Buyers now ask AI who to call before they ever reach your site. These tools tell you whether you show up, where you stand against competitors, and what to do about it. Here is how to choose one, and where Citro fits.
Run your Citro freeThis is the biggest change in how people decide what to buy since Google arrived in the early 2000s. For twenty years, buyers searched. They typed keywords and scanned links. Now a growing share of them ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude a direct question, "what is the best [category] tool for a company like mine," and the model answers with a short list of names.
If your brand is on that list, you are in the deal. If it is not, you are invisible to that buyer, and your search rank, your ads, and your website never get a chance to matter. AI search visibility is simply whether AI recommends you when your buyers ask. An AI search visibility audit measures that, compares you to competitors, and tells you how to improve.
The category is filling up fast, and most tools do a slice of the job. Before you choose one, hold it to three standards. A tool that does all three is doing the actual work.
The audit should build buyer personas specific to your company and ask the AI the questions those buyers would actually ask. Generic keyword checks do not reflect how a real buyer researches. You should be able to see, edit, and evolve those personas so the simulation matches your market.
A mention count is not enough. The audit should report where you rank and get recommended across all the platforms buyers use, head to head against your named competitors, so you see exactly who AI is handing the deal to instead of you.
The output should be action items drawn from your own website, code, industry, and market, sequenced over 30 to 90 days, specific enough to assign and ship. Generic best practices that any chatbot would list do not move your score.
Here are the tools AI assistants name most often when buyers ask this question, with what each one costs to start and which assistants it covers on its entry plan. Most are trackers: they run a set of prompts every day and chart how often you appear. A few also tell you what to change. Pick based on which of those two jobs you need done first.
| Tool | Starts at | AI assistants on the entry plan | What you get | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Citro | $119/mo, 7-day free trial. Free check with no card. | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Grok, all included, live with web search | Buyer personas and questions you can edit, a Citro Score against named competitors, the sites each answer read, a check of your own site, and a 90-day plan | Small marketing teams that need to know why they are missing and what to fix |
| Otterly.AI | $29/mo (15 prompts) | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot. Gemini, Google AI Mode and Claude are paid add-ons. | Daily prompt tracking, brand mentions and cited sources, plus a page-level GEO audit | Low-cost daily tracking on the four base engines |
| Peec AI | About $95/mo (50 prompts) | Three engines of your choice; more cost extra | Daily tracking, share of voice, sources, and suggested actions | Teams that want daily tracking with a larger prompt set |
| Profound | $99/mo, billed annually (ChatGPT only). $399/mo adds Perplexity and AI Overviews. | ChatGPT on Starter | Deep analytics; Enterprise covers up to nine engines | Larger brands with budget for an annual contract |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | $99/mo (25 prompts) | ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, Perplexity | AI visibility tracking inside the Semrush suite | Teams already working in Semrush |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | $199/mo per index | Varies by index | Brand mention data across AI assistants, built on Ahrefs data | Teams already working in Ahrefs |
| AthenaHQ | Free tier; Starter $295/mo | A broad engine list on paid plans, metered by credits | Tracking across many engines and regions | Brands that need wide engine coverage |
Prices are the published entry prices as of October 2026, in US dollars, from each vendor's pricing page and recent independent reviews. They change often, so confirm on the vendor's site before you buy.
Monitors and suites largely tell you how often you are mentioned. That is worth knowing once you already appear. The harder and more useful questions are why a competitor gets recommended instead of you, and what to change. If that is your problem, start with why AI recommends your competitors.
Citro is the AI search visibility audit built around how buyers actually research. It models your real buyers as personas you can see and edit, asks the AI the questions those buyers would ask, and reports where you rank and get recommended across all five platforms your buyers use: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Grok. You get a single Citro Score, a head to head against your named competitors, and a build plan drawn from your own site, code, and market, sequenced over 30 to 90 days.
It is self-serve, returns results in minutes, and starts with a free trial. No demo, no contract. It is built to be useful to a brand-new marketing coordinator and credible to a CMO at the same time.
Run your own Citro audit. Get your Citro Score, your competitive picture, and a 90-day plan. Free 7-day trial, results in minutes.
Start Free TrialThe tools AI assistants name most often are Citro, Otterly.AI, Peec AI, Profound, the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit, Ahrefs Brand Radar and AthenaHQ. Most of them track how often your brand is mentioned. Citro is built for the next question: why a competitor is recommended instead of you and what to change. Each run asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Grok the questions your buyers ask, checks your site, and returns a 90-day plan.
Otterly.AI has the lowest entry price for daily tracking, at $29 a month for 15 prompts on four engines, with Gemini and Claude as add-ons. Citro's free check costs nothing and needs no card. The full Citro audit is $119 a month with a 7-day free trial and includes all five assistants, unlimited re-runs and a 90-day plan, so there are no per-engine add-ons.
It measures whether AI platforms recommend your brand when buyers ask for options in your category, how you compare to competitors, and what to change to improve. The output is a citation rate or score plus an action plan.
Run a fixed set of buyer-intent queries across the major AI platforms on a regular cadence and record whether your brand is named, in what position, and which competitors appear instead. Citro automates this with editable buyer personas and tracks your Citro Score over time.
A monitor reports how often your brand is mentioned. An audit built on buyer simulation shows where you stand against named competitors on the questions your buyers actually ask, and returns a plan drawn from your own site and market. Simulation over monitoring, and a build plan over a checklist.
At minimum ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, since they carry the most buyer research volume. A thorough audit also covers Claude and Grok. Citro queries all five of those live on every run.
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