The best AI SEO tools in 2026, sorted by the job they do.
"AI SEO tool" covers three jobs: tracking what AI answers say about you, optimizing content so Google and AI engines pick it up, and checking that AI crawlers can read your site at all. Most tools lead with one. This page sorts 18 tools into those three jobs, adds free checks you can run today, and links every fact to the vendor's own page with the day we read it.
Which AI SEO tool does which job?
Each tool sits under the job its own pages lead with, in the order AI engines named them. The bold line is the vendor's own description; the fit line is our read.
Job 1: track what AI answers say about you
Profound
Enterprise AI search platform with answer engine insights, agent analytics and an AI Marketer agent.
Best fit if: you are an enterprise that wants the widest engine panel and AI traffic attribution through your CDN.
Otterly.AI
Self-serve AI search monitoring for ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot, with GEO audits.
Best fit if: you want daily AI answer tracking at a low fixed price, with a free AI crawler simulation tool beside it.
Peec AI
AI search analytics for marketing teams and agencies: visibility, position, sentiment and sources.
Best fit if: you want to choose your engines and audit robots.txt across 40+ AI bots in the same tool.
Ahrefs Brand Radar
AI mention tracking inside Ahrefs, built on a database of hundreds of millions of prompts plus your own.
Best fit if: you already use Ahrefs for SEO and want AI mentions from a large prompt database beside it.
SE Ranking
SEO suite with an AI Search toolkit that tracks brand mentions and citations in AI answers.
Best fit if: you want Google rank tracking and AI answer tracking in one SEO plan.
Rankscale
Credit-based AI search visibility tracker with brand dashboards, citations, sentiment and query fan-out analysis.
Best fit if: you want a wide engine list per brand dashboard, with the cadence set per search term.
Knowatoa
AI search visibility monitoring with competitor gaps, cited sites and sentiment alerts.
Best fit if: you track several sites on one account with daily updates and a weekly digest.
ZipTie
Usage-based AI search tracker: you pay per prompt and engine, with unlimited seats and projects.
Best fit if: you want to pay per prompt and engine, with Bing AI Overview tracking and Search Console included.
Job 2: optimize and produce content for AI search
Writesonic
AI articles (15 a month on Starter), site audits, Action Center (full on Enterprise) and agentic workflows
Best fit if: you want AI articles, site audits and agentic workflows next to AI visibility tracking.
Siftly
GEO blog posts (8 a month on Starter), citation outreach campaigns, Reddit and social distribution
Best fit if: you want GEO blog posts and Reddit and social distribution, with GA4 and Search Console from Growth.
AIclicks
Clicky AI Agent and AI-optimized articles (5 a month on Starter)
Best fit if: you want a set number of AI-optimized articles each month, with a GA4 integration from Pro.
Promptwatch
Agent credits, content gap analysis and AEO articles (5 a month on Professional, 10 on Business)
Best fit if: you want content gap analysis that turns into AEO articles, with logs of AI bot visits.
Job 3: check that AI crawlers can read your site
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit
AI Search Health in Site Audit flags blockers for AI crawlers (up to 100 pages)
Best fit if: your team already audits sites in Semrush and wants AI crawler blockers flagged there.
Scrunch
AI agent and bot traffic, 5 site audits a month on Core; AXP on Enterprise
Best fit if: you want AI bot traffic, site audits and, on Enterprise, a version of your site built for AI agents.
AthenaHQ
Manages AI crawler access with a smart robots.txt and llms.txt
Best fit if: you want AI crawler access managed for you through a smart robots.txt and llms.txt.
And Proofsource, on the same facts
Proofsource
AI intelligence platform that shows which buyer questions name your brand, who gets named instead, and drafts the fix for each gap.
Best fit if: you want AI answer tracking, the pages cited instead of you, drafted fixes and a check of what AI crawlers can read, in one place.
How we sorted: by what each vendor's own pricing or product page, read on and , leads with. Many tools do more than one job; the table below shows all three for each. Proofsource makes this list and includes itself on the same facts.
How do the AI SEO tools compare on tracking, content and crawler checks?
16 tools from our hub list, the same four facts for each, including ours. "Not published" means the vendor's public pages did not say.
| Tool | What it is | Content and fixes | AI crawler checks | Price to start |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profoundsource | Enterprise AI search platform with answer engine insights, agent analytics and an AI Marketer agent. | AI Marketer agent, Opportunities, reusable Agents and Profound Sheets | Agent Analytics: AI-sourced traffic and attribution through CDN integrations such as Cloudflare, Vercel and Akamai | Free trial, then Enterprise at a custom price through a demo |
| Otterly.AIsource | Self-serve AI search monitoring for ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot, with GEO audits. | Recommendations (3 a week on Lite) and GEO audits (1,000 a month on Lite) | Agent Analytics on Standard and above; a free AI crawler simulation tool | $29/mo Lite (15 prompts); Standard $189/mo (100); Premium $489/mo (400) |
| Peec AIsource | AI search analytics for marketing teams and agencies: visibility, position, sentiment and sources. | Gap analysis, ranked recommended actions and agent actions | Crawlability audit of robots.txt across 40+ AI bots, plus crawl insights from CDN logs | $95/mo Starter (50 prompts, 3 models); Pro $245/mo (150); Advanced $495/mo (350) |
| Ahrefs Brand Radarsource | AI mention tracking inside Ahrefs, built on a database of hundreds of millions of prompts plus your own. | Finds the pages AI cites and mention opportunities | Not published | Brand Radar AI from $199/mo; custom prompt packages from $50/mo; Ahrefs plans from $129/mo include 5 to 20 tracked AI prompts |
| SE Rankingsource | SEO suite with an AI Search toolkit that tracks brand mentions and citations in AI answers. | Not published | Not published | Core $129/mo (100 prompts tracked daily); AI Search add-on +$89/mo |
| Rankscalesource | Credit-based AI search visibility tracker with brand dashboards, citations, sentiment and query fan-out analysis. | Rankscale Scout recommendations and page audits (50 a month on Pro) | Not published | Pro $99/mo (1,200 credits, 10 brand dashboards); Pro+ $229; Growth $385; Enterprise $780; Essentials from $17/mo, billed yearly |
| Knowatoasource | AI search visibility monitoring with competitor gaps, cited sites and sentiment alerts. | Not published | Not published | Starter $59/mo; Growth $199/mo; Enterprise custom |
| ZipTiesource | Usage-based AI search tracker: you pay per prompt and engine, with unlimited seats and projects. | Content Generation add-on: briefs and pieces with footnote citations | Not published | Usage-based, about $0.01 per prompt check per engine; presets from $42.75/mo |
| Writesonicsource | AI search visibility platform with SEO and content tools: tracking, AI articles, site audits and agentic workflows. | AI articles (15 a month on Starter), site audits, Action Center (full on Enterprise) and agentic workflows | Not published | Starter $79/mo billed annually (50 prompts); Basic $199/mo; Growth $399/mo; Enterprise custom |
| Siftlysource | GEO platform that tracks AI answers and adds content, citation outreach and social distribution. | GEO blog posts (8 a month on Starter), citation outreach campaigns, Reddit and social distribution | AI bot crawl tracking from Growth | Free plan; Starter $79/mo (50 prompts); Growth $249/mo; Scale $599/mo; Enterprise custom |
| AIclickssource | AI search visibility tracker with an AI agent and AI-optimized articles. | Clicky AI Agent and AI-optimized articles (5 a month on Starter) | Not published | Starter $59/mo (30 prompts, 3 models); Pro $189/mo (150, 4 models); Business $499/mo (300, 6 models); Enterprise custom |
| Promptwatchsource | Self-serve AI search tracking with content production: agent credits, content gap analysis and AEO articles. | Agent credits, content gap analysis and AEO articles (5 a month on Professional, 10 on Business) | Crawler logs that show when AI bots read your site | Essential $95/mo (50 prompts, 1 project); Professional $245/mo (150, 2); Business $579/mo (350, 5) |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkitsource | AI visibility add-on to the Semrush SEO suite: brand performance, prompt tracking and an AI search site audit. | AI-generated strategic recommendations | AI Search Health in Site Audit flags blockers for AI crawlers (up to 100 pages) | $99/mo per user (25 tracked prompts, 1 domain); 50 more prompts for $60/mo |
| Scrunchsource | AI search monitoring plus an Agent Experience Platform that serves AI agents an optimized version of your site. | Insights and recommendations, 1 page optimization a month on Core, content generation | AI agent and bot traffic, 5 site audits a month on Core; AXP on Enterprise | $250/mo Core (125 prompts, 5,000 responses a month, 4 LLMs) |
| AthenaHQsource | AI search platform for tracking and acting on visibility, with content and citation agents. | On-page and off-page actions and a content optimization agent; a recommendation engine on Enterprise | Manages AI crawler access with a smart robots.txt and llms.txt | Essential free ($25 credit, 300 credits); Starter $295/mo (3,600 credits, 1 credit = 1 AI response); Enterprise custom |
| Proofsource | AI intelligence platform that shows which buyer questions name your brand, who gets named instead, and drafts the fix for each gap. | Each gap names the pages the engine cited instead and comes with a draft held for your approval | Site audit checks whether AI crawlers get through and how much of each page they can read without JavaScript | Free trial; then plans from $9 a month (5 questions on ChatGPT, weekly), at self-serve checkout |
Can AI crawlers read your site? Free checks first
Before paying for content or tracking, check the plumbing. If GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot is blocked, or your pages render their text with JavaScript a crawler never runs, no amount of content will be read. These checks are free:
- Proofsource robots.txt checker: reads your robots.txt and tells you, crawler by crawler, whether GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Googlebot, Bingbot and others are allowed, blocked or not mentioned, with the line that decides it.
- Proofsource llms.txt generator and llms.txt validator: write or check the file in the llmstxt.org format. It is cheap to publish, though in our own read engines almost never cite it.
- Otterly.AI: a free AI crawler simulation tool, per its pricing page.
Among the paid tools, these publish a crawler check or AI bot analytics:
- Profound: Agent Analytics: AI-sourced traffic and attribution through CDN integrations such as Cloudflare, Vercel and Akamai.
- Otterly.AI: Agent Analytics on Standard and above; a free AI crawler simulation tool.
- Peec AI: Crawlability audit of robots.txt across 40+ AI bots, plus crawl insights from CDN logs.
- Siftly: AI bot crawl tracking from Growth.
- Promptwatch: Crawler logs that show when AI bots read your site.
- Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit: AI Search Health in Site Audit flags blockers for AI crawlers (up to 100 pages).
- Scrunch: AI agent and bot traffic, 5 site audits a month on Core; AXP on Enterprise.
- AthenaHQ: Manages AI crawler access with a smart robots.txt and llms.txt.
- Proofsource: Site audit checks whether AI crawlers get through and how much of each page they can read without JavaScript.
How is AI SEO different from SEO for Google?
Classic SEO earns a ranking on a results page. AI SEO earns a mention, or a citation, inside an answer. The two meet in Google AI Overviews, which are built from pages in Google's search index, so ranking work still feeds them; see how AI Overviews choose brands and how to rank in Google AI Overviews.
ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude choose their sources their own way, so a page can rank well on Google and still be missing from their answers. That is why AI SEO tools measure answers directly instead of inferring them from rankings, and why the GEO tools list judges tools on the sources they show.
Which other AI SEO tools are worth a look?
Two more from our sourced compare pages.
| Tool | Content, data and actions | AI engines covered | Price | Free trial | Best fit if (our read) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frasesource | AI Visibility monitors and alerts but does not auto-fix; the content side writes 10 to 100 articles a month by plan and publishes them | ChatGPT and Google AI on Starter; Perplexity added on Professional; Claude and Gemini added on Scale | Starter $49/mo ($39 billed yearly), Professional $129/mo ($103), Scale $299/mo ($239); Enterprise is custom | Free 7-day trial, no credit card | your job is producing content: it drafts in your brand voice and publishes to your CMS, with AI visibility as one feature. Proofsource vs Frase |
| Similarwebsource | Citation analysis with the exact links, sentiment by topic, AI referral traffic, and an AI SEO agent that drafts an SEO strategy | Not stated for brand visibility; its AI traffic trackers name ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Mode, Claude, Grok and DeepSeek | $99 for AEO Intelligence (1 user, 150 tracked prompts, 3 months of history); $333 and $542 tiers add SEO, competitive and ad intelligence; billing period not stated | A free trial on every plan; length not published | you want AI referral traffic and citation links, plus an AI SEO agent that drafts an SEO strategy. Proofsource vs Similarweb |
Where is Proofsource weaker for AI SEO?
- Not a classic SEO suite. Proofsource measures AI answers. For keyword rankings, backlinks and technical SEO at scale, Semrush, Ahrefs and SE Ranking are built for the job.
- Content at volume is Managed. Writesonic, Siftly, AIclicks, Promptwatch and Frase publish a monthly article count. Proofsource drafts the fix for each gap on self-serve; on Managed, our team writes and publishes for you.
- 4 engines at self-serve checkout. Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek and Meta AI are enabled on a call (Book a demo) or on Managed.
Where it is stronger: the three jobs meet in one report. Each gap names the pages the engine cited instead, comes with a drafted fix, and sits beside a site audit of what AI crawlers can read. Daily or weekly, chosen per plan; the trial runs 2 scans about a day apart.
What buyers ask about AI SEO tools
What is the best AI SEO tool?
Pick by the job. To track what AI answers say about you, look at Otterly.AI, Peec AI, Rankscale or Proofsource. To produce content for AI search, Writesonic, Siftly, AIclicks, Promptwatch and Frase publish article quotas. To check that AI crawlers can read your site, Semrush, Scrunch and AthenaHQ build it in, and free checkers cover the basics.
Do AI SEO tools help with Google rankings?
The SEO suites do: Semrush, Ahrefs and SE Ranking add AI tracking to rank tracking, audits and backlinks. Google AI Overviews are built from pages in Google's index, so classic SEO still feeds them. The AI-first tools on this page focus on what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and AI Overviews say rather than on blue-link rankings.
Which AI SEO tools check AI crawler access?
On the pages we read: Semrush (AI Search Health in Site Audit), Peec AI (a robots.txt audit across 40+ AI bots), Otterly.AI (a free AI crawler simulation tool), Scrunch (AI bot traffic and site audits), AthenaHQ (a smart robots.txt and llms.txt), Siftly (AI bot crawl tracking from Growth), Promptwatch (crawler logs), Profound (Agent Analytics) and Proofsource (a site audit of what AI crawlers can read). Our free robots.txt checker covers the first check.
Are there free AI SEO tools?
Yes: Siftly's free plan, AthenaHQ's free Essential plan, Otterly.AI's free AI crawler simulation tool, and Proofsource's free robots.txt checker, llms.txt generator and llms.txt validator. Proofsource's trial, 2 days of full AI visibility, is free too, with no card: 25 buyer questions on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews.
Does llms.txt help AI SEO?
Less than its reputation suggests. We fetched the file from the 300 sites four AI engines cited most: 129 publish one, those sites were cited 6,343 times, and one citation pointed at the file. It costs little to publish, and it is a reading list for agents, not a ranking file. Crawler access and the pages engines cite matter more.
- Profound pricing www.tryprofound.com/pricing, read Oct 4, 2026 and Oct 5, 2026
- Otterly.AI pricing otterly.ai/pricing, read Oct 4, 2026 and Oct 5, 2026
- Peec AI pricing peec.ai/pricing, read Oct 4, 2026 and Oct 5, 2026
- Ahrefs pricing ahrefs.com/pricing · Ahrefs Brand Radar ahrefs.com/brand-radar, read Oct 4, 2026 and Oct 5, 2026
- SE Ranking pricing seranking.com/pricing.html · SE Ranking AI visibility tracker seranking.com/ai-visibility-tracker.html, read Oct 4, 2026 and Oct 5, 2026
- Rankscale pricing rankscale.ai/pricing, read Oct 5, 2026
- Knowatoa pricing knowatoa.com/pricing · Knowatoa homepage knowatoa.com/, read Oct 5, 2026
- ZipTie pricing ziptie.ai/pricing/, read Oct 5, 2026
- Writesonic pricing writesonic.com/pricing, read Oct 5, 2026
- Siftly pricing siftly.ai/pricing, read Oct 5, 2026
- AIclicks pricing aiclicks.io/pricing, read Oct 5, 2026
- Promptwatch pricing www.promptwatch.com/pricing, read Oct 5, 2026
- Semrush KB: AI Visibility Toolkit www.semrush.com/kb/1493-ai-toolkit, read Oct 4, 2026 and Oct 5, 2026
- Scrunch pricing scrunch.com/pricing, read Oct 4, 2026 and Oct 5, 2026
- AthenaHQ pricing www.athenahq.ai/pricing, read Oct 5, 2026
Each vendor's own pricing or product page, read on the date shown. Proofsource's facts render from its own pricing source. Spot an error? Write to hello@proofsource.co and we will correct it.
- Frase pricing www.frase.io/pricing, read Oct 5, 2026 · Frase AI Visibility feature www.frase.io/features/ai-visibility, read Oct 5, 2026
- Similarweb AI Search Intelligence: features, plans and FAQ aisearch.similarweb.com/, read Oct 5, 2026
Track, fix and check crawlers in one report.
See which buyer questions name your brand, who gets named instead, and what to fix. 200 answers. 25 Prompts/Question. Top AI engines. 2 days. Free. No card.
Google AI OverviewsGoogle AI Mode
