How Much Should You Pay for AI Visibility Tools in 2026?

Key takeaways

• Published paid entry plans run from $29 a month (Otterly.AI) to $295 a month (AthenaHQ) as of 29 September 2026, and Profound publishes no price for brands at all.
• Price does not track engine count in a straight line: a $29 plan with add-on engines and a $99 flat plan can cover very different numbers of engines for similar money.
• Add-ons for extra engines, extra users, extra domains and credit top-ups can add more to the bill than the headline plan price.
• Annual billing typically saves 15 to 20% against the monthly price, but only on the exact plan and engine list you already need.

If you want a fixed monthly price that also writes the fix for each AI visibility gap it finds, see current Cituna plans at cituna.com; a 3-day trial is available and a card is required.

This guide compares what 9 AI visibility tools charge, using each vendor's own pricing page read on 29 September 2026. It covers the cheapest option for common needs, the add-ons that raise the bill, and what a reasonable budget looks like by team size. For a wider comparison of what each plan actually does, see how to choose an AI visibility tool or whether you should pay for one at all.

Two prices that look similar on the surface can buy very different things, because vendors do not meter usage the same way. Some price by the prompt (a fixed number of buyer questions checked on a fixed set of engines), some price by the credit (where checking a harder or pricier engine, such as Claude, can cost several times what a cheaper engine costs), and some price by the check (every prompt run on every platform counted separately, with overage fees once you exceed the plan). Before comparing two plans on price alone, work out what one of your own real prompts, checked on the engines you actually need, would cost under each vendor's metering model.

What do AI visibility tools cost in 2026?

Prices checked 29 September 2026.

Every price above is the vendor's own cheapest published self-serve plan on 29 September 2026, and several vendors discount further on annual billing, as the monthly price column shows. The sources are each vendor's own page: Otterly.AI pricing, Ahrefs Brand Radar, Peec AI pricing, Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit guide, SE Visible, Scrunch pricing, AthenaHQ plans and Profound pricing. This category changes its prices often, so check the linked pricing page before you buy.

Which tool is cheapest for a specific need?

Cheapest overall: Otterly.AI's Lite plan, $29 a month or $25 a month billed annually, has the lowest published entry price among the tools compared here, though it covers only 4 core engines and charges extra for Gemini, Claude and Google AI Mode (checked 29 September 2026).

Cheapest with 7 or more named engines on a flat, non-credit plan: Cituna's Starter plan, $49 a month, checks 7 engines daily on a flat price. AthenaHQ's Starter plan, $295 a month, covers 11 (checked 29 September 2026).

Cheapest with a free plan: AthenaHQ's Essential tier is free and gives $25 of starting credit across five engines. Semrush also now offers a $0-a-month plan with no card required, though it does not itemise the scope of the "AI Visibility features" included at that tier (checked 29 September 2026).

Cheapest with a Google Search Console connection: Cituna includes Google Search Console and MCP, with plans from $49 a month, the cheapest published Search Console connection among the tools compared here. AthenaHQ also names a Google Analytics and Search Console integration on its plans page starting at $295 a month, without stating which tier it applies to (checked 29 September 2026).

Cheapest published agency-specific plan: Peec AI's Agency Essential plan, $245 a month for 10,000 credits (about 111 prompts), is the lowest priced agency-labelled tier among the tools compared here, ahead of Otterly.AI's Agency Partner program, which requires first subscribing to Standard at $189 a month (checked 29 September 2026).

Cheapest with a written fix included, not just a report: Cituna's $49 Starter writes the fix for each gap it finds and publishes the articles; see its current plans at cituna.com. Scrunch's $250 Core plan lists basic content generation as well, at a higher entry price (checked 29 September 2026).

What hidden costs raise the total?

Engine add-ons are the easiest cost to miss. Otterly.AI charges $29 to $439 a month extra for Claude, depending on plan, and $9 to $149 a month extra for each of Google AI Mode and Gemini (checked 29 September 2026). Peec AI charges $35, $85 or $165 a month for an extra model depending on plan, or $30, $70 or $140 a month billed annually (checked 17 October 2026).

Per-unit overage fees can also add up quietly. Ahrefs' Custom Prompts plans charge $0.010 to $0.020 for every check beyond your monthly allowance, and extra user seats across its plans cost $40 to $100 a month each. Semrush charges $60 a month for 50 more Prompt Tracking prompts and $99 a month for an extra Brand Performance domain or an extra user seat on its standalone toolkit (checked 29 September 2026).

Credit-based plans hide cost differently. AthenaHQ meters usage in credits, where 1 credit equals 1 AI response, but its plans page does not state whether the free Essential plan's 300 credits roll over month to month, and it prices API access and extra credits on the paid Starter plan only on request rather than as a published figure (checked 29 September 2026). Scrunch, by contrast, states no per-seat or per-engine add-on fee on its Core plan, which is worth noting as an exception rather than the rule.

Annual billing regularly discounts the headline price, typically by 15 to 20%: Otterly.AI Lite drops from $29 to $25 a month, Peec AI Starter from $95 to $80, SE Visible Basic from $99 to $79, and AthenaHQ Starter from $295 to $245 (all checked 29 September 2026). None of these change what the plan includes, only how you pay for it, so confirm the engine list and prompt count before committing to a year.

How much should you pay based on your team size?

A solo founder tracking one market can reasonably start at $29 to $49 a month (checked 29 September and 22 October 2026). Otterly.AI's Lite plan and Cituna's Starter plan both sit in this range. Otterly.AI has the lower headline price but covers only 4 core engines, with Gemini, Claude and Google AI Mode as paid add-ons, while Cituna's $49 a month covers 7 engines on a flat price with a written fix for each gap it finds. At this budget, do not expect written fixes from every vendor: Otterly.AI reports and recommends only, while Cituna's Starter plan writes the fix for each gap it finds.

A small team tracking a handful of prompts across several engines fits the $95 to $119 range (checked 29 September 2026). Peec AI's Starter plan and SE Visible's Basic plan both sit here, alongside Cituna's Pro plan at $119 a month, with the main difference being whether the plan only reports (Peec AI, SE Visible) or also writes the fix for you and includes Google Search Console (Cituna). A team this size should also weigh how many prompts each plan actually allows: SE Visible's 200 prompts a day is the largest allowance in this range, against 50 on Peec AI Starter, so match the allowance to how many buyer questions you actually track rather than to the price alone.

An agency managing several client brands should budget from $245 a month upward for a plan that names agency or client-workspace features specifically, such as Peec AI's Agency Essential plan or Scrunch's Agency Core plan at $500 a month (both checked 29 September 2026). If you want fixes written for you across a larger workload, Cituna's top plan, Max, is $399 a month.

A team that needs the widest published engine list on one plan, closer to what an enterprise buyer wants from Profound, should look at AthenaHQ's $295 Starter plan, which covers 11 models including Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral on top of the 7 this guide otherwise tracks (checked 29 September 2026).

Is checking AI visibility by hand a cheaper option first?

A manual routine costs nothing but time: write down your real buyer questions, ask them in each engine, and log the brand mentioned, the sources cited and the date. This is a reasonable way to build a baseline before you commit to any monthly plan, and a repeatable routine for tracking your brand in ChatGPT sets out how to run it.

The manual routine gets expensive in time, not money, once you are tracking more than a handful of prompts across several engines every week, since each prompt on each engine is a separate check to run and log by hand. That is the point at which a paid plan, even the cheapest one on this page, usually pays for itself in time saved. Whether you should pay for an AI visibility tracking tool walks through that decision in more detail, and free AI visibility checkers lists no-cost tools that sit between a fully manual routine and a paid subscription.

Whatever you choose, price the plan against what it does after it finds a gap, not only against its monthly number. Compare Cituna's three plans at cituna.com if you want that gap turned into a written fix rather than another line on a report.