LLM SEO tools do one of three jobs. Mention trackers ask AI engines your questions on a schedule and count how often you are named (Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.AI, LLMrefs, and add-ons from Semrush and Ahrefs). Traffic analytics count real visits from ChatGPT and other assistants (Google Analytics 4 for free, TalkGenAI's AI Visibility tab). Writers and optimizers produce the pages that get cited (Surfer, Frase, TalkGenAI). Start with the free traffic data; add a tracker when you need to know what AI says about you in answers that send no clicks.
By Yaniv Mizrahi, founder of TalkGenAI. We make one of the tools below, so we kept our own product to the groups it fits and read every other price from the vendor's own site on 10 October 2026. We did not test each tracker's accuracy hands-on.
Why do I need to know which kind a tool is?
Because the numbers disagree, and each one is right about something different. In a test for one client we asked ChatGPT and Claude 40 buyer questions each:
| Engine | Answers that named the brand | Answers that linked to it |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 8 | 1 |
| Claude | 7 | 12 |
A mention tracker would report ChatGPT as the better engine for this brand. Analytics would show almost no visitors from it. Neither is wrong: the tracker measures awareness, analytics measures traffic. The GEO vs SEO guide explains why this gap exists and why Google rankings do not predict either one.
Mention trackers compared
Each tracker sends your questions (prompts) to AI engines on a schedule and records whether you, and your competitors, are named or linked. Prices below are the entry point as listed on each vendor's site on 10 October 2026.
| Tool | From, per month | Questions tracked | AI engines |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly.AI | $29 | 15 | 4, more as add-ons |
| LLMrefs | $79 | 500 | 10 |
| Peec AI | €89 | 50 daily | 3 named |
| Semrush | $199 | 50 daily | not listed |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | €47 | not listed | 6, plus Claude |
| Profound | custom | custom | up to 9 |
- Otterly.AI: Lite tracks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot; Claude, Gemini and AI Mode are paid add-ons. Standard is $189 for 100 questions, Premium $489 for 400. The page also shows lower prices. Free trial.
- LLMrefs: one plan covering ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Copilot, Meta and DeepSeek. The price is marked "limited time". 7-day free trial.
- Peec AI: Starter €89 for 50 questions, Pro €199 for 150. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini are named on their site. Prices are from Peec's own comparison page; the pricing page did not load for us.
- Semrush: the Starter tier of the SEO + AI Search plans, with Semrush's SEO toolkit included. The $139 SEO plan also monitors custom prompts.
- Ahrefs Brand Radar: custom prompts from €47, the AI Visibility Index €179. Tracks ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot, with Claude available. Prices were shown to us in euros.
- Profound: enterprise pricing on request, up to 9 engines including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Copilot. Free trial: 50 questions daily for 7 days on 3 engines.
Why trackers charge per question: every check is a real call to an AI model. In our own product one check costs us roughly $0.20 to $0.38, which is why 15 questions and 400 questions are different price tiers everywhere.
The free version: write down 20 real buyer questions (from sales calls, support tickets, Reddit threads), ask them in ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity once a month, and note in a spreadsheet whether you are named and whether you are linked. It takes about an hour and tells you most of what a tracker would at small scale.
AI traffic analytics: the part that is free
Google Analytics 4 already records visits from AI assistants as referrals. Open Traffic acquisition, use Session source as the dimension, and look for chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, claude.ai, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com, with Landing page as a second dimension.
This is the data that surprised us most. On 4MeNearMe.com, ChatGPT sent 122 visits in September 2026 and 114 of them went to one page, a time zone tool. No tracker would have told us that, because nobody asks an AI "which page of 4MeNearMe.com should I visit". The whole story, page by page, is in our LLM SEO guide.
TalkGenAI's AI Visibility tab reads the same GA4 data and puts each page's AI visits next to its Google position, so you see which pages win in both. It needs a connected GA4 property and a paid plan. TalkGenAI also has a prompt tracker ("Who Mentions You"), which is invite-only today.
Writers and optimizers
Knowing you are not cited is only useful if you then publish better pages.
- Surfer scores a draft against the pages that rank and suggests terms to add. You or your writer still write. Our Surfer SEO alternative page compares it with a tool that writes.
- Frase describes itself as a content operating system for AI search, from research and drafting to publishing and monitoring.
- TalkGenAI writes the article in your brand voice, saves it as a draft on your WordPress site with image, FAQ schema and meta, and then shows its Google position and AI visits. See the SEO blog writer guide for the settings, or let an AI SEO agent run the whole loop.
Which LLM SEO tool should I pick?
| Your situation | Start with |
|---|---|
| No budget | GA4 for AI visits plus the free monthly 20-question check |
| You want to know if AI names you, for one brand | A tracker with 15 to 50 questions: Otterly.AI Lite, Peec AI Starter or LLMrefs |
| You already pay for Semrush or Ahrefs | Their AI add-on first, one login less |
| Many brands or markets, enterprise reporting | Profound |
| You know what to fix but cannot produce the pages | A writer, then measure the new pages with GA4 |
How many questions to track: our 40-question test (80 calls, 79 usable answers) was enough to see a clear pattern for one market. Start with 20 to 50 questions phrased the way buyers ask, not keyword lists.
What are the limits of this comparison?
Prices and plan limits change often; check the vendor's page before buying. We list each tool by its main job and did not run the same test through every tracker, so we make no claim about which one is most accurate. AI answers also vary between runs of the same question, so every tracker shows a sample, not a fixed truth.
Try it in 5 minutes
- Create a free account and connect Google Analytics.
- Open AI Visibility to see which pages AI assistants send people to.
- With an agent: get a key at app.talkgen.ai/connect-agent and ask Claude: "Which of my pages got visits from ChatGPT last month?"
Last updated: 2026-10-10