What does an AEO platform actually do?
An answer engine optimization platform tracks how often AI engines such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Gemini mention or cite your brand when people ask questions in your category. It runs a set of prompts on a schedule, stores the answers, and turns them into share of voice, citation counts and sentiment you can compare against competitors. The better ones add recommendations and attribution, so a mention connects to traffic you can see in your analytics.
The market splits into three groups: enterprise platforms built only for AI visibility, lighter dedicated trackers, and SEO suites that bolted an AI layer onto tools you may already pay for. Published entry prices run from $29 a month to custom enterprise contracts. This comparison covers the nine platforms we see most often in 2026, grouped that way, and closes with a short path to choosing one.
10+
AI engines tracked by Profound, the category's enterprise leader, including ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Copilot and Grok (Profound, 2026)
$96M
Series C raised by Profound in 2026 at a reported $1B valuation, a measure of how fast this category matured
405M+
search-backed prompts behind Ahrefs Brand Radar, the largest published database among the SEO suites (Ahrefs, 2026)
$29
lowest published entry price in the category (Otterly.AI), against custom enterprise contracts at the top end
The enterprise platforms: Profound and Scrunch AI
Profound is the reference point. It tracks ten-plus engines, including ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Claude, Grok, Meta AI and DeepSeek, claims the largest prompt dataset in the category, and carries the SOC 2 Type II compliance stack large companies ask for. Reported plans start near $99 a month, and the full product is priced as an enterprise contract.
Scrunch AI starts around $250 a month and leans into competitive share of voice, plus testing how AI agents experience your site. Conductor and BrightEdge added AI visibility layers to their enterprise SEO platforms; they make sense if you already run them, though one independent review notes BrightEdge's AI data lags by about 48 hours.
The mid-market trackers: Peec, Athena, Otterly and Goodie
Peec AI (from €89 a month) built its base in Europe on competitor benchmarking at a fair price. Athena HQ (from $95 a month billed annually) tracks seven-plus engines and flags when an engine describes your brand wrong, which matters more than raw counts for a smaller brand. Otterly.AI starts at $29 a month and covers the basics: prompt monitoring across ChatGPT, Google and Perplexity with daily or weekly updates.
Goodie sits at the top of this group, at $495 a month for its Pro plan, and tracks eleven-plus models, including Amazon Rufus. If retail media matters to your brand, that coverage is hard to find anywhere else.
The SEO suites that added an AI layer
Semrush folded AI visibility into its platform, with plans from $139.95 a month. Ahrefs sells Brand Radar as a $199 add-on backed by 405M+ real prompts, though it does not track Claude. SE Ranking's SE Visible runs $89 to $259 a month. HubSpot ships a free AEO grader plus tracking at about $50 a month, tied to its CRM. If your team already lives in one of these, test its AI module before adding another subscription.
Six questions to ask before you pay
- Which engines do your buyers actually use? Match coverage to that list, not to the longest spec sheet
- Where does the prompt data come from? Real user prompts beat a synthetic list you invent and hope matches reality
- Can it connect visibility to outcomes through GA4 or referral attribution, or does it stop at a dashboard?
- Does it overlap with a suite you already pay for? Run the built-in module first and buy for the gap
- Does the price match your stage? Under $100 a month covers a startup testing the channel; enterprise contracts buy compliance and depth you may not need yet
- Does it tell you what to fix, or only what happened? Recommendations you can act on separate a tool from a report
You can measure before you buy
Write down 20 to 30 questions your buyers ask, run them monthly through ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google with AI Overviews, and log who gets cited in a spreadsheet. That manual audit costs an afternoon and tells you whether you have a visibility problem worth monitoring for $100+ a month. A platform automates the loop. It does not decide what to do about the result.
Do you need a dedicated platform, or is your SEO suite enough?
Start from what you already spend. If you pay for Semrush, Ahrefs or SE Ranking, their AI modules answer the first question, which is whether engines cite you at all. Move to a dedicated platform when you need engines they skip, deeper prompt data, or attribution your suite cannot give you. Dedicated tools exist because the suites treat AI as a feature; whether that gap matters depends on how much of your pipeline already starts inside an AI answer.
How much does AEO software cost in 2026?
Published prices run from $29 a month (Otterly.AI) to custom enterprise contracts (Profound, Conductor, BrightEdge). The crowded middle sits between $89 and $500 a month, where Peec, Athena HQ, SE Visible, Goodie and Semrush's plans compete. Most vendors price by prompt volume, engine coverage and seats, so the real driver is how many questions you track and how often you run them.
What should you measure first?
Citation share on the prompts that map to revenue, not total mentions. Pick the 20 questions a buyer asks right before choosing a provider in your category, then track three things: how often you appear, what the engine says about you, and who shows up when you don't. Sentiment and competitor share explain movement; raw mention counts mostly flatter you.
Do these platforms improve your visibility, or just report it?
They report it. Moving the number is content and structure work: direct answers under question headings, citable statistics, sources engines trust, presence on the sites they read. Our answer engine optimization guide covers that playbook step by step. Buy measurement when you are ready to act on it.
Where this fits in your stack
At MindWorks we run this loop for clients: measure citation share, fix the content and structure gaps, measure again. The platform matters less than the cadence. If you want a read on where your brand stands in AI answers before paying for anything, our free growth audit includes exactly that check, with no retainer attached.
Match the tool to your stage, not to the category leader's feature list. A $29 tracker plus action beats an enterprise dashboard nobody reads.
Written by
Esteban San Martin
CEO
Industrial civil engineer specializing in growth marketing and product management, with experience leading product and marketing teams at Silicon Valley companies. He blends business vision with technical fluency to build growth systems that compound.
