How Much Do AI Visibility Tools Actually Cost in 2026?
Published entry prices in 2026 run from about US$29 a month to US$399 a month, with enterprise tiers quoted into the thousands. Otterly Lite starts at US$29, Peec Starter at about US$95, AthenaHQ at about US$295, and Profound Growth at US$399. Free structural checkers sit below all of them.
That is a fourteen-fold spread for tools that all claim to answer the same question: does ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude mention your brand when a buyer asks?
Here is the published ladder, checked against vendor and comparison sources in mid-2026.
--- Otterly: Lite US$29/mo for 15 tracked prompts, Standard US$189 for 100 prompts, Premium US$489 for 400 prompts, Enterprise custom from around US$1,000/mo.
--- Peec: Starter around US$95/mo, Pro US$245, Advanced US$495.
--- AthenaHQ: around US$245/mo billed annually, US$295 billed monthly, on a credit model.
--- Profound: Growth from US$399/mo, rising into the thousands for the full analytics and white-label tiers.
--- Free checkers: Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker, IsVisible.ai, Arobis and UDomain AEO Auditor, all US$0 with no card.
Prices are list prices in US dollars and vendors adjust them. Treat the figures above as the shape of the market, and confirm the current number on the vendor's own pricing page before you sign anything.
What Are You Actually Buying at These Prices?
Almost every paid AI visibility tool bills on tracked prompts, not on pages or keywords. A prompt is one question the tool asks the AI engines on a schedule, for example "best web design agency in Hong Kong". Your plan tier is essentially a prompt allowance, and everything else scales from it.
This is the single most important thing to understand before you compare plans, because prompt counts are not comparable across vendors without doing arithmetic.
Otterly's US$29 Lite tier covers 15 prompts. Peec's entry tier costs roughly three times more. If you only ever need to know whether your brand shows up for a handful of high-intent questions, the cheap tier is not a crippled version of the expensive one. It is the same product with a smaller allowance.
What the higher tiers add is breadth and history: more prompts, more engines, competitor share-of-voice, regional splits, source attribution showing which pages the AI actually cited, and in Profound's case white-label reporting for agencies.
What Does It Work Out To Per Prompt?
At published entry tiers in 2026, cost per tracked prompt lands between roughly US$0.86 and US$1.98 a month. Scrunch comes in around US$0.86, Peec around US$1.90, Otterly around US$1.93, and Profound around US$1.98. The headline price differences shrink dramatically once you normalise for allowance.
This is the number to run before you assume the cheaper tool is cheaper. A US$29 plan at 15 prompts is not obviously better value than a US$189 plan at 100 prompts, because the second one costs less per unit of the thing you are actually buying.
The practical implication: decide your prompt count first, then shop. Most small teams need somewhere between 10 and 40 prompts to cover their real buying questions. Write that list down before you open a single pricing page, and the comparison takes ten minutes instead of an afternoon.
What Can You Get for Free, and Where Does Free Stop?
Free AI visibility checkers give you a point-in-time snapshot: a visibility score, a structural audit of whether AI crawlers can read and quote your site, and a prioritised fix list. Ahrefs, IsVisible.ai, Arobis and UDomain AEO Auditor all run without a credit card or an account. What free does not give you is tracking over time.
That distinction is the whole decision. A free scan answers "is my site readable and quotable by AI right now, and what is broken?" A paid tracker answers "across 100 buyer questions, week over week, how often am I mentioned versus my three competitors?"
Most Hong Kong teams are not yet at the second question. If you have never run the first scan, paying US$399 a month to watch a number you have not tried to fix yet is an expensive way to feel informed.
The sequence that saves money is unglamorous. Run a free structural audit. Fix what it flags. Wait for a re-crawl. Re-scan. Only then, if you genuinely need continuous competitive monitoring, buy a tracker.
Where Does UDomain AEO Auditor Fit?
UDomain AEO Auditor is a free structural AEO audit, not a prompt tracker. You enter a URL and get a report in under 30 seconds, with no sign-up and no credit card. It runs 170+ AEO structure checks and reports on visibility across ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini.
The published facts, taken from the product page, are worth stating plainly so you can compare them line by line against a paid plan.
--- Price: US$0. No credit card, no account required.
--- Time to report: under 30 seconds for most sites, up to about 60 seconds for complex ones.
--- Coverage: ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini.
--- Depth: 170+ structure checks, grouped into an overall score, AI copy signals, numeric structure checks and an action plan.
--- Email: used only to open the full dashboard and optional follow-up analysis, with no charges or auto-billing.
--- Expected timing after fixes: structural changes typically re-crawled in 2 to 4 weeks; citation and authority signals accumulate over 1 to 3 months.
If you are weighing it against a specific paid platform rather than against free options, we have covered two of those decisions separately: AEO Auditor versus Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit and Profound alternatives for Hong Kong teams. This page is the cost picture; those two are the head-to-heads.
What Are the Honest Limitations?
A free structural audit cannot do what a paid tracker does. UDomain AEO Auditor gives you a point-in-time picture of whether AI engines can read and cite your site. It does not monitor 100 prompts weekly, does not chart competitor share-of-voice over months, and does not replace a paid platform for an agency reporting to clients.
Three more caveats worth stating before anyone quotes this page back at us.
The uplift figures are UD projections, not audited benchmarks. The product page cites numbers such as roughly 80% more visibility after AEO work and a projected 40 to 60% lift from schema completion. These are our modelled estimates from client work, not independently verified industry research. Treat them directionally.
Free alternatives exist and are good. Ahrefs runs a free AI visibility checker covering ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, AI Overviews and AI Mode with no signup and no cap on brands checked. If your only need is a quick score, you have several credible free options and you should use more than one.
Prices move. Every figure in this article is a published list price gathered in 2026. AI visibility is a young, fast-repricing category. Verify on the vendor's page before you commit budget.
So What Should You Actually Buy?
Match the tool to the question you are being asked to answer. If nobody has asked you for a weekly competitive report, you do not need a paid tracker yet. If you own client reporting or a category where AI recommendations already drive enquiries, a paid tier is a real cost of doing business.
--- You have never checked: run a free structural audit today. Cost US$0, time under a minute.
--- You need 10 to 20 prompts watched: Otterly Lite at US$29 is the cheapest credible entry.
--- You need 100+ prompts and competitor share-of-voice: Otterly Standard at US$189 or Peec Pro at US$245 sit in the value band.
--- You are an agency reporting to clients: Profound from US$399 buys the deepest analytics and white-label output. It wins that row honestly.
--- You are fixing structure before measuring: a free 170-point audit is the right first move, and paying for tracking now would be premature.
The mistake we see most often in Hong Kong is buying the monitoring before doing the fixing. You end up paying monthly to watch a flat line.
The Takeaway
AI visibility pricing is not really a price question. It is a question of whether you are at the audit stage or the monitoring stage, and almost everyone asking is still at the audit stage. Start free, fix what the audit flags, and buy tracking when a real reporting obligation appears.
We understand AI. We understand you better. With UD by your side, AI doesn't feel cold. After 28 years helping Hong Kong companies get found, the pattern has not changed much: the tool that tells you the truth cheaply is worth more than the tool that tells you more.
Reviewed by the UD AI team.
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