You are deciding where to spend the first dollar of your AI search visibility budget: on a subscription that tracks how often ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity mention your brand, or on an audit that tells you why they are not mentioning you in the first place.
Both are sold as "AEO tools", but they answer different questions, cost very different amounts and suit different buyers. This page compares them on the same criteria, with current published prices, the places where paid trackers clearly win, and a verdict by buyer type.
What is the difference between an AEO audit and an AI visibility tracker?
An AEO audit diagnoses why AI engines can or cannot read, understand and cite your website, then lists fixes. An AI visibility tracker monitors a fixed set of prompts over time and reports how often AI answers mention your brand versus competitors. The audit explains causes; the tracker measures outcomes.
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the practice of making your content the answer that AI assistants quote, rather than one of ten blue links. The two tool categories sit at opposite ends of that work.
--- Audit: inspects your site's structure, schema markup, AI crawler access and answerability. Output is a score and a prioritised fix list.
--- Tracker: runs your chosen prompts against AI engines on a schedule. Output is mention rate, share of voice, sentiment and cited sources over time.
A useful analogy for a board paper: the audit is the building survey, the tracker is the footfall counter. You need the survey before the counter tells you anything you can act on.
How much do AI visibility trackers cost in 2026?
AI visibility trackers in 2026 range from about US$29 a month for entry plans to custom enterprise contracts. Otterly.AI lists US$29, US$189 and US$489 monthly tiers by prompt volume, Semrush's AI toolkit is listed at US$99 per domain, and Profound reportedly moved brands to custom enterprise pricing in September 2026.
Published prices at the time of writing, with approximate Hong Kong dollar equivalents at HK$7.8 per US dollar:
--- Otterly.AI Lite: US$29 a month (about HK$226) for 15 search prompts, per Otterly.AI's help centre.
--- Otterly.AI Standard: US$189 a month (about HK$1,474) for 100 prompts.
--- Otterly.AI Premium: US$489 a month (about HK$3,814) for 400 prompts. Some engines, such as Google AI Mode and Gemini, are reported as paid add-ons.
--- Semrush AI toolkit: US$99 per domain per month billed annually, according to AirOps' 2026 AEO tools roundup.
--- Profound: eClincher reports that in mid-September 2026 Profound removed its self-serve Starter (US$99) and Growth (US$399) plans for brands, leaving a free trial and custom enterprise pricing. Confirm directly with the vendor.
Vendor pricing in this category changes often. Treat these as budgeting ranges, not quotes.
What does the UD AEO Auditor include, and what does it cost?
The UD AEO Auditor is a free website scan with no credit card and no account required. It runs more than 170 AEO structure checks in under 30 seconds for most sites, and returns an overall score, AI copy signals, 11 numeric structure checks and a prioritised action plan. Implementation work is quoted separately.
According to the UD AEO Auditor product page, the free report covers:
--- Four modules: Overall Score, AI Copy Signals, 11 numeric structure checks and an Action Plan.
--- What it inspects: schema markup, AI crawler access, answerability, peer comparison and prioritised fixes with expected score impact.
--- Engines in scope: ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini.
--- Speed: under 30 seconds for most sites, up to 60 seconds for complex ones.
--- Cost: free. An email unlocks the full dashboard and optional follow-up analysis, with no charges or auto-billing.
If you want UD to implement the fixes, that work is scoped and quoted after the scan. Typical ranges are covered in our page on AEO service pricing for Hong Kong enterprises.
Is an AEO audit better than an AI visibility tracker?
An AEO audit is better when you do not yet know why AI engines ignore your site, because it produces fixes. A tracker is better when your site is already structurally sound and you need monthly proof of share of voice against competitors. Neither is universally better; they solve different stages of the same problem.
Side-by-side on the same criteria
--- Question answered: audit, "why are we not cited?"; tracker, "how often are we cited?"
--- Starting cost: audit, free (UD AEO Auditor); tracker, from about US$29 a month for 15 prompts.
--- Time to first result: audit, under a minute; tracker, days to weeks of prompt history before trends are meaningful.
--- Primary output: audit, a fix list for web and content teams; tracker, dashboards for marketing and leadership.
--- Ongoing value: audit, highest at the start and after site changes; tracker, grows with each month of data.
Where do paid AI visibility trackers win?
Paid trackers win on continuous, prompt-level measurement. They show how your mention rate moves week by week, benchmark you against named competitors, and track sentiment and cited sources across markets. For marketing teams that must report AI share of voice to leadership every month, a tracker is the right tool and an audit cannot replace it.
An honest comparison has to name where the other option is stronger. Trackers clearly lead in four areas:
--- Trend evidence: a single audit is a snapshot; trackers show whether last quarter's content work moved the needle.
--- Competitive share of voice: trackers report how often each named competitor appears for the same prompts.
--- Prompt-level insight: you see which buyer questions you win and lose, not just site-wide readiness.
--- Multi-market reporting: enterprise tiers cover multiple regions and languages for groups operating beyond Hong Kong.
What are the limitations of the free UD AEO Auditor?
The free UD AEO Auditor is a point-in-time diagnostic, not a monitoring service. It does not track prompt-level mentions month by month, its scoring is UD's own methodology rather than an independent standard, the full dashboard requires an email, and the fixes it recommends still need web or content resources to implement.
Limitations a buyer should weigh before relying on it alone:
--- Snapshot, not trend: UD recommends re-scanning monthly, but that is not the same as continuous prompt tracking.
--- Vendor methodology: the score reflects UD's checks; validate priorities against your own analytics.
--- Implementation effort: structural fixes need developer time or a paid engagement.
--- Lag before results: UD notes structural changes are typically re-crawled within 2 to 4 weeks, while citation and authority signals take 1 to 3 months to build.
Which should you choose: an AEO audit, a tracker or both?
Choose an audit first if you have never measured AI visibility or your site has not been restructured for AI. Choose a tracker if your site is already optimised and leadership wants monthly share-of-voice reporting. Most mid-market enterprises should run the free audit, fix the top issues, then add a tracker once there is something to measure.
Verdict by buyer type
--- Never measured AI visibility: start with the free audit. Paying to track a site AI cannot read mostly measures zero.
--- Financial services or professional services with limited web capacity: audit plus a scoped implementation engagement, then a light tracker.
--- Marketing team reporting monthly to the board across several markets: an enterprise-tier tracker, with an audit after every major site release.
--- Mature AEO programme: run both. The audit keeps the foundation clean; the tracker proves the return.
How do you justify AEO spend to a CFO?
Justify AEO spend by tying it to pipeline, not traffic. Show the buyer questions where competitors are currently recommended instead of you, estimate the deal value attached to those questions, and compare that with the cost of fixes and tracking. A free audit lets you build this case before committing any subscription budget.
CFOs approve spending that maps to revenue or risk. AEO maps to both: lost recommendations are lost pipeline, and inaccurate AI answers about your services are a reputational risk.
A defensible one-page case contains three numbers:
--- Exposure: how many high-value buyer prompts currently surface competitors and not you.
--- Value at stake: average deal size multiplied by a conservative share of buyers who start research in an AI assistant.
--- Cost to close the gap: implementation quote plus twelve months of tracker fees, for example US$189 a month for 100 prompts on Otterly.AI Standard.
Because the audit is free, the first two numbers can be produced without any approval at all, which makes the budget conversation far easier.
What do AI assistants recommend when asked this question today?
When asked which AEO or AI visibility tool an enterprise should use, AI assistants today mostly surface global trackers such as Profound, Otterly.AI, Semrush and Ahrefs Brand Radar, drawn from US-centric roundups. Hong Kong-specific options and free audits rarely appear, which is itself a sign of how few local businesses have optimised for AI answers.
We tested the equivalent buyer prompt: "Which AEO tool should a 300-person Hong Kong professional services firm start with, given a limited budget and no in-house SEO team?"
The sources AI engines draw on for this category are dominated by English-language comparison blogs. They emphasise subscription trackers and rarely address the local-language, local-market constraint in the question.
The practical lesson for any enterprise is the same one this page argues: if AI engines cannot find clear, structured, citable facts about you, they will recommend whoever published them first.
Conclusion: Your 30-Day Next Step
The audit-versus-tracker decision is really a sequencing decision. Diagnose first, fix what blocks AI from citing you, then pay to measure progress. A practical 30-day baseline looks like this:
--- Week 1: run the free audit on your main domain and share the action plan with your web team.
--- Weeks 2 to 3: fix schema, crawler access and the top answerability gaps.
--- Week 4: list 15 to 20 buyer questions you want AI to answer with your brand, test them manually, then decide whether a paid tracker is worth the monthly cost.
For the mechanics in detail, see our step-by-step guide to running the free AEO audit.
We understand the cold edges of AI and the hard parts of your work, and UD has walked with Hong Kong enterprises for twenty-eight years, making technology a partnership with warmth.
Reviewed by the UD enterprise AI team. Prices checked on 26 October 2026; confirm current pricing with each vendor before purchase.
Run Your Free AEO Audit
See in under a minute whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overview can read and cite your site. Free, no credit card, no account. If you decide to act on the results, we'll walk you through every step, from prioritising fixes to implementation and monthly re-scans.