Best AI search monitoring tools for SEO professionals

We ran our own check across the current AI search monitoring shortlist, then read the public pricing pages for the parts that affect client work. The result is useful, but untidy: visibility rankings show who gets mentioned, while pricing pages often use different units for reporting capacity.

If you’re comparing tools, start with the report you need to send. Check what can leave the platform, whether the result shows a margin of uncertainty, whether a client can open it without your login, and what one client-sized project costs each month.

Which tool should you shortlist for client reporting?

Our sample gives you a starting point, with a firm limit. The AI search visibility leaderboard for the week of 2026-08-24 contains 80 answers to 10 buyer questions across 4 engines. It measures which products appeared in those answers, not which product is best for every agency or client. Otterly appeared in 60% of answers, with an interval of 49 to 70. Peec AI appeared in 53%, with an interval of 42 to 63. Profound appeared in 48%, with an interval of 37 to 58. Semrush appeared in 33%, and Ahrefs in 18%.

Those figures give you a shortlist, not a verdict.

The rest of the sample is smaller still. AthenaHQ appeared in 14% of answers, HubSpot AEO Grader in 13%, Scrunch in 10%, Rankscale in 9% and AirOps in 9%. The leaderboard shows the source and intervals, so you can inspect the evidence rather than treat one percentage as a permanent market position.

The sample measures a slice of answers, not the whole market.

For a client-facing workflow, the public evidence separates into three groups. Otterly’s pricing page quotes “Detailed Reports & Export”, a Google Looker Studio Connector, unlimited brand reports and custom reports with your branding. Peec’s pricing page quotes “Custom exports (CSV)” and “Shareable dashboards”. Profound’s public pricing page, on 2 Oct 2026, showed no exports on its free Trial, and CSV and JSON exports on Enterprise and on agency client workspaces. It shows an API only on Enterprise.

The reporting unit matters more than a long feature list.

The CiteGraph pricing page says a scan includes the verbatim AI answer, lost answers, drafted fixes and a shareable report. Growth includes CSV export, and the public dossier link comes on Starter and Growth. That gives you a simple split: a client can inspect the evidence through the link, while CSV helps when you need to move the data into another report.

How much does each client cost you to monitor?

Two tools in this set publish enough to work out a cost per client: CiteGraph, whose monthly price can be divided by its stated project capacity, and Profound’s agency plan, which prices each client workspace (see below). That is an arithmetic comparison from the published plan prices, not a quoted per-client rate.

The arithmetic is only useful because the plan publishes both sides of it.

Otterly’s page has two tabs. Billed monthly, Lite is $29, Standard $189 and Premium $489 a month; billed annually, they are $25, $160 and $422 a month (checked 2 Oct 2026). It does not state client project capacity, so we cannot calculate a per-client figure. Peec says pricing is based on tracked prompts and models analysed, and that agencies can manage multiple client projects under one bundle. Its brand plans are priced, from €85 a month billed monthly for Starter with 1 project, but its agency pricing sits on a separate page we did not read, so we have no per-client figure to divide.

Otterly and Peec cannot be reduced to the same calculation from the public figures we have.

Profound uses credits as its visible unit rather than projects. Its public page gives brands limited credits on the free Trial and custom credits on Enterprise. The self-serve Agency Growth plan has 400 credits per month per client workspace, and on 2 Oct 2026 it was priced at $99 a month plus $399 a month for each full client workspace. For an agency, that makes the client cost visible: $399 a month per client, on top of the base.

Credits make the allowance visible, not the bill.

CiteGraph’s project limits also show what the apparent project cost buys. Starter gives 10 questions per project, 3 runs per question on 4 engines, and 6 tracked rivals. Growth gives 10 questions on 4 engines and 10 tracked rivals, and ChatGPT Only gives 20 questions on its one project, asked on ChatGPT alone. Weekly scans ask each question 3 times on every plan; a scan you start on Growth asks it 5 times. Those limits matter when one client needs several competitors or repeated runs rather than a single snapshot.

Which tool gives you a report a client can use?

A report has to survive three handoffs: your analysis, your client’s browser and the next month’s comparison. Export helps when you need to combine data with other reporting. A shareable page helps when your client wants to inspect the evidence without downloading a file. A margin helps when you need to explain why a result is a sample rather than a promise.

The report format is part of the product.

Before the first scan, the project dossier page has no measured answer, citation list or report to share. After the first scan completes, it contains the AI answer verbatim, the citations, lost answers, drafted fixes and a shareable report. Starter and Growth provide the public dossier link. The page moves from an empty evidence record to something a client can inspect.

That is a clearer before-and-after than a feature badge.

Otterly’s pricing page puts one reporting option plainly:

“Your own reporting: Custom reports via Google Looker Studio with your branding.”, Otterly pricing page

That tells you Otterly has a route to branded client reporting through Looker Studio. It does not tell you how many client workspaces your price supports, what the export contains, or whether the report displays uncertainty ranges. The same page quotes unlimited workspace management, with separate environments for every client and one login for your team, but the client-level bill remains unclear in the data we have.

Branded reporting solves presentation, not every buying question.

Peec’s public page says agencies can manage multiple client projects under one bundle, with centralised billing and flexible prompt allocation. That may fit a multi-client account, but its pricing still depends on tracked prompts and models, so the client cost needs your actual prompt plan before you can calculate it.

Profound’s public pricing page shows an API only on Enterprise. That matters if your reporting workflow needs to pull results into another system, because the Trial and the agency plan do not offer that route. Enterprise is priced by quote, so the cost of that workflow stays unknown until you ask.

Exports arrive late in Profound’s ladder.

The leaderboard prints intervals in the sample, such as Otterly’s 49 to 70 range around its 60% result. The paid plans also include shareable reports, and Growth adds CSV export. One helps you explain the limits of the sample. The other helps you move rows into a client reporting system.

What should you check before buying an AI search tracking tool?

Use this check against one real client account and one report template. A tool can collect answers well and still make the client-facing part awkward.

• Check whether the tool exports the raw answer, the citation source and the result date, rather than only a score.
• Check whether it prints an interval or other margin around a sampled result, and record what that margin means.
• Check whether a client can open a shareable report without needing your team login.
• Check whether the plan gives you separate client projects or workspaces, rather than making you mix accounts in one view.
• Check whether the billing unit is a project, prompt, model, credit or something else you can count.
• Check whether the plan includes enough runs to distinguish a repeatable result from one lucky answer.

The checklist catches workflow problems before they become renewal problems.

The free AI readiness check needs no account, runs fifteen checks and shows the fix for each. Paid plans start the day you pay, and the first full scan runs that day. That is enough to inspect the answer and report format, but not enough to prove a long-term client trend.

The main caveat is cost comparability: the public pricing pages do not expose every tool’s client-level cost, so this is not a like-for-like bill comparison.