Entry-level pricing for AI visibility tools runs from free to "talk to sales," but the number on the pricing page isn't comparable across vendors, because each one limits something different to reach it. Some cut prompt volume. Some cut model access. One skips a prompt count entirely and bills by credits instead. This comparison puts every vendor's cheapest self-serve tier side by side on the two limits that define what you're actually buying: how many prompts you can track, and against how many AI models. If you want the feature-fit breakdown by use case instead of the price breakdown, see how to compare AI visibility tools.
Entry tier, side by side
| Tool | Cheapest self-serve tier | Prompts | Engines at that tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| AthenaHQ | Free (Essential, 300 credits) | Credit-based, not prompt-based | 5 (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini, Claude) |
| Ranketta (online stores & brands) | €29/month (Tracker) | 25 | 2, choose from 8 supported |
| Otterly AI | €29/month (Lite) | 15 | 4 (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot; Claude, AI Mode, Gemini are paid add-ons) |
| Peec AI | €85/month (Starter) | 50 | 3 of 11 supported |
| Profound | $99/month (Starter) | 50 | 1 (ChatGPT only) |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | $99/month | 25 | 4 (ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, Perplexity) |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | $199/month (Select Platforms) | Pre-built index only, no custom prompts | 1, your own pick from 5 named platforms |
Sorted low to high. Verified directly against each vendor's own pricing page on 10 August 2026.
Vendor by vendor
AthenaHQ is the one tool here without a prompt count. Its free Essential tier comes with 300 credits and five engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini, and Claude. The mechanism is 1 credit = 1 AI response, so cost scales with how many models you track, not how many prompts you write. Tracking one prompt daily across all five engines runs through roughly 150 credits a month, which means the 300 free credits cover about two prompts at that cadence, not the dozens a prompt-based free tier would suggest. The paid Starter at $295 a month raises the pool to 3,600 credits and the engine list to nine (adding AI Mode, Copilot, Grok, and more on request).
Ranketta's Tracker tier is €29 a month on both the online-store and brand tracks: 25 prompts on 2 models of your choice from the 8 supported (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok). Because both slots are your own pick, €29 covers ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews together, the two surfaces most stores care about first, at a prompt count that still maps a real category: 25 prompts against both engines. The same €29 at Otterly runs 15 prompts, and tracking ChatGPT plus AI Overviews at Profound starts at $399. Moving up raises both limits at once rather than one at the expense of the other: Starter unlocks a third model, Growth runs 100 prompts on 4 models, Scale runs 300 prompts on 5. No engine is a paid add-on and no tier below the top one needs a sales call.
Otterly AI's Lite plan is the smallest prompt allowance in the table: €29 a month for 15 prompts on 4 engines (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot), with unlimited team members on every plan. The engine list is the thing to check before budgeting: Claude, AI Mode, and Gemini are paid add-ons at every tier, Lite through Premium, each with its own monthly price on top of the plan. If your buyers research in one of those three, the €29 sticker isn't the number you'll pay.
Peec AI starts at €85 a month for 50 prompts, the most generous prompt count under €100 in this table. The model side is where the line sits: every plan below Enterprise, from Starter at €85 through Advanced at €425 with 350 prompts, is capped at 3 of the 11 models Peec supports. More prompts are always a tier away; more models only come with an Enterprise conversation.
Profound's Starter is $99 a month for 50 prompts, but on exactly one engine: ChatGPT. Every other model is out of reach until Growth at $399, which extends to 100 prompts and 3 engines (adding Perplexity and Google AI Overviews). It's the narrowest engine coverage per dollar in the table, at both tiers.
Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit is a flat $99 a month: 25 prompts, 1 domain, 4 engines (ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, Perplexity). There's no cheaper tier and no bigger self-serve tier either; the only step up is a custom Enterprise quote. What you get for the money is well documented, including the collection method: prompts are "captured from real requests and not via any APIs of LLMs."
Ahrefs Brand Radar works differently from everything above: neither tier lets you track your own prompts at the entry price. The $199 Select Platforms plan gets you one platform of your choice (AI Overviews and AI Mode as one bundle, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, or Gemini), monitored against Ahrefs' pre-built index of 474 million organic AI prompts drawn from its keyword data. Custom prompts, the exact questions your buyers type, only exist on the $699 All Platforms plan, which covers all five platforms and adds 2,500 custom-prompt checks a month.
How to read the table
Match the limit to your situation before comparing prices. If your buyers spread across many AI models, the model cap is your real constraint and a cheap plan limited to 1 or 3 engines is measuring a channel you didn't choose. If you need to track a long list of specific buying questions, the prompt count is the constraint, and a credit-based or index-based plan needs converting into "how many of my prompts does this actually cover" before the price means anything. The full breakdown of what each Ranketta tier includes is at ranketta.com/pricing.
For definitions behind the category itself, see GEO and AEO in the glossary.
