AI Search Vitals review (2026): Evidence-first tracking from $19 a month
AI Search Vitals keeps the raw answer for every check on ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and DeepSeek, from $19/mo. Its API-only data and check limits matter. A buyer's review, plus the Promptwatch option.
AI Search Vitals is a cheap AI visibility tracker with an unusual habit: it keeps the evidence. For every successful check it stores the raw answer, the actual model, the market, the language, the web-search mode, the run time, the token usage and any cited URLs. If a client asks "where did that number come from?", you can show them.
That makes it a good fit for budget-minded teams and small agencies who care more about verifiable data than a polished score. We read aisearchvitals.com/pricing and llms.txt on 20 October 2026.
What it is
The tool runs saved buyer prompts against ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and DeepSeek, daily or weekly. From the answers it reports mention rate, citation rate and share of voice against up to 20 competitors per project, with a citation explorer for domains and pages and period-over-period changes on your own domain's citation rate.
Three GEO audit tools sit alongside. A crawlability checker reviews robots.txt, AI crawler policy and headers. A content checker looks at headings, metadata and JSON-LD. AI Query Expansion suggests related queries. There is also AI Prompt Research and AI Competitor Research, each returning up to five suggestions per request.
The site is direct about one limit: checks run through provider APIs and may not match what a person sees in the consumer apps. Results are labeled as observations from a named model, location, language and time, not as official rankings.
Plans and limits
Prices read on 20 October 2026:
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | Main limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | $19 | $185/year | 20 prompts, 10 projects, 1,200 checks a month, 1 extra seat |
| Standard | $79 | $758/year | 50 prompts, 50 projects, 20 workspaces, 6,000 checks, 5 extra seats |
| Premium | $199 | $1,910/year | 100 prompts, 100 projects, 50 workspaces, 12,000 checks, 15 extra seats |
| Capacity pack | $12 | n/a | 600 extra checks a month, stackable |
One prompt on one engine is one check, counted when submitted even if the provider call fails. GEO audits share a daily cap: 10 on Lite, 40 on Standard and 80 on Premium. Nothing rolls over, and quarterly billing is no longer offered to new subscribers.
The 7-day trial needs no card, but it runs on ChatGPT only with 50 checks in total, and the workspace turns read-only afterwards.
What works
The evidence trail is the real selling point. A tracker that stores the model name, search mode and token count for each answer is easier to audit than one that hands you a score. The documentation is also precise about how allowances are counted, which saves surprises at the end of the month.
The price is low enough to try on a side project, and monthly and annual billing carry the same allowances. Standard and Premium let several workspaces share one allowance, which suits a small agency.
What to check before paying
Do the arithmetic on Lite first. Twenty prompts run daily on four engines is about 2,400 checks a month. Lite includes 1,200. So on Lite you either run weekly, track fewer engines, or buy capacity packs at $12 per 600 checks. Two packs bring you to daily coverage for $43 a month.
Other points for the checklist:
- Perplexity, Grok and Google AI Overviews are not among the listed channels. For many buyers, AI Overviews is the engine their boss asks about first.
- The engines available to you depend on what the administrator has enabled for your workspace. Ask which ones you will actually get.
- Answers come from provider APIs. The vendor itself warns they may not reproduce the consumer apps.
- The setup flow starts with a ChatGPT baseline report, and more channels are added after you subscribe, so the trial tells you little about Claude, Gemini or DeepSeek.
Where it falls short against a full AI visibility platform
AI Search Vitals' crawlability checker tells you whether AI bots are allowed in. It does not tell you whether they came. There is no crawler-log view of which pages GPTBot or ClaudeBot actually fetched, and no tracking of AI-referred visitors or conversions. The citation explorer covers domains and pages but does not break out Reddit or YouTube sources. And because it samples through APIs, it measures something adjacent to what users see, which the vendor admits.
When Promptwatch is the better buy
Promptwatch monitors the real interfaces of ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, Llama, DeepSeek, Mistral and Copilot, plus Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. That alone closes two of the gaps above: Perplexity and AI Overviews are covered, and the answers come from the UI rather than an API proxy.
The bigger difference is what happens around the answer. Agent Analytics logs real AI crawler visits and the crawl-to-citation path, so you see whether the page you fixed after an audit was fetched. Visitor analytics records AI-referred sessions and conversions through a script or GTM template. Citation analytics covers pages and domains and adds Reddit and YouTube citations.
Plan choice: Essential at $95 a month gives 50 prompts across all tracked LLMs with daily refresh and 6,000 responses, roughly what AI Search Vitals Standard covers on prompts. Professional at $245 adds 150 prompts, 25M crawler logs and 1M visitor events, which is the plan to pick if you want to connect visibility to traffic.
Verdict
AI Search Vitals is honest about what it measures and cheap enough to try. Keeping the raw answer per check is a habit more trackers should copy, and the audit tools cover basic crawlability and schema. The limits bite once you run four engines daily, and it skips Perplexity and AI Overviews. For a program that needs to explain why visibility moved and what it earned, Promptwatch Professional is the stronger buy.
FAQ
Does AI Search Vitals check the ChatGPT app itself?
No. The site describes its runs as provider or API proxy observations and says they may not reproduce the consumer product.
How many checks do I need for daily tracking?
Prompts times engines times days. Twenty prompts on four engines daily is about 2,400 checks a month, double what Lite includes.
Is there a free plan to compare with?
AI Search Vitals offers a 7-day ChatGPT-only trial. Promptwatch's Explore plan is free for 10 prompts on ChatGPT at promptwatch.com.