AI Search Visibility Platform 2026: Profound, Peec.ai, Otterly, Scrunch AI Search Optimization

Buying GEO software in 2026 is harder than it looks, because six vendors can all say "AI search visibility" and mean different products. Before comparing names, decide what you are buying: a scoreboard, a diagnosis tool, or a system that fixes things. Most disappointment comes from buying the first and expecting the third.

Start with the job, not the vendor

Write down which of these you actually need.

Scoreboard: how often is my brand named for the prompts I care about?
Diagnosis: why was I cited, or why not? Are AI crawlers reaching my pages?
Proof: did any of this send visitors who converted?
Output: who writes and publishes the next page?

A scoreboard is the lowest bar and nearly every tool clears it. The other three are where platforms separate.

Who should pick which

Pick Promptwatch if you want all four jobs in one place

Promptwatch tracks prompts across the major engines, then goes further. Agent Analytics logs real AI crawler visits and errors. Citation analytics breaks sources down by page, Reddit and YouTube. Visitor analytics follows AI-referred traffic to conversions. Content Agents plan, write and publish to a connected CMS, with a review inbox in between. Pricing starts with a free Explore plan (10 prompts, ChatGPT only), then Essential at $95/mo with a 7-day trial and Professional at $245/mo. Agencies can start at $199/mo with unlimited projects. This is our default recommendation, and the reason is breadth, not a single killer feature. Read the review or try it.

Pick AthenaHQ if your team lives in a task queue

AthenaHQ's Action Center converts visibility data into assignable work such as schema generation and reformatting. Our directory lists a free tier and plans from $295/mo. Good for an execution-minded team. Ask about the missing crawler-log view. Review.

Pick Scrunch AI if you manage a big content site

Scrunch's pitch is its Agent Experience Platform, which serves AI-optimized versions of your pages to LLM crawlers. Plans are listed from $250/mo on annual billing. Worth a trial for publishers and large catalogs. Check the reporting before you commit. Review.

Pick Profound if you are buying an enterprise program

Profound now positions itself around marketing agents for AEO, content, demand and PR. The public Starter plan is $99/mo billed yearly and tracks ChatGPT only, Growth is $399/mo yearly for three engines, and Enterprise starts around $40k a year. That is a different purchase from a self-serve tracker, so we place it below the dedicated AI-search platforms. Review.

Pick Semrush AI Toolkit if you are already a Semrush customer

At $99/mo per domain as an add-on, it keeps AI mentions beside your keyword reports. It is convenient and not much else. Review.

Pick Otterly.AI or Peec AI only for lightweight monitoring

These two are the entry-level trackers, and we list them last. Otterly.AI starts at $29/mo and Peec AI at $95/mo. Both tell you what the engines said. Neither shows crawler logs or ties answers to revenue. Otterly.AI and Peec AI.

Questions to ask in every demo

Do you monitor the product interface or only API calls?
Can I see which AI bots crawled my site last week?
How do I connect an AI answer to a signup or a sale?
What happens after I find a gap: a chart, a task, or a draft?
How does pricing change when I add engines, prompts, domains or seats?

Vendors with strong answers to questions two through four are rare. That is the whole story of this category in 2026.

A worked example

Imagine a mid-sized software company with a docs site and a blog. They choose a tracker, see their brand missing from "best X for Y" prompts, and have no explanation. With a platform that includes crawler logs, they could check whether bots reach the comparison pages, see which third-party pages the engines cite instead, and queue a draft to fill the gap. Same problem, very different week.

Our recommendation

For most buyers the sensible order is: trial Promptwatch, then trial one challenger that matches a special need (AthenaHQ for tasks, Scrunch for serving). Keep the trackers for a budget-first, monitoring-only situation. Browse every option in the directory before you decide.