Nennbar vs aivimo (2026): a DACH subscription or a licence on your own server?
Nennbar is a German SaaS tracker from €32.50/mo with DACH-weighted scores and local source checks. aivimo is a self-hosted licence from €4,500. How to choose, and when Promptwatch wins.
Nennbar and aivimo both sell AI visibility tracking to German-speaking companies, and the overlap ends roughly there. Nennbar is a SaaS subscription built around German buying questions and DACH sources such as Wer liefert was, Kununu and North Data. aivimo is software you buy once and install on your own server, for organisations that won't put brand and prompt data into someone else's cloud.
In practice the choice usually comes down to your data-protection policy rather than features. Both vendors' pages were read on 20 October 2026. Promptwatch is in the table for teams without an on-premise requirement.
Side by side
| Nennbar | aivimo | Promptwatch | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vendor | LEA Software UG, servers in Frankfurt | Activaria GmbH, Vienna | Promptwatch B.V., Amsterdam |
| Model | Monthly or annual subscription | Perpetual licence plus optional maintenance | Monthly or annual subscription |
| Entry price | Start, €39/mo or €32.50/mo annually (net) | M, €4,500 one-time plus €800/yr maintenance | Essential, $95/mo (Explore is free) |
| Larger tier | Business, €299/mo or €249.17/mo annually | XL, €9,000 plus €2,500/yr | Business, $579/mo; agency plans from $199/mo |
| Trial or sample | Free live scan; €29 one-off check | Not published | Free Explore tier; 7-day trial on Essential |
| Engines | 4 on Start, 8 on Pro | OpenAI, Perplexity, Anthropic, Google, xAI "and others" | All tracked LLMs |
| How answers are collected | Web interfaces for ChatGPT and Gemini in the free scan; real German results pages for AI Overviews | Provider APIs | Real UI monitoring, not just APIs |
| Cadence | Every two weeks on Start, weekly per question on Pro | You set it | Daily |
| Data location | Frankfurt servers; queries via EU and US providers | Your server, or Activaria's European data centre | Not published |
| AI traffic | Cookie-free beacon counting AI visits | Not published | Visitor analytics with conversions |
| AI crawler logs | Not published | Not published | Agent Analytics from Professional |
How Nennbar works
Nennbar asks typical B2B buying questions in German, measured from Germany, Austria or Switzerland, and labels each answer as mentioned, not mentioned or misrepresented. Its score weights each engine by estimated DACH reach: ChatGPT 38, Google AI Overviews 19, Gemini 14, Copilot 12, Perplexity 6, AI Mode 5, Claude 4 and Mistral 2. That beats a flat average, since a Claude mention reaches fewer German buyers.
The local-source angle is the other reason to buy it. Nennbar flags when models cite WLW, Kununu, North Data, Handelsblatt, Heise or German Wikipedia, and checks whether your brand has a findable profile on wlw.de, kununu.com and northdata.de. English-first tools don't look for these at all.
Pro at €89 a month (€74 annually) is the sensible plan: 50 questions, all eight engines, fact checks with alerts, the AI-traffic beacon, a REST API, MCP and unlimited seats. The €29 one-off check is credited to Pro if you upgrade within 30 days.
Watch the cadence wording. The homepage says Pro is "updated daily", but llms.txt says each question runs once a week. Each question is also asked once per engine per measurement, and Nennbar's own study found only about half of vendors are named again after a week, so single readings are noisy.
How aivimo works
aivimo sends prompts you define to several AI providers through their APIs and records whether your brands and domains are mentioned, cited as a source, or ranked behind competitors. Results go into a local SQL database with a German browser dashboard. Every answer is stored with provider, model, timestamp and cost, and changes to prompts and configuration go into an audit trail.
The licence is the product. M costs €4,500 for 1 organisation and up to 10 brands or domains. L is €7,500 for 3 organisations and 30. XL is €9,000 for unlimited organisations, brands and domains. Setup on your server is included. Maintenance (€800, €1,200 or €2,500 a year) buys updates, support for new models and email support, and the software keeps running without it.
Three things to settle with Activaria before you sign. The site doesn't say whether prices include VAT. It doesn't say whether AI provider API fees are included, even though it logs a cost per answer. And the homepage promises agencies "one purchase price for unlimited brands", while M and L cap brands at 10 and 30.
What three years costs
Assuming maintenance is paid each year, aivimo M comes to €6,900 over three years before API fees. Nennbar Pro on annual billing is €888 a year, or €2,664 over the same period. Nennbar Business, with 500 questions across 10 domains, is about €8,970. aivimo XL with maintenance is €16,500 over three years. Unless you drop the maintenance contract and run the licence for many years, aivimo costs more, so treat it as a purchase for data control rather than savings.
Who should pick which
Pick Nennbar if you are a German, Austrian or Swiss B2B company and the questions that matter are asked in German. The reach weighting and the WLW, Kununu and North Data checks are things you won't get elsewhere.
Pick aivimo if your legal or IT team has ruled out SaaS for brand data. A self-hosted monitor with an audit trail is a clean answer to that. Don't buy it to save money.
The Promptwatch option
Without an on-premise mandate, both tools leave the same gap: neither shows whether the ChatGPT or Perplexity crawlers actually read the pages you change. Promptwatch's Agent Analytics records those visits from your CDN logs and follows them to citations, and its visitor analytics ties AI referrals to conversions rather than just counting visits.
Promptwatch is an Amsterdam company with prices available in euros. Professional at $245 a month includes 150 prompts on every tracked engine, refreshed daily, plus 25M crawler logs and 15 AEO articles. That is three times Nennbar Pro's question count, run every day instead of every week.
Verdict
Nennbar is the better tracker for German-language B2B work, and Pro at €74 a month on annual billing is fair value. aivimo makes sense only where data must stay in-house. For a company that just wants dependable data and proof that changes worked, Promptwatch Professional gives daily runs, crawler logs and conversions in one place.
FAQ
Is aivimo a SaaS tool?
No. It runs on your own server or VM, or Activaria hosts it in a European data centre. Results stay in a local SQL database.
How often does Nennbar measure?
On Pro and Business each question is measured once a week, although the homepage says "updated daily". On Start each question is measured every two weeks.
Which is better for a German company without data-residency rules?
Nennbar, if you want German-specific source checks on a budget. Promptwatch, if you want daily data plus crawler logs and conversions; plans are on promptwatch.com.