Best AI visibility tools for startups and small teams

What this page ranks on, before the list

Two things, both checkable, and neither of them "features". If you care more about engine count or country coverage, the order below is the wrong order for you and you should read the general list instead.

• Is there a real free tier. Not a demo, not a call: something that runs an actual scan and shows you an actual answer. Two tools here have one.
• Cost per tracked buyer question a month. This is the number that decides whether the tool survives your next budget review, and it is not the headline price. A $29 plan tracking 15 prompts costs more per prompt than a $189 plan tracking 100.
• Deliberately NOT ranked on: engine count, prompt volume ceilings, or enterprise features. A startup that needs 9,000 responses a month is not a startup for the purposes of this page, and Profound is the better answer for it.

The short answer

AnswerTrace, on both criteria. Its free plan runs a real scan on ChatGPT with no credit card, paid starts at ₹999 a month, and at 100 tracked questions it costs about 70% less than the comparable international plan.

AthenaHQ, if you want the widest free trial. Its Essential tier is free with $25 of credit and covers five engines, which is more than AnswerTrace gives away and more than several paid entry plans here.

Otterly.AI, if you want four engines for the least money and can live with 15 prompts. At $29 a month that is the cheapest paid entry point on this page in dollar terms.

On covering many engines, which is where this gets argued badly

Every tool here advertises an engine count, and the count on its own is a weak thing to buy on. An engine you can ask 15 questions on tells you less than an engine you can ask 100 on. What you are actually buying is engines times questions, so that is what this section compares.

Two facts first, because they do not favour us. Scrunch carries seven engines and AthenaHQ's paid tier carries ten, against AnswerTrace's four. And on engines times questions per rupee, Scrunch wins outright: Scrunch Starter returns 103 engine-questions per ₹1,000 a month against AnswerTrace Growth's 60. If raw coverage is what you want and you can spend, Scrunch is the answer and this page will not talk you out of it.

What is true for a small team is narrower. Scrunch starts at about ₹23,850 a month, which is not a small-team number, and neither is Profound, Semrush or AthenaHQ's paid tier. Under ₹5,000 a month the field is AnswerTrace and Otterly.AI Lite, and there Growth gives you 3 engines across 100 buyer questions where Otterly.AI Lite gives 4 engines across 15. That is 300 engine-questions against 60.

The engines AnswerTrace covers are ChatGPT, Google's AI Overview, Claude and Perplexity. The one it does not carry at all is Microsoft Copilot, and Otterly.AI does. Whether that costs you anything is a question about your buyers rather than about either tool: if they ask Copilot which product to buy, Otterly.AI sees that and we do not.

• Scrunch Starter: 7 engines across 350 buyer questions, 103 engine-questions per ₹1,000 a month.
• AnswerTrace Growth: 3 engines across 100 buyer questions, 60 engine-questions per ₹1,000 a month.
• AnswerTrace Starter: 2 engines across 25 buyer questions, 50 engine-questions per ₹1,000 a month.
• Otterly.AI Lite: 4 engines across 15 buyer questions, 22 engine-questions per ₹1,000 a month.
• Otterly.AI Standard: 4 engines across 100 buyer questions, 22 engine-questions per ₹1,000 a month.
• Profound Starter: 3 engines across 50 buyer questions, 16 engine-questions per ₹1,000 a month.
• Semrush AI Toolkit: 4 engines across 25 buyer questions, 11 engine-questions per ₹1,000 a month.

1. AnswerTrace

First on both criteria, and the second one is where the gap is largest: at 100 tracked questions a month it is about 70% less than Otterly.AI Standard. The free plan runs a real scan on ChatGPT with no card, at 10 questions; the next entry gives away more engines.

• Free is ₹0: one product, 10 buyer questions, one scan, no credit card. Starter is ₹999 a month for 25 buyer questions per scan, Growth ₹4,999 for 100, Pro ₹19,999 for 200. Prices exclude 18% GST, which GST-registered businesses claim back.
• ChatGPT on every plan including free, Google's AI Overview from Starter, Claude from Growth, Perplexity from Pro. No Microsoft Copilot.
• 8 countries, 101 cities across 7 of them, and 12 languages of which 10 are Indian.
• Choose it if you want to see a real answer before you pay anything, and the lowest cost per tracked question once you do. It also tells you which questions you lose and what to change, rather than only reporting the score.
• Facts read from AnswerTrace's own pricing page on 26 August 2026.

2. AthenaHQ

Second overall and first on free tiers, which is worth saying plainly: five engines and $25 of credit is a more generous trial than ours. It drops to second because paid starts at $295 a month, which is not a startup number.

• Essential is free with $25 of credit, Starter $295 a month with 17% off annually, Enterprise custom. It is priced in credits, where one credit is one AI response.
• Essential covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot; Starter adds AI Mode, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek and Meta AI.
• Essential and Starter are single country and single language; multi-region is Enterprise.
• Choose it if you want a genuinely free tier to try and a long engine list, for one market. Its free plan carries more engines than most paid entry plans here.
• Facts read from AthenaHQ's own pricing page on 26 August 2026.

3. Otterly.AI

Third. The $29 Lite plan is the cheapest paid entry here and carries four engines, which is remarkable value if 15 prompts is enough. Per tracked question it is the most expensive plan on this page.

• Lite is $29 a month for 15 search prompts, Standard $189 for 100, Premium $489 for 400, Enterprise from $1,000. Annual billing takes 15% off.
• Every plan tracks four engines: "ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, MS Copilot". Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini are add-ons at $9 to $439 a month.
• It advertises "Multi-country support (50+)" on every plan.
• Its pricing page states no Indian language support.
• Choose it if you sell across many countries at once, or if you want every core engine on the cheapest plan rather than unlocking them as you grow. It leads on both.
• Facts read from Otterly.AI's own pricing page on 26 August 2026.

4. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

Fourth, and effectively free if Semrush is already in your stack. As a standalone purchase, $99 a month for 25 prompts is hard to justify at this stage.

• Semrush sells AI visibility as a toolkit inside its wider SEO suite, at $99 a month billed annually, with 25 tracked prompts and one domain. Another 50 prompts is $60 a month, and extra domains or locations are $99 each.
• It covers mentions from ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity.
• Choose it if you already pay for Semrush and want AI visibility next to the SEO tools you use daily rather than another login. It is the only option here that is part of a broader suite.
• Facts read from Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit's own pricing page on 26 August 2026.

5. Profound

Fifth for a startup, first for a funded team. $99 a month is reachable, but it is billed yearly, which is a twelve-month commitment before you know whether the category matters to you.

• Starter is $99 a month and Growth $399 a month, both billed yearly, with Enterprise custom. Starter tracks 50 unique prompts and 1,500 responses monthly; Growth 100 prompts and 9,000 responses.
• Self-serve plans monitor ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, with Gemini, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek and Claude on Enterprise.
• Starter and Growth are one language and one region. Multi-region means Enterprise.
• Choose it if you want high response volume against a single market and are comfortable with annual billing. Nothing else here returns 9,000 responses a month at that tier.
• Facts read from Profound's own pricing page on 26 August 2026.

6. Peec AI

Sixth, mostly on process. A startup evaluating four tools on a Friday afternoon cannot compare a price that is only available through a sales call.

• Peec AI does not publish prices. Its pricing page lists Starter, Pro, Advanced and Enterprise by name with a "Talk to Sales" route.
• It states the engines available across plans as "ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini". The number of models is tiered: Starter 1, Pro 2, Advanced 3.
• Countries per project are tiered too: Starter 1, Pro 2, Advanced 5.
• Choose it if you are happy to go through sales to get a number and want to pick which specific models you monitor. Be aware the entry plan monitors one model.
• Facts read from Peec AI's own pricing page on 26 August 2026.

7. Scrunch

Seventh here and excellent elsewhere. $250 a month at entry is not a startup price, and the 350 prompts you get for it are far more than a small team will use.

• Starter is $250 a month billed annually or $300 month to month, Growth $417 annually or $500 monthly, Enterprise not stated. Starter includes 350 custom prompts and 1,000 industry prompts. Extra seats are $25 a month each.
• It covers seven engines: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews and Meta.
• Its pricing page states no country or language limits.
• Choose it if prompt volume is your constraint. It tracks far more prompts at entry than anything else here, and covers the widest engine list.
• Facts read from Scrunch's own pricing page on 26 August 2026.

When another tool fits better

If you want the most generous free trial rather than the cheapest paid plan, AthenaHQ gives you more engines than we do for nothing, and you should take it.

If price is not actually your constraint and coverage is, this page is ranking on the wrong axis for you. It covers eight countries live today where Otterly.AI covers 50+, and adds more on request with a buyer-question bank and search geography of their own rather than by relabelling an existing one. It does not carry Microsoft Copilot at all, and engines unlock by tier rather than all arriving on the cheapest plan.

And if you are pre-product or pre-first-customers, do not pay for anything yet, ours included. Run the free scan, see whether AI engines name you at all, and come back when buyers are actively comparing you against named rivals. That is the point at which being absent from the answer starts costing you deals, and it is the point the paid plans are built for.

What none of them can do

No tool on this page, ours included, can make an AI engine recommend you. Engines decide what to say from sources nobody controls, and they change their minds between runs. What these tools do is measure where you stand today and track what moves after you change something.

Any vendor promising you a placement is selling you something it cannot deliver. That includes us, which is why this page ranks tools on what they measure and what they cost rather than on outcomes none of us can promise.