Key Takeaways
- Entry prices are close: Airefs $24/mo (billed yearly), Otterly.AI $29/mo, Ranketta EUR 29/mo, Peec AI $95/mo. The headline number hides very different limits.
- Otterly's $29 Lite plan covers 15 prompts on 4 engines. Peec's $95 Starter covers 50 prompts on 3 models. Per prompt, Peec is not the expensive one.
- Ranketta is built for online stores, with product-level tracking and product feed fixes. Airefs is the only one of the four that writes articles and outreach drafts.
- Airefs tracks just ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, and AI Overviews is a paid add-on. Do not confuse it with Ahrefs.
- Several third-party roundups still quote old prices (Peec at EUR 75-89, Otterly with 6 engines). Check each vendor's pricing page before you buy.
What "budget" means for AI visibility tracking
AI visibility trackers run a set of prompts against ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and other engines, then report whether your brand shows up, where, and with which sources. The entry tiers of these tools look similar on a pricing page. They are not.
Three numbers decide whether a cheap plan is useful: how many prompts you can track, how many engines each prompt runs on, and what you can do with the result. A plan with 15 prompts on 4 engines is a spot check. A plan with 50 prompts on 3 models is a small but real monitoring set. Compare on those, not on the sticker price.
All prices below come from the vendors' own pricing pages as captured in our research. Pricing in this category changes often, so confirm before you commit.
The four tools at a glance
| Tool | Entry plan | Prompts at entry | Engines at entry | Seats | Standout |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airefs | Lite, $24/mo billed yearly | 25 | ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews (AIO is a paid add-on) | 1 | Writes articles and outreach drafts |
| Otterly.AI | Lite, $29/mo | 15 | ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot | Unlimited | Cheapest broad monitoring, daily tracking |
| Ranketta | Tracker, EUR 29/mo | 30 per model, 2 models | Choose 2 from AIO, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity | n/a | Product data fixes for e-commerce |
| Peec AI | Starter, $95/mo | 50 | 3 models | Unlimited | Most generous entry coverage, SKU tracking |
Otterly.AI: the cheap, simple monitor
Otterly.AI is the one most budget roundups lead with, and the reputation is fair. The marketer-built interface is clean, tracking is daily on every plan, and you get unlimited team members even on Lite.
The details matter, though. According to its pricing page, Lite is $29/mo with 15 prompts. It covers ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot. Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini are paid add-ons. Otterly's own blog still describes 6 engines at $29, which only holds if you count the add-ons. Lite also limits you to 3 recommendations a week and one workspace.
The next step up is a jump: Standard is $189/mo for 100 prompts, and it adds API, MCP and Agent Analytics. Extra prompts cost $99 per 100. Annual billing takes 15% off.
Best for solo marketers and small agencies who want a baseline and a weekly look at competitors. Weak point: 15 prompts runs out fast, and it monitors rather than helps you fix anything.
Peec AI: the most coverage for the money at entry
Peec is the priciest of the four on the sticker, and the one most likely to be the best value if you actually need monitoring. Starter is $95/mo for 50 prompts, 3 models, 1 project and 1 country. Pro is $245/mo (150 prompts, 2 projects, 3 countries) and Advanced is $495/mo (350 prompts, 5 projects, Looker Studio).
All plans include unlimited users, competitors and languages, plus daily tracking. Every plan also has an Ads library, Local GEO and AI Shopping with SKU-level tracking via Shopify or a CSV catalog. The standard-plan models are ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI. Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Mistral and others, plus Perplexity, sit on Enterprise.
Note the stale numbers floating around. Older posts quote EUR 75-89 for entry, and some say 2,000+ customers. The pricing page now shows $95 and claims 4,000+ brands and agencies. Peec also says plainly that it does not write or publish content, so fixes stay with your team.
Best for teams that need real competitor and source analysis and can act on it themselves. Agencies should look at its separate agency pricing page.
Ranketta: built for online stores
Ranketta is the newest name here and the most specialized. It is e-commerce and merchandising focused: it tracks which products AI recommends, corrects product titles, attributes and descriptions, and exports a corrected feed. Plans are in euros with a 7-day free trial.
| Plan | Price | Models | Prompts | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tracker | EUR 29/mo | 2 | 30 per model | 1 website, 1 country, MCP |
| Starter | EUR 79/mo | 3 | 50 per model | Merchandising, 5k credits, MCP |
| Growth | EUR 199/mo | 4 | 100 per model | 2 websites, 3 countries, 15k credits |
| Scale | EUR 449/mo | 5 | 300 per model | 5 websites, 10 countries, 45k credits |
Premium engines (Alexa, Claude, Copilot, Grok, Meta Muse) can be selected from Starter up, and they count toward the model limit. Annual billing saves EUR 60 to EUR 900 a year depending on plan. Agency plans are priced separately.
Two cautions. First, the claims about how Ranketta compares with Peec (UI scraping with repeated runs, SOC 2 status, Peec's 3-model cap) come from Ranketta's own blog, so read them as vendor-written. Second, I found no independent accuracy tests for any of these tools. Ranketta's own case study cites a supplements store reaching 44% AI visibility, which is a vendor example, not a benchmark.
Best for stores selling products where the real problem is bad product data, not just invisibility. A free audit is available on Ranketta's site. If you are not selling products, the merchandising layer is wasted on you.
Airefs: cheapest, narrowest, and not Ahrefs
Airefs starts at $24/mo billed yearly, the lowest of the four. Name warning first: it is a different company from Ahrefs. Search for "Airefs" and you will often get Ahrefs results, and the products have nothing in common beyond a similar spelling. Ahrefs Brand Radar costs $50/mo for custom prompt tracking and $199/mo for its AI Visibility Index.
| Plan | Price (billed yearly) | Domains | Seats | Prompts | Articles/mo | History |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | $24/mo | 1 | 1 | 25 | 1 | 7 days |
| Pro | $49/mo | 3 | 2 | 60 | 3 | 90 days |
| Expert | $83/mo | Unlimited | 20 | 150 | 6 | 180 days |
Airefs tracks only ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, and AI Overviews costs extra: $100 a year on Lite, $211 on Pro, $300 on Expert. So the real Lite price for both engines is higher than $24. What you get in return is unusual for this price: AEO article writing, discovery of Reddit, Quora and LinkedIn threads with drafted comments, drafted backlink and mention outreach, AI crawler and AI traffic analytics, and an MCP server on Pro and up. It shows G2 4.9/5 and has a 7-day trial. An Agency tier is listed as early access.
Best for solo founders who want a little tracking plus content and outreach help in one cheap tool. Skip it if you need Perplexity, Gemini or Copilot data.
Price per useful unit
Here is a rough read of entry plans, using the research figures. Prompt runs across models are my own arithmetic, so treat them as approximate.
| Tool | Entry price | Tracked prompts | Engines | Approx. prompt-engine runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airefs | $24 | 25 | 1 (2 with add-on) | 25 to 50 |
| Otterly.AI | $29 | 15 | 4 | 60 |
| Ranketta | EUR 29 | 30 per model | 2 | 60 |
| Peec AI | $95 | 50 | 3 | 150 |
Peec costs about three times the others but delivers roughly 2.5 times the prompt-engine runs, with unlimited seats and SKU tracking included. If your set of prompts is 50 or fewer and you need it across several engines, the cheapest sticker is not the cheapest outcome.
Which one should you pick
- You sell products online and your feed is messy: Ranketta.
- You want the cheapest recognizable monitor and 15 prompts is enough: Otterly.AI.
- You want solid competitor and source analysis and have someone to act on it: Peec AI.
- You want monitoring plus content drafts and outreach on a tiny budget, and ChatGPT plus AI Overviews is enough: Airefs.
What these budget tools do not do
None of the four is a full loop of monitor, fix and measure. Otterly and Peec monitor. Ranketta fixes product data. Airefs writes content. If you outgrow them, the next tier is a platform like Promptwatch, which pairs prompt tracking with IP-verified AI crawler logs, a Content Agent that publishes to WordPress, Webflow or Framer, and visitor analytics that show whether AI traffic converts. Plans start at $95/mo for Essential, though the crawler logs and article tools sit on higher plans, so check promptwatch.com/pricing.
For a wider shortlist, the GEO software directory at bestgeosoftware.com lists dozens more trackers, and ai-rank-tools.com focuses on rank trackers specifically.
How to test before you pay
- Write 15 to 25 real buyer prompts, including two or three that name a competitor.
- Run the 7-day trials (Ranketta, Airefs) or the evaluation window (Otterly) on the same prompts.
- Check whether the engines you care about are included on the plan, not as add-ons.
- Hit the prompt limit on purpose and see what the upgrade costs.
- Compare what each tool tells you to do next. A dashboard with no next step is only half a tool.
Prices, engine lists and plan limits change often. The numbers here came from vendor pricing pages in the research for this guide, so confirm them directly before signing up.
FAQ
Is Airefs the same as Ahrefs?
No. Airefs (getairefs.com) is a separate, small AI search monitoring and content tool. Ahrefs is the established SEO suite, and its Brand Radar product is a different offering.
Which of the four is cheapest?
Airefs at $24/mo billed yearly, then Otterly.AI at $29 and Ranketta at EUR 29. Peec AI is $95. But Airefs charges extra for AI Overviews, and the cheap plans cap prompts hard.
Do any of them track Claude?
Otterly sells Claude as an add-on. Ranketta counts it as a premium engine from Starter up. Peec lists Claude on Enterprise. Airefs does not track it.
Can agencies use these?
Peec and Ranketta both publish separate agency pricing pages, and Otterly has an agency partner program. Airefs lists an agency tier as early access.