Buyers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini which vendors to use. When a small business is invisible in those answers, or worse, misrepresented, the loss shows up as missing inbound before anyone has a chance to visit the site. The category of tools that measures this goes by AI search visibility, answer engine optimization (AEO), or generative engine optimization (GEO), and by 2026 it has split sharply into two camps: enterprise-priced platforms built for brand teams, and a thin layer of options an owner-operated business can actually buy.
We evaluated five tools an owner or founder of a 1-30 person business is realistically shopping between in October 2026: HubSpot's AI Search Grader, Otterly.AI, Peec AI, Profound, and AthenaHQ. Every price, prompt limit, and engine list below was read from the vendor's own pricing or product page in the first week of October 2026. We didn't run paid trials. This is a documentation and pricing comparison, graded on the criteria below.
How we tested
Each tool was evaluated on October 7-9, 2026 against its own published pricing and product pages. Scores weight engine coverage and small-business affordability heavily, because the owner/founder buyer we're writing for can't absorb a $400-$500/month entry price for a channel they're still sizing.
Engine Coverage at Entry Tier
We read each vendor's pricing page and recorded which AI assistants (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Claude) the cheapest paid or free tier actually tracks, not what the top enterprise tier supports. Tools that lock multi-engine coverage behind add-ons or the next tier up were marked down accordingly.
Prompt / Query Allowance at Entry
We recorded the number of tracked prompts (or equivalent credits) included in the cheapest ongoing paid plan, and the frequency of refresh. A one-time grade and a continuously tracked panel of 15 prompts were scored differently.
Published Price for a Small Business
We priced the cheapest ongoing plan a founder-led or small team could actually buy, with monthly billing to avoid annual lock-in, and discounted tools where the real entry price (the first plan with usable multi-engine coverage) was materially higher than the headline.
Self-Serve Onboarding (No Sales Call)
We checked whether the entry plan is self-serve (credit card, no demo required), whether a free trial or free tier exists, and whether critical features are gated behind a sales conversation. Enterprise-only features are listed in each pick's cons where relevant.
Signal Beyond Monitoring
We recorded whether the tool only reports visibility, or whether it also surfaces specific gaps, source attribution, and prescriptive recommendations an owner can act on without hiring an agency. Tools that stop at a dashboard scored lower than those that produce a to-do list.
We priced and read the documentation for five tools a small-business owner is actually shopping between in October 2026. The full criteria and per-pick marks are above; the notes below cover where the ranking turned.
Why HubSpot’s Grader leads for a first check
Nothing else in the category costs zero and still returns a useful composite in minutes.
HubSpot’s composite score combines five weighted dimensions, Sentiment Results (40 pts), Presence Quality (20 pts), Brand Recognition (20 pts), AI Share of Voice (10 pts), and Market Competition (10 pts), cross-validated across GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity, and Gemini.
That’s the right shape for a first-ever baseline: three real engines, dozens of generated test queries, a readable interpretation, and no sales call. The owner of a small business who has never checked how AI assistants describe them should run it this week. The Grader is explicitly a lead magnet for HubSpot’s paid platform, with the follow-on
HubSpot AEO at $50/month, no HubSpot subscription required
, but the diagnostic itself carries no paywall.
Otterly earns the second slot on one line in its pricing table: it holds the mainstream engine set constant across every tier.
Lite’s four tracked engines (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot) are the same four tracked by the $489 Premium plan. The Lite customer pays for fewer prompts and workspaces, not a reduced engine lineup.
That matters because the common failure mode of cheap tiers in software is a crippled demo. Otterly’s $29 is a real plan with daily tracking, unlimited seats, and 1,000 GEO audits a month. The honest caveat is that a founder who needs Claude or Gemini on day one isn’t shopping at $29.
On Lite, Gemini is $9/month, Google AI Mode is $9, and Claude is $29
, but those add-ons are still priced for a small-business budget.
When Peec AI is the upgrade
The 15-prompt ceiling on Otterly Lite is the number small teams hit first. Peec AI is the next step up:
Starter covers 50 prompts; Pro covers 150 prompts; Advanced covers 350 prompts
, with unlimited seats across every tier. The gating decision is model coverage: Starter forces a choice of three engines from the available pool, and additional models are a paid add-on. For a 5-30 person team that has already proved AI visibility matters and now wants to track a real prompt panel across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and one Google surface, Starter is the right size.
Where Profound sits for a small business
Profound’s self-serve ladder has moved more than once in 2026, and the current tryprofound.com landing page foregrounds its Command Center product rather than a pricing table. For a small business, that means two things: expect a sales conversation to confirm current plans, and confirm which engines are included at the price you’re quoted. If a small business has genuinely confirmed that their buyers overwhelmingly use ChatGPT, a plausible claim for some developer-tool and B2B SaaS niches in 2026, Profound’s depth on that one engine is the draw. Any broader shopping decision pushes toward higher tiers where cheaper tools now compete directly. Verify the current ladder on Profound’s own pricing page before paying.
What didn’t make the cut
AthenaHQ earns its reputation on breadth.
The Starter plan tracks eleven models: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI, and Mistral, with additional models available on request, a list that grew from eight over 2026 and adds the long-tail models most competitors skip entirely.
That’s a real advantage for a Shopify brand that wants Claude on day one and can absorb the $295/month Starter plus a usage-based credit meter. For the owner/founder buyer we’re writing for, it’s the wrong first paid tool. Our Not Recommended mark is about fit, not quality: AthenaHQ at Starter is the most expensive published entry in the category, and the free Essential tier (five engines, 300 credits/month, no Claude) is the version small businesses should actually use.
What this ranking doesn’t do
Every tool here measures visibility. None of them publishes a page, replies to a competitor’s citation, or edits your site on your behalf. The follow-on work, building the pages, schema, and third-party mentions that AI assistants cite, sits downstream of any score. If you’re reading this because the Grader returned a low mark and you need the next step, our rankings of AI programmatic SEO page generators for small B2B teams and AI internal linking tools for small business content teams cover the content side of the same job.
Pricing in this category has moved more than once in the last twelve months and continues to move. Verify every published price on the vendor’s own site before you buy; the figures above were read in the first week of October 2026 and will be re-checked quarterly.
Questions Readers Ask
Which AI brand visibility tracker do you recommend for a small business?
Run HubSpot's AI Search Grader first. It's free, requires no account, and covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini in a single five-minute report. If the result shows a real visibility gap worth watching over time, Otterly.AI's $29/month Lite plan is the cheapest sustained seat in the category and tracks the same four mainstream engines as its $489/month Premium tier. Teams that outgrow 15 prompts move to Peec AI's Starter, which includes 50 prompts and unlimited user seats.
Is a free tool like HubSpot's AI Search Grader actually useful, or is it just a lead magnet?
Both, honestly. The Grader is a top-of-funnel tool for HubSpot's platform; you trade a business email for the report. But the output itself is real: it queries three engines with dozens of generated prompts and returns a composite score with written interpretation, with no run cap and no HubSpot subscription required. It won't watch your visibility over time or tell you which specific prompts to track, but it answers the first question ('are AI assistants mentioning us at all?') for free.
What should a small business know before buying Profound?
Verify the ladder. Profound's self-serve brand plans have been added and changed more than once in 2026, and the current tryprofound.com page is a product overview rather than a pricing table. Expect a sales conversation for anything beyond the lightest tier, and confirm which engines are included at the price you're quoted before committing.
Why did AthenaHQ fall short of a recommendation for small businesses?
Cost. AthenaHQ's broader coverage is real (the Starter plan includes 11 models with Claude on a single tier, which no cheaper tool matches), but at $295/month on a credit-metered model, it's the highest published paid entry in the category. For a Shopify or DTC brand that already treats AI visibility as a budget line and wants revenue attribution to Shopify and GA4, it earns its price. For a 1-4 person business sizing a new channel, the free Essential tier is a fair place to start and the paid tier isn't.
Do any of these tools fix the problem, or do they only measure it?
Measurement is the whole product for most of them. All five tools report where your brand appears in AI answers and surface the gaps; none of them publishes a page or edits your site on your behalf. Peec AI, Profound, and AthenaHQ layer prescriptive recommendations and (in Profound and Athena's cases) content agents on top, but the actual on-page and PR work that moves an AI answer still sits with you or an agency. If you're shopping for a monitor plus a content system, see our rankings of AI programmatic SEO page generators for small B2B teams and AI internal linking tools for small business content teams.
