you need exports or a team workspace. Buy it as a low-cost trial of AI tracking, then move to Pro when the prompt list grows.

6. Scrunch: best for audits plus AI visibility data

Scrunch Core costs $250 a month for 125 unique prompts, 5,000 responses a month, 5 site audits a month, 1 brand workspace, 5 user licenses, 1 country, 1 language and 1 persona. It covers 4 LLMs: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Microsoft Copilot. Enterprise is custom, with 9 LLMs, API access, the Agent Experience Platform and a dedicated account team.

Scrunch pairs visibility tracking with page audits and AI agent traffic monitoring, so you can see both what AI engines say about your brand and whether AI bots visit your site. The prompt manager, citation tracking and insights dashboard are included on Core.

The entry price is the drawback. At $250 a month for 125 prompts, Scrunch costs more per prompt than every other pick here except Semrush Starter. The 4-engine list on Core is also narrower than Peec AI or Rankscale, and Claude and Gemini wait for Enterprise.

Skip Scrunch when your prompt list is small or your budget is under $250 a month. It fits a team that will use the audits and the agent-traffic data every month, not one that only wants a visibility score.

7. Semrush: best for Semrush users adding AI tracking

Semrush Starter, its SEO + AI Search plan, costs $199 a month, or $165.17 a month billed annually. It tracks 50 prompts a day, covers 1 domain for AI brand performance, and includes 300 AI visibility reports a day, 5 websites to monitor and 500 keywords tracked daily. Pro+ costs $299 a month, or $248.17 billed annually, with 100 prompts a day. The SEO-only plan costs $139 a month. No free trial is offered for the AI Visibility Toolkit.

The case for Semrush is consolidation. If your team already runs keyword research, position tracking and site audits in Semrush, adding AI prompt tracking to the same login avoids a second contract, a second dashboard and a second invoice. The toolkit also covers AI sentiment monitoring and AI visibility reports for any domain.

The cost is the drawback. Starter at $199 a month buys only 50 prompts a day, and the SEO-only plan at $139 a month does not include the same AI prompt tracking.

Skip Semrush when AI checking is your only job. A dedicated checker gives you more prompts for less. Keep it when your SEO work already lives in Semrush and you want AI visibility beside it. For the wider SEO picture, see the best AI tools for programmatic SEO and Adziq's SEO services.

What one year of AI checking costs

Monthly prices hide the real commitment, so here is the year worked out from the list prices above, before tax, on monthly billing unless stated.

Annual billing cuts most of these: SE Ranking Core falls to $1,238.40 a year, Peec AI Starter to about $969, and Otterly.AI Lite to about $296. Rankscale Essentials is already yearly only.

How to choose

Match the tool to the size of your prompt list and the engines you care about.

Count prompts before you buy. List every brand, product and buyer question you want tracked, then multiply by the engines that matter. A list of 40 prompts checked daily on 3 engines is 120 prompt-engine checks a day, which fits Peec AI Starter at 50 prompts on 3 models, but not Otterly.AI Lite at 16 prompts. A list of 500 prompts checked weekly fits LLMrefs, but not a daily tool at the same price.

Check engine coverage the same way. If Claude or Gemini answers matter to your buyers, confirm they are included in the entry plan, not sold as an add-on or held for Enterprise.

Common questions

Sources

• SE Ranking subscription and pricing
• Peec AI pricing
• Otterly.AI pricing
• LLMrefs pricing
• Rankscale pricing
• Scrunch pricing
• Semrush SEO and AI Search pricing

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