Monitoring is a subscription.
The audit is a fix list.
Profound is valued at $1.8B after a $180M Series D. Semrush AI Visibility now sits inside Adobe. Otterly and Peec launched fast and priced sharp. They're strong monitoring subscriptions. FindWhat.ai is a one-time audit: the receipts, plus a ranked list of what to fix first.
What should you know before buying an AI-visibility tool?
Three things that hold across the category — sourced to the vendors’ own pages and SparkToro’s research — and how a one-time audit handles each.
1. A dashboard isn’t a fix list.
Most tools in the category are monitoring subscriptions: a visibility number tracked over time, with the work of deciding what to change left to you or your agency. Some now add helpers — Profound’s agents draft content for your approval — but reviewing, publishing and off-site work stay with your team.
Our answer: the audit ($1 basic / $50 full) ends in a ranked fix list with the exact steps, so you, your team, or your agency can act on it the same week.
2. AI answers don’t repeat.
SparkToro found less than a 1-in-100 chance that ChatGPT or Google’s AI returns the same brand list twice for the same prompt. A single score can’t carry that much variance on its own.
Our answer: every audit ships with a receipts view showing the raw engine answers and QA flags where our judge disagrees with the text, so you can see the variance yourself.
3. Subscriptions add up.
As of October 2026, Profound has no self-serve paid tier — a free 7-day trial, then custom Enterprise pricing. Semrush AI Visibility is $99/mo per domain on annual billing, with extra users as paid add-ons. Otterly charges per extra engine; Peec’s standard plans track 3 of 6 engines.
Our answer: $1 basic or $50 full, one-time. Everything in the tier included — no subscription, no per-prompt or per-seat add-ons.
Where does each tool actually win?
Checked against every vendor's live pricing + features pages, October 2026. We don't overclaim differentiators we don't have.
Profound
Category leader by funding and citation research ($180M Series D at a $1.8B valuation, Sep 2026). Free 7-day trial, then custom Enterprise pricing covering up to 9 answer engines; agents draft content for your approval. Best fit: enterprises with an in-house team.
Semrush AI Visibility
Part of Semrush, now owned by Adobe. $99/mo/domain for 25 prompts (billed annually), 7-day free trial. Standard plan covers ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity and Gemini. Best fit: teams already running Semrush who want AI-visibility on the same dashboard.
AthenaHQ
Closest full-capability competitor. $295/mo Starter covers 11+ models with per-engine citation tracking ("Pinpoint Websites Cited by ChatGPT") and hallucination detection ("Oracle discrepancy detection" at Enterprise). Free Essential tier with $25 credit. Best fit: mid-market brands who want dense measurement without an agency.
Otterly
Budget tier at $29/mo Lite (15 prompts). Free trial, but no permanently free tier. 4 engines base + 3 as paid add-ons (7 total). Best fit: solo operators who need a monthly number and no consulting.
Peec AI
Berlin-based, $29M raised, ~$10M ARR by May 2026. From $95/mo; standard plans pick 3 of 6 engines (ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini). Measurement-only, by its own description. Best fit: mid-market brands who want a clean dashboard.
FindWhat.ai
A one-time audit, not a subscription. $1 basic audit (covers our engine cost) measures citation visibility across ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. $50 full audit adds Claude, Perplexity, Gemini. Plain-English PDF plus a live receipts view, ending in a ranked fix list you can hand to your team or agency.
How do the tools stack up feature by feature?
Checked against each vendor's live pricing and features pages as of October 2026. Where a competitor genuinely matches or leads on a capability, we show it — this chart doesn't inflate our position.
| Capability | FindWhat.ai The audit | Profound | Semrush AI | AthenaHQ | Otterly | Peec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raw engine answers + citations (spot-checkable receipts) | ||||||
| Written audit report with a ranked fix list (not a dashboard export) | — | — | ||||
| Low-commitment entry tier (≤ $1, one-time) | ||||||
| Ranked roadmap (impact × effort) with named domains | — | |||||
| Per-engine citation-target mining | ||||||
| Judge-vs-engine QA disagreement flagging | — | — | — | — | ||
| No per-domain / per-prompt / per-seat add-ons | — | — | ||||
| Live coverage across ≥5 major AI engines (full audit) |
Legend: shipped partial (some tier, or with caveats)— not shipped
Want a deeper head-to-head against one specific tool?
Each of these pages walks through pricing, capability, and honest “pick them if” / “pick us if” guidance for one competitor at a time.
Profound
Deepest citation dataset in the category. A monitoring subscription, not an audit.
Read the head-to-head →
FindWhat.ai vsSemrush AI Visibility
The obvious pick if you're already on Semrush. Domains and seats are priced separately.
Read the head-to-head →
FindWhat.ai vsOtterly
One of the lowest entry prices in the category. Monitoring, not an audit.
Read the head-to-head →
FindWhat.ai vsPeec AI
Clean dashboard, fast growth. Measurement-only, by its own description.
Read the head-to-head →
Why does the category exist at all right now?
AI referral traffic is ~1.08% of website traffic, growing about 1% a month on average, per Conductor’s 3.3B-session benchmark. 40–60% of the domains AI engines cite change from one month to the next for the same prompts (Profound, ~80K prompts per platform, 2025). Google AI Overviews appear on roughly 16% (Semrush, Nov 2025) to 48% (BrightEdge, Feb 2026) of tracked searches, and on over 75% in some industries.
The takeaway: an audit is a snapshot, and the answers shift within weeks. What moves visibility is acting on the fixes — not a dashboard you check quarterly. Run the audit, ship the top of the fix list, and run it again when you want a fresh read.
What else do people ask about AI-visibility tools?
Which AI-visibility tool should I pick?
If you want an ongoing monitoring dashboard, pick Profound (deepest dataset) or Peec AI (freshest UX). If you want a one-time audit with the raw answers as receipts and a ranked fix list you can hand to your team or agency, pick FindWhat.ai. See the per-competitor pages below for head-to-head detail.
How is FindWhat.ai different from Profound, Semrush AI Visibility, Otterly, and Peec?
The others sell monitoring subscriptions: a dashboard you check every month. FindWhat.ai is a one-time audit ($1 basic / $50 full) — no subscription. You get the score, the raw engine answers behind it as receipts, and a ranked fix list with the exact steps, so you, your team, or your agency can ship it.
Do the AI-visibility scores agree with each other across vendors?
No — and no vendor should imply they do. SparkToro found less than a 1-in-100 chance that ChatGPT or Google's AI returns the same brand list twice for the same prompt. A single score needs the raw answers next to it: FindWhat.ai ships receipts (raw engine answers + QA flags) so you can see the uncertainty directly.
Is there a low-commitment entry tier that isn't a subscription?
FindWhat.ai's Basic audit is $1 one-time (covers our engine cost) with no subscription. As of October 2026, Profound, Semrush, Otterly and Peec offer time-limited free trials ahead of a subscription, and AthenaHQ has a free credit-based tier.
Take the basic audit. Compare it to whatever else you're running.
Same URL, same day. See the difference in evidence density.
Run my basic audit — $1