Over the past few weeks, I've spent a lot of time diving into what AI responses and the websites they cite say about the AI visibility tool I spend most of my time on: Ahrefs Brand Radar.
It's interesting to me how many sites either make up wild, inaccurate claims or omit that Ahrefs' custom prompt tracking starts at just $50/m and doesn't require a standard Ahrefs subscription.
One site even went so far as to say that if you have 10 clients, Ahrefs will cost you over $8,000 per month (in reality, with Brand Radar you can check as many sites as you like from a single account).
I'm going to put this down to them not being informed, rather than any kind of malice.
I was discussing this exact topic with Charles Floate recently on X and thought I would do a full comparison of where Ahrefs stands among other AI visibility tools.
To clarify before I share the tweet (which I checked in with Charles about before screenshotting here), he is not part of my statement about misinformation.
Instead, Charles helped me realize Ahrefs and I could do a much better job clarifying our pricing.
While I'm technically biased, I don't forget that one year ago I was simply an Ahrefs customer, and I'm as curious as anyone about how much it would cost to track prompts for myself and clients using prominent tools.
The numbers below are exactly as I found them on the pricing page of each platform.
In this day and age, it's also possible to vibe-code your own AI visibility monitoring tool, which I've done myself for several small-scale tests.
Dedicated platforms can excel in managing large amounts of data, defining metrics, generating useful charts and tables, integrating the likes of bot and website analytics, displaying AI mentions alongside traditional search data, showing whether your brand is mentioned on cited pages themselves, and more.
As it stands, there are easily 100+ brands in the space that offer some of this functionality.
For this analysis, the companies I'm going to focus on are Ahrefs Brand Radar, Peec AI, Positive Surfer, Profound, Promptwatch, Searchable, and Semrush.
All have either received millions in funding or were recently acquired for significant sums. Each also has a page covering Ahrefs on their site, so I'm not bringing them into a comparison they would want no part of.
It's important to me personally that I'm respectful there.
An upfront disclaimer
This article aims to show exactly how much it would cost to track a specific number of prompts across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Mode.
It's important to note that each tool may also offer additional extras on its plans beyond custom prompt tracking.
For example, Positive Surfer's Pro plan offers integrations with WordPress, Google Docs, and Contentful.
With an Ahrefs Free plan, you can get access to Bot Analytics, Site Audit, Web Analytics, Social Media Manager, and similar tools.
Scrunch's cheapest plan Core, pictured below, supports five user licenses. Peec AI offers MCP access on its cheapest plan.
If you're in the decision-making process and you're interested in any of these extra features, I recommend checking out the sites of each tool individually.
Now on to the analysis...
Across four of six AI visibility monitoring scenarios, Ahrefs Brand Radar is the cheapest option
After considering six pricing scenarios that differ by how many models are monitored or how many prompts are checked daily, Ahrefs is the cheapest in four and the second cheapest in two.
Peec AI and Promptwatch have very respectable pricing for their cheapest tiers, though it's actually Searchable that wins in two of the scenarios.
| Daily prompts | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 x 3 Models | $50/mo | $95/mo | $399/mo | $95/mo | $250/mo | $125/mo | $99/mo | $219/mo |
| 50 x 2 Models | $60/mo | $95/mo | $399/mo | $95/mo | $250/mo | $125/mo | $299/mo | $219/mo |
| 50 x 3 Models | $90/mo | $95/mo | $399/mo | $95/mo | $250/mo | $125/mo | $299/mo | $219/mo |
| 100 x 3 Models | $130/mo | $245/mo | $399/mo | $245/mo | $250/mo | $125/mo | $299/mo | $359/mo |
| 100 x 4 Models | $175/mo | $330/mo | Talk to Sales | $245/mo | Talk to Sales | $150/mo | $299/mo | $359/mo |
| 200 x 4 Models | $250/mo | $660/mo | Talk to Sales | $579/mo | Talk to Sales | $525/mo | $549/mo | Talk to Sales |
As you can see, checking 50 prompts daily across three models (such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Mode), Ahrefs Brand Radar is the cheapest option, followed by Peec AI/Promptwatch, then Searchable.
If you wanted to check 200 prompts daily across four models, Ahrefs is once again the cheapest option. At this volume, Profound, Scrunch, and Surfer would require talking to their sales team before you could sign up.
Profound is limited by its cheapest plan, which only lets you check a single model (ChatGPT), and by the jump from $99/m to $399/m for the next tier.
We can also look purely at an alloted amount of checks per month. Here things are admittedly a little more difficult to compare, as some companies have both a Brand and Agencies plan, with the latter more focused on a specific number of checks.
I've tried to be accurate here and update each site accordingly. For example, Promptwatch's pricing goes from $245/m for 10K checks using their Brands pricing, to $199/m on Agencies pricing.
That said, please check each site individually for their latest numbers.
| Tool | 10K Checks/m | Per check | 20K Checks/m | Per check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $145/mo | $0.0145 | $250/mo | $0.0125 | |
| $199/mo | $0.0199 | $399/mo | $0.0200 | |
| $245/mo | $0.0245 | $495/mo | $0.0248 | |
| $250/mo | $0.0250 | Talk to Sales | — | |
| $299/mo | $0.0299 | $549/mo | $0.0274 | |
| $359/mo | $0.0359 | Talk to Sales | — | |
| $400/mo | $0.0400 | $400/mo | $0.0200 | |
| Talk to Sales | — | Talk to Sales | — |
To check AI responses 10,000 times per month or 20,000 times per month, once again Ahrefs works out to be the cheapest platform overall.
Three places where Ahrefs Brand Radar stands out
Ahrefs Brand Radar has the cheapest starting price. No other tool starts at just $50/m.
If you want more Ahrefs functionality, you can combine this with a Starter ($29/m), Lite ($129/m), or higher plan, but it's not required.
Ahrefs Brand Radar also allows users to pay for overages, so you don't have to jump to the next level to track a few extra prompts. I did not see that option on any other tool.
As an example, if you want to track 25 prompts daily across three platforms, the $50/m plan is more than sufficient. If you wanted to check 40 prompts daily, you don't need to jump up to the next plan (Growth) at $100/m.
Instead, you can pay the overage of $0.02 per check, resulting in a $72/m plan. Still far short of the $95/m lowest tier from the other platforms I've compared.
Ahrefs also lets you track unlimited separate projects, which isn't the case for Semrush (one domain for Brand Performance analysis).
Tracking prompts, of course, should prioritize right action
If your primary focus is to track custom prompts, Ahrefs' pricing is hard to beat.
While this study focused on costs, I'd argue companies will look to excel in (among other things) helping users see how their brand is performing in their industry, combining multiple data sources to get a better picture of AI's value, and linking AI responses to actionable next steps.
Doing these things well takes a lot of time and resources.
No matter which platform you use, it's important to understand that responses can be volatile. The same prompt given to ChatGPT, made just a few minutes apart, can result in different brands being recommended, and different cited sources.
I've done some research into this (and plan to do more).
My best piece of advice is to start small, or at least don't try to track everything.
Prioritize tracking prompts around products or services you're actively promoting, so you're more likely to do something with the insights you get from responses. You can always expand your coverage later.
