Key takeaways
- Peec AI Starter is $95 a month for 50 prompts, 3 models of your choice, daily tracking, unlimited users and 1 project. Most alternatives under $100 beat it on one axis and lose on another.
- Sticker prices mislead. Otterly's $29 Lite plan climbs to roughly $76 once Gemini, AI Mode and Claude are added, and ZipTie prices engines separately.
- LLMrefs gives you 500 prompts for $79, but refreshes weekly, so you get about 4 readings a month instead of 30.
- Almost every plan under $100 stops at monitoring. If you want content and fixes handled, check what the plan includes before you switch.
- Pick on the engines your buyers actually use first, then on prompts per dollar, then on refresh rate.
Why people look past Peec AI at all
Peec is a good measurement tool. Its Starter plan gives you daily tracking, unlimited seats and a clean dashboard, and the company says 3,500+ brands and agencies use it. Nobody I read is complaining that the data is wrong.
The complaints are narrower. Starter locks you to 3 models chosen from ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI. Claude and Perplexity are not on that list; Perplexity appears only in the Enterprise tier, which covers up to 13 models. Costs also jump quickly as you grow. Xamsor's review points out that two Starter plans cost $190 a month while one two-project plan costs $245. And Peec tells you where you are missing, but it does not write or publish anything to fix it.
So the real question is not "what is cheaper". It is which limit you are willing to live with.
A caveat on sources: several of the comparison articles online are written by vendors who sell one of the tools listed (Unveilr, Yozigo, Geoptie). Their rankings are self-interested, so I lean on their published prices and ignore their verdicts. Confirm every number on the vendor's own pricing page before you buy.
What Peec costs, for reference
| Peec plan | Price (monthly) | Prompts | Models | Projects |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $95 | 50 | 3 | 1 |
| Pro | $245 | 150 | 3 | 2 |
| Advanced | $495 | 350 | 3 | 5 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited | Up to 13 | Unlimited |
Some sources say annual billing drops Starter to about $80, and that extra models cost $30 or $35 a month. Those two figures conflict across sources and I could not confirm them on Peec's own page, so check before budgeting. Euro-priced listings (around 89 EUR) also exist, which is likely regional pricing.
The under-$100 field at a glance
The table below uses October 2026 monthly pricing in USD, mostly from Geoptie's comparison, which I cross-checked against the other sources where I could. Treat the engine counts as snapshots; vendors change them often.
| Tool | Price | Prompts | Refresh | Engines | What you give up |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly Lite | $29 | 15 | Daily | 4 (Gemini, AI Mode, Claude cost extra) | Real cost near $76 with add-ons; recommendations capped |
| ZipTie Starter | about $43 | 50 | Daily | 3, no Claude | Engines priced separately; all 7 is about $91.50 |
| Geoptie Starter | $49 | 15 | Daily | 4 of 7, Claude included | No free plan or trial |
| Knowatoa Starter | $59 | Not published | Not published | 3 | No Claude |
| LLMrefs | $79 | 500 | Weekly | 8, Claude included | Only about 4 readings a month |
| Peec Starter | $95 | 50 | Daily | 3, no Claude | Extra models cost more |
| Promptwatch Essential | $95 | 50 | Daily | 4 of 11, Claude included | Content articles start at the $245 plan |
| Semrush AI Visibility | $99 | 25 | Daily | 4, no Claude | 1 domain, 1 seat |
| Rankscale Pro | $99 | 1,200 credits | User-set | 17+ | Claude runs burn credits about 8x faster |
| Geoptie Professional | $99 | 100 | Daily | 4 of 7 | Fewer engines than the prompt count suggests |
Yozigo's own listing adds a few more: Yozigo Solo at $39 for four engines, LLM Pulse at 49 EUR with five models on every plan, and Scrunch at $250. Those are vendor-published and I have not verified them, so I have left them out of the table.
The cheap-looking options and their catches
Otterly.AI
Otterly Lite at $29 is the lowest entry price on the list and the easiest one to misread. You get 15 prompts and four engines, daily. Add Gemini ($9), AI Mode ($9) and Claude ($29) and you are at about $76, still with 15 prompts. Recommendations are capped at three a week. It works if you have one brand, a short list of prompts and a tight budget. It does not work as a Peec replacement for a team tracking a whole category.
ZipTie
The Starter preset is about $43 for 50 daily prompts on 3 engines, with no Claude. That is the same prompt count as Peec for less than half the money. The catch is that engines are priced separately, so running 50 daily prompts on all seven lands near $91.50. Content generation is a $20 add-on. Good value if you only need three engines.
Geoptie
Starter is $49 for 15 prompts and two brands with Claude included. Professional is $99 for 100 prompts, 10 brands, white-label output and API and MCP access. The 100-prompt tier is the interesting one for small agencies. Remember that Geoptie published the comparison I took these numbers from, so verify them yourself.
Knowatoa
Starter is $59 across ChatGPT, AI Overviews and AI Mode. It does not cover Claude, and prompt count and refresh frequency are not published, which makes it hard to compare fairly. Ask before you commit.
Where the budget goes further
LLMrefs
500 prompts across eight engines, Claude included, for $79. On paper this crushes Peec's 50 prompts for $95. The tradeoff is refresh rate: weekly means about four readings a month, where a daily tool gives you around thirty. For slow-moving category research that is fine. For watching the effect of a content change within days, it is thin.
Rankscale
Pro at $99 gives 1,200 credits, which is up to 4,800 answers, across 17+ engines with 10 dashboards. The credit model is the trap. A Claude run costs 2 credits against 0.25 for ChatGPT, so if Claude matters to you the pool drains about eight times faster. Page audits are capped at 50 a month. Cheap for broad coverage, awkward for predictable budgeting.
Semrush AI Visibility
The base plan is $99 for 25 prompts, 4 engines, 1 domain and 1 seat, with extra seats from $45 a month. It makes sense if you already live inside Semrush and want everything in one login. As a standalone Peec replacement it is the weakest value here: half the prompts, no Claude, and seats cost extra.
A plan that sits at Peec's price but covers more
Promptwatch Essential is $95 a month, the same as Peec Starter, with 50 prompts and daily tracking, but it covers four of its 11 active models with Claude included, and the monthly plan has a 7-day trial. It also adds things Peec Starter does not list: IP-verified AI crawler logs, a weekly site audit, 500 agent credits, content gap analysis, and API and MCP access. See promptwatch.com/pricing for the current plan details.
What you give up at this price is the content engine. AEO articles start at the $245 Professional plan, and the fully automated Content Agent is on Business at $579. Essential is a tracker with diagnostics, not a publishing pipeline. Whether that is a win depends on if you value crawler logs and gap analysis more than a third engine slot.
Why prompt coverage matters more than the headline count
One reason to care about how many prompts and engines you get: the engines behave differently. Promptwatch Data on average sources per response shows ChatGPT citing about 5 sources per web-search answer, while Google AI Overviews cites about 10 and Perplexity almost exactly 10 every day. Copilot swung from under 2 to nearly 17 sources within a few weeks before settling low. That volatility is a reason to judge Copilot tracking on monthly trends, not weekly snapshots, and it is a reason a weekly-refresh tool will give you a noisy picture of it.
The other feature worth asking about is query fan-outs. Promptwatch's ChatGPT query fan-out report measured about 2.15 searches per response in early December and about 1.84 by early March, with fan-out query length falling from roughly 117 characters to about 53 from April. A tracker that only runs your prompt and never shows the searches behind it hides part of the story. Ask any vendor whether they expose fan-outs.
How to choose
If you track one brand and just need a pulse
Otterly Lite or ZipTie Starter. Both are daily and cheap. Do the arithmetic with the engines you need before you commit, because both prices move.
If you need a lot of prompts
LLMrefs for breadth at weekly refresh, Rankscale if you can live with credit math. Peec and most of the others cap you near 50 prompts at this price.
If you need Claude
Peec Starter does not include it, and Semrush and Knowatoa skip it too. Geoptie, LLMrefs, Rankscale and Promptwatch include it at or under $100. Otterly charges $29 extra for it.
If you run a small agency
Agency needs are different: multiple clients, white-label reports and seats. Geoptie Professional ($99, 10 brands, white-label) fits under the cap. Promptwatch's agency plans start at $199 and Peec's agency pricing lives on a separate page I have not read, so check both.
If you want someone to fix the gaps
None of the sub-$100 plans do this well. Geoptie's own pitfall list says many entry plans stop at monitoring, leaving audits, fixes and content to your team. Plan to spend more or to do the work by hand.
A short checklist before you pay
- List the engines your buyers use, not the engines on the vendor's homepage.
- Price that exact engine set, including add-ons, per month.
- Check refresh rate. Weekly is not daily, even at 10x the prompts.
- Check seats and projects. Extra seats and second projects are where Peec, Semrush and others get expensive.
- Ask whether fan-outs and sources are visible per response.
- Use the free trial or monthly billing first. Annual savings are not worth it before you know the tool fits.
For more options than fit here, the rank trackers in the AI tracking directory at ai-rank-tools.com and the GEO software directory list dozens more tools at every price point.
Bottom line
Under $100 a month, nothing beats Peec Starter on every axis, and nothing is strictly worse either. ZipTie gives you the same prompt count for less if three engines are enough. LLMrefs gives ten times the prompts if weekly is fine. Promptwatch Essential matches Peec's price while adding Claude and crawler logs. Otterly is the cheapest way to start, as long as you read past the $29.