- Trackers are cheap because sampling is cheap: Otterly's published tiers run $29, $189 and $489 a month by prompt count (15, 100, 400), with enterprise from $1,000.
- The meter is prompts × engines: extra engines like Claude cost add-on fees, and 100 extra prompts cost $99 a month on Otterly's published add-on pricing.
- A tracked prompt is a sample, not the market: your buyers phrase questions a thousand ways, and answers vary by day, market and surface.
- Read every score with its denominator: 15 prompts on four engines is 60 daily observations, whatever the dashboard's percentage says.
- Value arrives when observations become shipped page and source changes. Budget the acting before the watching.
An AI visibility tracker runs a fixed set of prompts across AI search surfaces (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot and others) and records whether your brand appears, gets cited, and how you compare with competitors. Entry pricing is genuinely cheap: Otterly starts at $29 a month for 15 prompts across four engines. That $29 buys observation. What it cannot buy at any tier is the thing the observation is for: changes to your pages and sources that move the next answer. Know which half you're purchasing.
What a $29 tracker actually does
Otterly's own pricing page is admirably concrete about the mechanics, which makes it a good reference model for the category. The $29 plan tracks 15 search prompts daily across four engines (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot), with Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode available as paid add-ons. The $189 tier moves to 100 prompts and adds API and MCP access; $489 buys 400 prompts; enterprise starts at $1,000 a month. Annual billing takes 15 percent off. Rivals price the same shape: Peec meters prompts and models (50 prompts on its Starter, per its published plan structure), and Profound's self-serve plans run $99 and $399 a month. The whole category is a metered sampling service.
That's not a criticism. Daily, consistent, competitor-compared sampling is exactly what you can't do by hand, and at $29 the evidence is cheaper than an hour of anyone's time. The mistakes are all in how the samples get read.
How to read tracker data without fooling yourself
- Keep the denominator visible. "Brand visibility 40%" means: appeared in 40% of the tracked responses, for these prompts, on these engines, this window. Change the prompt set and the score changes. Never compare percentages across different prompt sets or tools.
- Prompts are your hypothesis, not the market. You chose 15 phrasings; buyers use thousands. Rotate a slice of prompts quarterly against real query language from Search Console and support tickets, or the tracker measures an increasingly stale guess.
- Surfaces differ by design. ChatGPT, AI Overviews and Perplexity retrieve differently and cite differently. Keep per-surface records rather than one blended score; the observation fields worth keeping are in AI search metrics: what to measure.
- Expect volatility. Same prompt, same engine, different day, different answer. Trends over weeks mean something; single-day movements mostly don't.
The gap no tracker fills
A tracker's finding is always some version of: for this prompt, the answer cited these sources and recommended these brands, and you weren't one of them. The fix is never inside the tracker. It's on your pages (the facts, the structure, the crawlability), and in your sources (the reviews, directories, editorial mentions and communities the answer engines lean on). That work is SEO plus source development, whoever does it. So the honest budget line for AI visibility is: tracker fee + the delivery capacity to act on what it finds. The fork between buying more depth and buying more delivery is covered in AI visibility depth vs search delivery, and the report-vs-action distinction in AI visibility reporting vs SEO execution.
Who should buy at each tier
- $29-tier: solo operators and small teams who want a weekly evidence pulse and will personally act on findings. Best value in the category if you actually ship changes.
- $100-500 tier: teams with real prompt coverage needs, API/reporting workflows, or agencies monitoring clients. Justified when someone owns the acting.
- Enterprise tier: multi-brand, multi-market programs where the tracker feeds an existing delivery operation. Unjustified as a standalone purchase; at this spend the acting capacity should already exist.
How Searchmaxxed uses trackers
We run AI-answer observation inside the Managed Search Loop as one evidence stream beside Search Console, analytics and live SERPs, and every observation either becomes a ranked queue item (a page to fix, a source to develop) or an explicit decision to keep watching. The one-off version is the AI Visibility Audit: A$4,500, six business days, mapping where you're invisible across Google and AI answers and exactly which pages and sources to change, credited in full if a program starts within 14 days. The difference from a tracker subscription is the output: a ranked fix plan rather than a score.
FAQs
How do I track AI visibility?
Pick a prompt set that mirrors real buyer questions, run it daily across the surfaces your market uses, and record appearance, citations, position and sentiment per surface. A tracker automates this; a spreadsheet and discipline can pilot it free.
Is there a free AI visibility tracker?
Free tiers and trials exist across the category (Otterly runs a free trial; several tools offer limited free checks), and manual spot-checking costs nothing. Free options prove the concept; consistent daily competitor-compared sampling is what you pay for.
What is the best AI visibility tool?
They differ mainly on engines covered, prompt limits and price mechanics: Otterly for cheap entry across four engines, Peec for prompt-and-model flexibility, Profound for depth and agent workflows. Trial two against the same prompt set and compare the observations, not the dashboards.
What is a good AI visibility score?
There's no absolute benchmark: the score depends entirely on your prompt set and competitors. The useful reading is relative and directional: your share versus named rivals, on the same prompts, trending over weeks.
How is AI visibility measured?
By sampling: run prompts, parse responses for brand mentions, citations, position and sentiment, aggregate over time. Every score is a percentage of tracked responses, which is why the denominator (prompts, engines, window) must travel with the number.
Can a tracker improve my AI visibility?
No tool in this category changes your pages or sources. Improvement comes from acting on findings: fixing the facts answers get wrong, building the pages that deserve citations, developing the third-party sources engines trust.
Do I need to track every AI engine?
Start with where your buyers actually are: ChatGPT and Google's AI features cover most markets' bulk. Add engines when their referrals show up in your analytics, not because an add-on exists.
How many prompts do I need?
Enough to cover your commercial question space: brand, category, comparison and buying-intent phrasings across your key products and markets. Small brands do real work with 15 to 50; the number should follow your question inventory, not the pricing tier.
Are tracker scores comparable between tools?
No. Different prompt sets, sampling schedules and parsing rules produce different numbers for the same brand. Pick one tool's methodology and compare against yourself over time.
Tracker or audit: where do I start?
If you'll act weekly, start the cheap tracker today. If you want the full map and a ranked fix plan first, start with an audit and then decide what continuous tracking earns its keep.
Next step
Spend the $29 if you'll ship changes from it. If you'd rather start from the complete map, book the AI Visibility Audit or LET'S TALK.