GEO Tools Compared: What Each Tracks and What It Costs

Twelve trackers in one table

Underneath, every tool below works the same way: it sends a list of prompts to AI engines, usually through their APIs, records the answers, and counts mentions and citations. The differences are which engines, how many prompts, how often, and what it costs. Prices are as published on each vendor's own pricing page as of October 2026. This market reprices often, so check the vendor's page before you buy. For how trackers fit into the wider work, start with our generative engine optimization guide.

A note on names. AthenaHQ is an independent AI visibility vendor. It has nothing to do with Athena CMS, the content system DataCram builds into its clients' sites. Similar names, unrelated companies.

Reading the price tag: prompts times engines times days

Sticker prices are hard to compare because vendors meter different things: prompts tracked daily, credits, checks or projects. Convert everything into answers per month. Thirty prompts on four engines checked daily is 3,600 answers a month. The same thirty checked weekly is about 520. For a local business the weekly figure is usually enough, and it can change which plan you need by a few hundred dollars.

• Prompt-based plans (Semrush, Otterly.AI, Scrunch, Peec AI) cap the number of questions. Check how often each one runs and which engines count against the cap.
• Credit-based plans (AthenaHQ, Rankscale) spend credits per check. Ask how many credits one prompt on one engine costs before comparing.
• Check packs (Ahrefs custom prompts) sell a monthly number of checks on top of a base subscription.
• Engine add-ons can hide the real price. Otterly.AI treats Claude, AI Mode and Gemini as add-ons, so the entry plan may not cover the engines your customers use.
• Locations are often limited. A business with several cities should confirm per-location tracking before signing anything annual.

Which kind of tracker fits which buyer

Whatever you pick, a tracker is only as good as the questions you feed it. The prompt tracking guide covers how to choose them, and AI share of voice explains how to read the figure the dashboard produces, including why a ten-point swing on a small sample is usually noise.

Free instruments already in your accounts

Before paying anyone, open the reports Google and Microsoft now publish for nothing. They are first-party data from the engines themselves, which no paid tracker can claim, and they cost a login.

• Google Search Console, Generative AI performance report. Impressions for your pages in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date. Rolled out to every site by August 31, 2026. Impressions only, no clicks.
• Bing Webmaster Tools, AI Performance report. Citations in Copilot and Bing's AI summaries, the grounding queries behind them, and Citation Share per query. No clicks.
• GA4, AI Assistant channel. Visits from recognized AI assistants since May 13, 2026, excluding AI Overviews and AI Mode. Our walkthrough on tracking AI traffic in GA4 adds a custom channel for what it misses.
• Google Merchant Center, AI performance report. For stores: share of voice for shopping queries in AI Mode and AI Overviews, for English queries in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India.
• DataCram's [free AI visibility check](/ai-visibility-check). One customer question, run live through ChatGPT and other engines via their APIs, showing whether you were named and who was named instead. API answers can differ slightly from the consumer apps.

Where AICiteBeam fits

DataCram built its own tracker, AICiteBeam, on Next.js, Supabase and the Vercel AI SDK. It monitors whether ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews name and cite a brand, tracks competitor share of voice and the sources each engine cites, and sends alerts when visibility moves. We use it to run the monitoring inside client programs, so the tracking and the fixing happen in one place. We are not quoting a price for it on this page; ask, and we will tell you how it fits your situation.

What no tracker can tell you

Google says plainly that no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems. Every tracker is an outside observer asking questions, which is useful, and limited in ways you can predict.

The last two are where the money goes. A competitor may be named because of its reviews, its mentions in the places engines read, or a site that crawlers can actually read while yours is invisible to AI despite ranking on Google. Finding out which takes an audit, not a dashboard.

Choosing a tracker in four questions

1. 1

   Which engines do your buyers use?

   Rule out any tool that does not cover them at your price tier, counting add-ons. A tracker that skips AI Mode is a poor fit for a business that lives on Google.

2. 2

   How many answers a month do you need?

   Multiply prompts by engines by runs. Most local businesses need hundreds a month, not tens of thousands.

3. 3

   Who will read the answers?

   A tracker without a reader is a monthly email nobody opens. If nobody on staff has the hours, budget for help rather than a bigger plan.

4. 4

   What happens when the number is bad?

   If the answer is "we send it to the agency", ask what the agency will fix. GEO pricing explains what a managed program includes, from $625 a month after a free GEO audit.