Ahrefs Brand Radar review: AI visibility data, pricing and who it's for (2026)

Ahrefs Brand Radar is Ahrefs' AI visibility tool. It tracks how often AI answers mention your brand, and which competitors they pick instead, across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google. Brand Radar pricing starts at $50 monthly to track your own prompts. The full AI Visibility Index costs $199 per AI platform, or $699 for every platform. For a team that already works in Ahrefs, it's a fast, strong read on where you stand in AI search. But it measures the answers. Changing them is a separate job.

Here at Searchmaxxed, that separate job is our work. We make your company the answer in Google and in the AI engines your buyers ask: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews. Then we turn those answers into a steady flow of high-intent leads and pipeline. So our advice is plain: buy Brand Radar if you want the scoreboard, and talk to us if you want your name on it.

What is Ahrefs Brand Radar?

Brand Radar is the part of Ahrefs that measures AI visibility, meaning how often AI answers name your brand or link to your site. When people search "Ahrefs AI visibility", this is the product they mean, and it works in two ways that decide what you pay.

The first is the AI Visibility Index. Ahrefs has already put more than 519 million questions to AI platforms and stored every answer, so you can search any brand instantly. No setup. No cap on how many brands or domains you look up.

The second is custom prompts: you add your buyers' exact questions, pick the platforms and let Brand Radar check them as often as daily.

Both report the same four core numbers:

• Mentions: how often your brand name appears in AI answer text.
• Citations: how often an AI answer links to your pages or domain as a source.
• AI share of voice: your share of the answers in a topic set, against your competitors.
• Estimated impressions: your potential exposure, weighted by the real search volume behind each prompt.

Extra reports cover cited domains and pages, sentiment, buyer-journey stage and the hidden fan-out searches an AI runs behind each prompt. Lite and higher plans also get YouTube, TikTok and Reddit data free while those indexes stay in beta. Ahrefs says more than 3,000 companies use it. An SEO specialist at Octopus Energy says AI answers she once pulled out with scripts now take "just a few clicks" to find.

How much does Ahrefs Brand Radar cost?

Brand Radar costs nothing to preview and $50 to $699 monthly to run, depending on which half you buy. Every paid Ahrefs plan from Lite ($129 monthly) also includes a small daily prompt allowance.

Prices come from Ahrefs' pricing page and help centre as at 1 November 2026, quoted in US dollars that Ahrefs says "may vary slightly by region".

The unit that matters is the check. One prompt on one platform in one location uses one check, so a single prompt tracked daily burns about 30 checks a month. Claude is the exception, at 8 checks per update.

A few buying details from Ahrefs' own pages:

• You can buy Brand Radar on its own, and it comes with an Ahrefs Free account.
• Ahrefs' pricing FAQ says "We never run discounts", and it lists no free trial beyond Ahrefs Free and the checker.
• Ahrefs doesn't issue refunds in general, though you can ask for one on a monthly plan you haven't used.
• The main plans run $129 (Lite), $249 (Standard), $449 (Advanced) and $1,499 (Enterprise, annual commitment).

What would Brand Radar cost a B2B team tracking real buyer questions?

For a typical B2B setup, custom prompts cost between $50 and about $360 monthly. Three choices set the bill: how many engines you track, how many markets you sell in and how often you check.

Here's a worked example. Say you're a cybersecurity company selling in the US and the UK, and you write 50 buyer questions such as "best email security for a 500-person company". You track them in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews.

The maths is short. Fifty questions across four engines and two markets, checked 30 times a month, makes 12,000 checks. Growth covers 7,000 and charges $0.015 apiece for the other 5,000, or $75. Claude is where bills jump. At eight checks per update, Claude's 3,000 daily updates become 24,000 on their own. Whatever allowance your Ahrefs plan already includes, from 150 to 600 checks, comes off the top.

Now set that against the value of one enterprise deal. In G2's survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers, fielded in March 2026, 69% chose a different vendor than planned because of an AI chatbot's guidance. Deals like that can vanish before your sales team ever hears about them.

Which AI engines does Brand Radar track?

Brand Radar's index covers six AI platforms: Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot. Claude works for custom prompts only. Ahrefs runs it through the API as Claude Sonnet 4.6 with web search. Grok appears in the list, but Ahrefs says it's "temporarily unable to gather new data" after Grok's policy changes.

The index isn't spread evenly. Ahrefs publishes its prompt counts per platform on its AI Visibility Index page:

Shares are our own rounded arithmetic.

About 78% of the index sits in Google's two AI surfaces. That matters in B2B, where buyers lean hardest on ChatGPT: G2 found it's the dominant chatbot for B2B software research, at 63%. If ChatGPT decides your shortlist, put your most important buyer questions into custom prompts there instead of leaning on the index alone.

Where does Brand Radar's data come from, and how accurate is it?

Brand Radar's index starts from real searches. Ahrefs takes keywords from its database of 28.7 billion with search volume, then turns them into questions through People Also Ask and semantic fan-out. It asks each one in the free public web version of every AI platform, on the default model, with no login or personalisation.

Freshness depends on the source:

• ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot: re-tested monthly, reported on a 90-day window.
• AI Overviews and AI Mode: updated continuously, every few days, in line with Ahrefs' keyword data.
• Custom prompts: as fresh as the cadence you set, from monthly to daily.
• History: AI Overviews data goes back to August 2024, and chatbot data to May 2025.

On accuracy, Ahrefs is open about the limits in its methodology, where it calls the metrics "directional indicators, not exact traffic counts". Coverage is strongest in English. Ahrefs also warns that long-tail or niche prompts "may not always be included". Hallucinated or broken links stay in the data too, because Ahrefs treats them as real model output rather than errors to filter out. And it says Brand Radar "is not a substitute for audience measurement or traffic analytics".

Ahrefs' own summary is a good one. Think of Brand Radar as "a media-visibility audit, showing what appears in AI and search", not a count of who saw it. Read the numbers that way and they earn their keep. Watch the trend. Watch your gap to competitors, and don't fixate on the exact count.

Should you use the AI Visibility Index or custom prompts?

Use the index to benchmark an established brand or category, and custom prompts for the exact questions your buyers ask. Ahrefs says the index "works best for established brands or topics with meaningful search demand", and it points newer brands, and anyone with uncommon queries, to custom prompts.

Enterprise B2B usually needs both. Cybersecurity buyers ask things like "SOC 2 automation for a fintech startup", and a question that long can fall outside an index built from search data. So write 30 to 50 of them, from the first problem through to vendor comparisons, and track them daily in your buyers' engines. Our guide to showing up in AI search covers how to build that question set.

Does Brand Radar show traffic from AI search?

Not by itself. Brand Radar measures visibility inside answers, and Ahrefs says plainly that it can't tell you who saw them. For visits, Ahrefs adds AI Analytics. Its free Web Analytics script shows which pages AI search sends people to, and a Bot Analytics beta tracks AI crawlers.

Whatever tool counts your AI visits, check the sessions before you celebrate. We learned why on a client's account:

A client's GA4 showed AI-assistant visits jump from 354 to 6,050 in a month. Almost none of it was real. About 5,700 came in three one-hour bursts: same 1920x1080 desktop Chrome, all new users, no referrer, about 20 seconds each, landing on two pages. Real AI traffic was 385 sessions against 354 the month before, roughly flat.

A visibility chart and a traffic chart can both look like a win. Only revenue settles it, so for our clients we track which searches and AI answers turn into revenue, through their CRM as well as GA4.

What should you do with what Brand Radar shows you?

Use it to find the sources the engines already trust, then get your name onto them. The Cited Domains and Cited Pages reports show which sites each AI platform links to when it answers your buyers' questions. That's your target list.

Ahrefs used Brand Radar itself to study 75,000 brands in December 2025. YouTube mentions had the strongest correlation with AI visibility, at about 0.737, with branded web mentions close behind at 0.66 to 0.71. The number of pages on a brand's own site barely registered. It came in at about 0.194. Ahrefs adds that correlation isn't causation, but the direction is clear: what other sites say about you counts for more than how much you publish.

Our own ChatGPT panel points the same way:

Across 900 ChatGPT answers about Australian agencies, a single third-party "best agencies" site was cited in 168 of them. The next three were a second listicle, Semrush's agency directory and Clutch. If you want to be recommended, the job is getting onto the handful of pages the model already trusts.

So the useful loop runs like this:

1. Find the questions where competitors get named and you don't.
2. Open the cited pages behind those answers and note what each one says about every vendor in your category.
3. Fix your own pages so they answer those questions in their first lines.
4. Earn a place on the lists, reviews and trade articles the engines cite.
5. Re-check the same questions monthly.

Brand Radar handles steps 1, 2 and 5 well. Steps 3 and 4 are the work, and they're the part we do for clients.

Is Ahrefs Brand Radar worth it?

Yes, if your team already pays for Ahrefs and wants a research view of AI search beside its SEO data. Your plan already includes some daily prompts. The index adds instant competitor benchmarks, and the API, MCP server and Looker Studio connector feed whatever reports your leadership already reads.

It's a weaker fit in these cases, going by Ahrefs' own documentation:

• Your brand is new, or rarely searched. Ahrefs says the index may have limited coverage for brands with little search volume.
• You need weekly movement in ChatGPT from the index. Chatbot data refreshes monthly, so use custom prompts for that.
• You sell mainly outside English-language markets. Ahrefs says coverage is strongest in English.
• You want visits, leads or revenue. Ahrefs says Brand Radar is no substitute for traffic analytics.

Weighing other trackers? Our comparison of AI visibility tools sets prices, engines and trials side by side, and our guide to Ahrefs alternatives covers the wider suite.

Brand Radar or a managed AI search team: which fits?

Brand Radar fits a team that will do the AI search work itself and wants the measurements. A managed team fits a company that wants the result, meaning its name in the answers and the pipeline that follows. Searchmaxxed is ours, so we list it first and say so.

Plenty of companies run both. The tool gives your team its own view, while the managed work moves the numbers that view reports.

Is Searchmaxxed right for you?

We're a strong fit if you're a law firm, clinic or premium builder that's losing ground in Google or missing from AI answers. Perhaps your SEO team hasn't caught up. You want your company named when buyers ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google who to choose. And you want results you can trace to pipeline.

You talk to the people doing the work, with no account manager in between. We go after the searches and AI answers that bring buyers, then put your name on the pages those answers trust. We track what ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews say about you. Then we track which of those answers turn into revenue, through your CRM as well as GA4. And you own your site, content and data from day one. Our AI search optimisation service page sets out the full scope, from technical SEO and content to digital PR and AI answer tracking.

One client came to us with a website that wasn't working. Three months later he was on page one for one of the most competitive searches in his industry. Now he has more high-intent leads than he can handle, and we're building the systems to handle them.

Across the whole client book:

Searchmaxxed's work has generated more than $15 million in revenue through search for its clients.

"I can't believe this worked." That's what we hear. Clients tell us they finally found a growth partner in search that keeps its word and gets things done.

We're the wrong call in two cases. If you need leads this month to survive, search takes longer than that. And if all you want is a dashboard of AI mentions to watch in-house, Brand Radar will cost you less.

What should you do next?

Put your brand and three competitors through Ahrefs' free AI Visibility Checker today. Note which platforms name them and skip you. Then list the domains those answers cite. That gap is your starting list, and closing it is the work we do.

Get your free search analysis. We'll benchmark you against your top competitors across Google, ChatGPT and the other AI engines. We'll show you where they're named instead of you, and the few moves that will matter most.

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