Buyer's guide · AI search visibility · Checked
AI visibility checkers compared: free tools, trackers and a one-off audit
Start with a free AI visibility checker: Ahrefs' and Semrush's free checkers show, without signing up, whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and other AI platforms mention your brand, and HubSpot's free AI Search Grader shows how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini describe you. Pay for a tracker such as Otterly.AI (from $29 a month), LLMrefs ($79 a month) or Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit ($99 a month) only if you need the same questions re-checked every day. A checker tells you whether you're mentioned, not why, so if you're missing, first make sure AI crawlers can reach and read your pages.
Disclosure: ChikuOS sells some of the options below, and they're labelled "ChikuOS". No vendor paid to be listed or placed, and we earn no commission or affiliate fee from any link on this page. Prices and features of other products are as listed on their own sites on 18 October 2026; follow the links to check current terms.
AI visibility checkers and trackers compared (prices as listed by each vendor)
How we chose and ordered these: Free checkers come first, then paid trackers and audits from the lowest listed price up; at the same price, other providers are listed before ours. What each tool shows is as the vendor describes it; we haven't run every tool on the same brand. How we compare.
| Option | Type | Price | What it shows | Good fit when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs Free AI Visibility Checker | One-time snapshot by brand name | Free, no signup; preview limited to the top 5 per section | Mentions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode; top topics, cited domains and cited pages | A quick baseline for a brand people already search for |
| Semrush Free AI Visibility Tool | Snapshot by domain | Free, 3 checks a day, no account | A 0 to 100 AI Visibility Score, mentions and citations across ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode and AI Overviews, top cited pages, competitor comparison | You want a score to compare against competitors |
| HubSpot AI Search Grader | One-time brand perception check | Free, no account | What ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini say about your brand based on their training data, across five dimensions | You care how AI describes you, not live search results |
| Mangools AI Search Grader | Brand check | Free tool | How your brand performs across ChatGPT and other AI search engines, with competitor strength | A second free opinion |
| Profound | Tracker for larger brands | Free 7-day trial (50 prompts a day, not customisable); Enterprise priced on request | Mentions, citations, sentiment and ranking across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews on the trial | A larger brand evaluating enterprise tracking |
| Otterly.AI | Daily tracker | Lite $29/month (15 prompts); Standard $189/month (100 prompts) | Daily tracking on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot (Claude, Gemini, AI Mode as add-ons), citations, sentiment, crawlability audit | A small business tracking a handful of buyer questions |
| LLMrefs | Tracker | $79/month, 7-day free trial | 500 tracked prompts for brand mentions, sources and fan-out queries | You want many prompts tracked for one price |
| ChikuOS AI Visibility Audit | One-off audit of your site | $79, 48 hours; $199 with fixes | AI crawler access (robots.txt and Cloudflare/CDN bot settings), whether pages show content without JavaScript, structured data, Bing and IndexNow status, plus 20 buyer questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Grok; ranked fix list | You're not mentioned and want to know what on your site to fix |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | Tracker inside Semrush | $99/month, no free trial | Prompt tracking, brand performance and AI analysis reports for 1 project and 1 domain | You already use Semrush for SEO |
Which one should you pick?
- You just want to know if AI mentions you: run the free Ahrefs and Semrush checkers. That's enough for most small sites.
- You care how AI describes you: HubSpot's free grader looks at brand perception rather than live search results.
- You need the same questions tracked every day: Otterly.AI's $29 Lite plan is the cheapest listed tracker here; LLMrefs and Semrush suit larger prompt sets or existing Semrush users.
- You're not mentioned anywhere and don't know why: check that AI crawlers can reach and read your site before paying for tracking. You can do that yourself (see below) or use our $79 AI visibility audit.
Brand new site? Expect zero at first
Free checkers look up your brand name or domain. Ahrefs says its prompts are built from what people really search for, so a brand nobody searches for yet may simply show nothing. That's what we found for our own site: when we asked an AI search engine five buyer questions a few days after launch, chikuos.com wasn't mentioned in any answer (our baseline is on the AI visibility audit page). A tracker can't change that on its own. Being mentioned by other sites does: Semrush's own guidance says AI platforms use trusted third-party sources to decide which brands are relevant.
What checkers don't tell you
- Whether AI crawlers can get in. A robots.txt rule or a CDN bot setting can block GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot. Check your robots.txt and any bot-blocking settings at your host or CDN.
- Whether your pages can be read. If key content only appears after JavaScript runs, some crawlers may see an empty page. Compare "view source" with what you see in the browser.
- Why answers change. AI answers vary from one day and one person to the next, which Semrush also notes in its FAQ. Treat any single check as a snapshot.
Where ChikuOS fits
We don't sell a tracker. The AI visibility audit is a one-off $79 report, delivered within 48 hours, that checks crawler access, rendering and structured data, runs 20 buyer questions across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Grok, and gives you a ranked fix list. It doesn't promise you'll be mentioned. If the free checkers already show you being mentioned and you just want to watch the trend, a tracker is the better buy.
FAQ
What is the best free AI visibility checker?
Ahrefs' Free AI Visibility Checker (no signup, covers ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, AI Overviews and AI Mode) and Semrush's Free AI Visibility Tool (3 free checks a day, with a 0 to 100 score) are the most complete free snapshots we found. HubSpot's free AI Search Grader is useful if you care how AI describes your brand.
How do I check if ChatGPT mentions my website?
Run a free checker such as Ahrefs' or Semrush's, then ask ChatGPT a few questions your buyers would ask, in a private window. Answers vary from day to day, so repeat the same questions over a few days before drawing conclusions.
Are paid AI visibility trackers worth it?
Only if you need the same questions tracked over time, for example to see whether new content or PR moved the numbers. For a one-time answer, the free checkers are enough.
Why doesn't my site show up in ChatGPT?
Common reasons are that it's new and few other sites mention it, AI crawlers are blocked by robots.txt or a CDN bot setting, or key content only loads with JavaScript. Check crawler access and rendering first, then work on being mentioned by other sites.
How much do AI visibility tools cost?
Free for one-off checkers from Ahrefs, Semrush, HubSpot and Mangools; $29 to $189 a month for Otterly.AI's Lite and Standard plans; $79 a month for LLMrefs; $99 a month for Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit; Profound's Enterprise plan is priced on request; our one-off AI visibility audit is $79, as listed on each vendor's site on 18 October 2026.
How this guide was made: researched and drafted with AI assistance, then every price and claim was checked against the linked source on 18 October 2026. Editorial responsibility: ChikuOS. Spotted something out of date? Email hello@chikuos.com and we'll correct it.