Compare · 2026-06-19
The AI visibility tools, compared — and the $79 one-time alternative to a monthly subscription
If buyers are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude who to hire, you want to know whether AI names *you* or your competitors. A growing shelf of tools tracks that — Profound, Otterly.ai, AthenaHQ, Peec AI, Ahrefs Brand Radar — and almost all of them are monthly subscriptions built for enterprise brand teams running thousands of prompts. AskedAbout takes the opposite approach: one $79 audit, no subscription, that tells a small or local business exactly where it stands across all four engines and what to fix first. Here's how the options actually compare.
See where AI ranks you — free checkThe tools, side by side
| AskedAbout | Enterprise suites (Profound, AthenaHQ) | Monitoring subscriptions (Otterly.ai, Peec AI, Ahrefs Brand Radar) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | $79, one-time | Custom / sales-led (typically enterprise contracts) | Recurring monthly subscription |
| Commitment to get an answer | Pay once, get the report | Demo + contract, often annual | Ongoing monthly plan |
| What you get | A scored report + a prioritized fix plan | Always-on dashboards & analytics for a brand team | Dashboards, tracking and alerts over time |
| How it reads the engines | Each prompt sampled multiple times; reports frequency + confidence | Continuous large-scale tracking | Periodic tracking; some rely on single-snapshot reads |
| Built for | SMBs, local & single-vertical businesses | Enterprise marketing / comms teams | Marketers monitoring many brands or keywords over time |
| Engines covered | ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity — via official APIs, methodology disclosed | Multiple engines | Multiple engines |
Competitor names, pricing and features above are summarized from public information as of June 2026 and change frequently — check each vendor's site for current details. We don't claim feature parity with the enterprise suites; we deliberately do one thing well.
Looking for a Profound alternative?
Profound is an excellent, well-funded platform built for enterprise brand teams that need always-on answer-engine analytics across huge prompt sets — and it's priced and sold that way (custom, sales-led). If you're a dentist, a law firm, an agency or a small SaaS, that's a lot of platform and a recurring commitment to answer a simpler question: does AI recommend me, or my competitors, and what do I fix first? AskedAbout answers exactly that for $79, once, with no demo and no contract. You can always graduate to a continuous-monitoring tool later — but you don't need one to see where you stand today. See the full AskedAbout vs Profound comparison.
Looking for an Otterly.ai, Peec AI or AthenaHQ alternative?
These are the SMB-friendlier end of the market, and they're genuinely useful if you want a dashboard you watch every month. The catch is the same one: it's a subscription, and you're paying month after month before you've even seen a first result worth acting on. AskedAbout flips the order — get the full picture and a concrete fix plan first, for a one-time $79, then decide whether ongoing tracking is worth a recurring bill. For a business that just wants to know its position and its to-do list, the one-time audit is the faster, cheaper start. See the full AskedAbout vs Otterly.ai comparison, the AskedAbout vs Peec AI comparison, or the AskedAbout vs AthenaHQ comparison.
How AskedAbout is different
- One-time, not a subscription. $79 buys the audit and the fix plan outright. Nothing recurring just to learn where you stand.
- Statistical honesty, not a single snapshot. AI engines give different answers every time you ask. We sample each buyer question many times across four engines and report how often you show up — with confidence — instead of one lucky-or-unlucky screenshot. The known weakness of cheap checkers is our headline feature.
- A fix plan, not just a score. Most tools hand you a number or a dashboard. We hand you the prioritized, specific actions that move your visibility — what to change, in what order.
- Built for SMB, local and single-vertical businesses. Enterprise suites don't serve a med spa in Scottsdale or an injury firm in Tampa; agencies charge 50× more. We're built for exactly that business.
- Honest about method. We query the official OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Perplexity APIs — which approximate but don't perfectly equal the consumer apps — and we say so. We don't scrape consumer AI UIs (it violates their terms).
Where a subscription tool is the better fit
We'd rather tell you the truth than win the wrong customer. If you're an enterprise brand team that needs to watch AI mentions continuously, across thousands of prompts and many competitors, with alerting and historical trend lines for several stakeholders — that's what Profound, AthenaHQ, Otterly.ai, Peec AI and Ahrefs Brand Radar are built for, and a one-time audit isn't a substitute for that monitoring. AskedAbout is the right call when you want to know where you stand right now and what to fix, without committing to a recurring bill to find out. Many businesses start with the $79 audit and only add monitoring once they've acted on the fixes.
What you get for $79
A full audit runs roughly 50–100 buyer-intent questions across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, each sampled multiple times — then reports your mention rate per engine, the competitors taking your slot and how often, which sources the engines lean on when they build a shortlist without you, and a prioritized fix plan. Delivered as a web report in minutes. Before you pay anything, a free 60-second check shows whether the engines name you or your rivals.
FAQ
What's the most affordable AI visibility tool?
Most are monthly subscriptions (roughly $29/mo at the low end up to enterprise contracts). AskedAbout is a one-time $79 audit, so there's no recurring cost just to see where you stand. There's also a free 60-second check.
Is there a one-time alternative to these monthly AI-tracking subscriptions?
Yes — that's exactly what AskedAbout is. You pay $79 once for the audit and fix plan instead of subscribing.
Do I need a subscription to check my AI visibility?
No. You can run a free check in about a minute, and the full $79 audit is a one-time purchase. Continuous monitoring is optional and only worth it once you want ongoing trend tracking.
How is AskedAbout different from Ahrefs Brand Radar?
Brand Radar is a feature inside an Ahrefs subscription aimed at marketers already paying for the suite. AskedAbout is a standalone, one-time audit focused on a single business — it ends with a prioritized fix plan, not just a tracking dashboard.
Which AI engines do you check?
ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google) and Perplexity, through their official APIs. We disclose that API answers approximate but don't perfectly match the consumer apps.
See your number
A free 60-second check shows what AI says about you.
Method — we query the official APIs of each AI engine, with web search where supported. Answers vary between runs; the full audit repeats every question and reports frequencies, never one-off snapshots.