Comparison
AEO tools compared — including where we’re the wrong choice
Six by choice, not by accident: the five rivals Perplexity named for our eight questions on 1 October 2026, and us. All six measure roughly the same thing: how often AI assistants name and cite your brand. They differ in who does the work, how much coverage you get, and what you pay.
The six vendors
Three kinds of product. Most mistakes come from confusing them.
All six measure roughly the same thing: how often AI assistants name and cite your brand. They differ in who does the work, how much coverage you get, and what you pay.
- Each rival’s entry price, read from its own pricing page on the date named
- How to check which vendors are any good
- Where we are not the right answer
- Yes
- No
- Not published, or not stated
| Vendor | Otterly.AISelf-serve tracker | AthenaHQSelf-serve tracker | Peec AISelf-serve tracker | Scrunch AIEnterprise platform | ProfoundEnterprise platform | Bungad AEOManaged subscription |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price on its own pricing pageRead 1 October 2026; Scrunch AI on 3 October | Published | Published | Plan names, no figure | Published | By quote only | Published |
| Writes the pages for you | You do the fixing | You do the fixing | You do the fixing | Your team acts on it | Your team acts on it | Content and structured data |
| Publishes its own audited visibility score | None we know of | None we know of | None we know of | None we know of | None we know of | 0 out of 100 |
| Named in our September 2026 self-auditEight buyer questions on Perplexity, identical in both runs | Otterly named in 2 of 8 in each September run. | AthenaHQ named in 1 of 8 in each September run. | Peec AI named in 2 of 8 in each September run. | Scrunch AI named in 1 of 8 in each September run. | Profound named in 2 of 8 in each September run. | Bungad named in 0 of 8 in each September run. |
| Built for | Marketers who will do the fixing themselves | Marketers who will do the fixing themselves | Marketers who will do the fixing themselves | In-house teams with capacity to act on dashboards | In-house teams with capacity to act on dashboards | Owners who want measurement and the work done |
Sources: each vendor’s own pricing page on the date named, the category table below, and our published self-audit. Prices and the evidence behind each mark are further down this page.
Categories
The three categories
The failure to avoid: buying a dashboard when nobody on your side has time to act on it. A tracker is only worth its price if someone writes the pages it tells you to write.
Swipe sideways to see every column
| Category | Examples | Built for | Rough price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise platform | Profound, Scrunch AI | In-house teams with capacity to act on dashboards, many markets | Profound: by quote only. Scrunch AI: a published Starter plan, in the table below |
| Self-serve tracker | Peec AI, Otterly, AthenaHQ | Marketers who want the numbers and will do the fixing themselves | Reported $29–$295 per month in run A (19 Sep 2026) |
| Managed subscription | Bungad AEO, AEO agencies | Owners who want measurement and the work done | Roughly $99–$799 per month |
Prices
What each one charges, from its own pricing page
Entry prices, read from each vendor’s own pricing page on 1 October 2026 (Scrunch AI on 3 October) and set beside what Perplexity reported about the same vendor in our stored September run.
More detail
We print a third-party figure only when it is both published by the vendor and present in one of our stored records, so every number below can be checked twice. Where those two sources disagree, we say so rather than pick the friendlier one.
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Otterly.AI
Self-serve tracker$29a month, entry plan
otterly.ai/pricing · read 1 October 2026
- What it publishes itself
- An entry plan at $29 a month on otterly.ai/pricing, read 1 October 2026, with higher tiers above it.
- What our stored run reported
- Reported as starting around $29 a month, the same figure in both runs.
-
AthenaHQ
Self-serve tracker$295a month, paid entry plan, the same figure run A reported
athenahq.ai/pricing · read 1 October 2026
- What it publishes itself
- A paid entry plan at $295 a month on athenahq.ai/pricing, read 1 October 2026 and the same figure run A reported, above a free tier.
- What our stored run reported
- Reported at around $295 a month in run A. Run B named AthenaHQ without giving a price.
-
Scrunch AI
Enterprise platform$250a month, Starter, billed annually, the same figure run B reported
scrunch.com/pricing · read 3 October 2026
- What it publishes itself
- A Starter plan at $250 a month billed annually on scrunch.com/pricing, read 3 October 2026 and the same figure run B reported. It costs more billed month to month, and a Growth tier sits above it.
- What our stored run reported
- Reported as starting around $250 a month in run B. Run A named Scrunch AI without giving a price.
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Peec AI
Self-serve trackerNo monthly figure on its page
Fetched 1 October 2026
- What it publishes itself
- Plan names without a monthly figure in the copy we fetched on 1 October 2026.
- What our stored run reported
- Reported at around $95 a month in run A. Run B reported a band of $89 to $95.
-
Profound
Enterprise platformNo monthly price at all
Read 1 October 2026
- What it publishes itself
- No monthly price at all: a free trial and a custom enterprise quote, read 1 October 2026.
- What our stored run reported
- Named repeatedly, with no price in either run.
-
Bungad AEO
Managed subscription$99, $299 and $799a month
bungad.com/pricing · enforced in the application
- What it publishes itself
- $99, $299 and $799 a month, published in our plans and enforced in the application.
- What our stored run reported
- Not named at all. Our own audited visibility score is 0.
Sources can disagree
A vendor’s own page and an assistant’s summary of it can disagree, which is the whole argument for reading the vendor’s own page before you believe a figure, this one included.
Two show no price
Two of the five show no monthly price, so any band you are quoted for them came from somebody’s guess.
Fit
Where each one fits
Kept to what the companies publish about themselves and what the answers say.
Profound
The most established name in the category, aimed at larger brands. Deep analytics, broad engine coverage, enterprise pricing and procurement. If you have a marketing team and multiple product lines, this is the serious option.
Peec AI, Otterly, AthenaHQ
Self-serve visibility trackers. You add prompts and competitors, they run checks and chart the results. Good value if you already have someone who will act on the findings. They give you the “what”, not the “so what” — and none of the writing.
Scrunch AI
Oriented towards how AI agents experience your site, which matters more as assistants move from reading pages to acting on them. Enterprise-leaning.
Bungad AEO (us)
A managed monthly subscription: we track the questions, find why you are skipped, and fix the content and structured data. The report is in the app, readable in two minutes — nothing is emailed, because the monthly report is written and tested but dormant.
We are deliberately narrow — Perplexity today, and only Perplexity. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini adapters are built and waiting on keys. We work through APIs because they give reproducible, auditable results. Google AI Overviews and Copilot have no public consumer API, so we do not track them on any plan rather than pretend to automate them. We are the newest name on this page, and the next section says what that costs you.
Our own audited score
We also publish our own audited score. We know of no such number published by any of the other five here. In our September 2026 self-audit — eight buyer questions, asked on Perplexity — Bungad was named in 0 of 8 answers, while Profound, Peec AI and Otterly each appeared in two. The whole run, including the questions and the sources the engine cited instead, is at our score.
Honesty
Where we are the wrong choice
- You have an in-house SEO team that only needs data. A self-serve tracker is cheaper and gives you more dashboards. Pay us for work, not numbers.
- You need a dozen markets and languages today. An enterprise platform will cover that breadth better than we do right now.
- You have no content to fix. If your site is three pages, spend the money on content first. Measuring an empty site tells you what you already know.
- You want guaranteed placement in AI answers. Nobody can sell you that, ourselves included. Anyone who does is selling something they do not control.
- You want a vendor the assistants already recommend. They do not recommend us: our own audited visibility score is 0 out of 100. Profound, Peec AI and Otterly were each named in two of our eight questions in September 2026; we were named in none. If that is your criterion, buy one of them.
Reputation
Which of these vendors is any good, and how would you know?
Nobody selling you something can answer that honestly, us least of all. A buyer has three pieces of evidence, and none is a testimonial.
Does the vendor publish its own audited visibility score?
Every company on this page sells the measurement, so every company on this page can run it on itself. We know of no published result from any of the other five.
More detail
We do, and ours is the worst available: named in 0 of 8 answers, visibility score 0 out of 100, with the whole run, the questions and the sources the engine cited instead. A vendor willing to publish its own bad number is telling you something a case study cannot.
What do the assistants themselves say?
The one reproducible reputation signal: you can re-run it yourself in an afternoon.
More detail
Across the eight buyer questions in our September 2026 self-audit, identical in both runs, Profound was named in 2 answers, Peec AI in 2, Otterly in 2, AthenaHQ in 1, Scrunch AI in 1 and Bungad in none. Read that as standing rather than as quality: it measures who the engines have learned to mention, and says nothing about whether the work is any good once you have bought it.
Does the vendor answer the uncomfortable questions in writing?
- Which engines are queried through an API and which are looked at by hand
- What the price is, on a page, without a call
- What happens to your data if you leave
- Where the product is the wrong purchase
If a vendor will not put those in writing, that refusal is the review. The full interview, including the four where our own answers come off worse than a competitor’s: the seven questions to ask an AEO vendor.
None of this gives you a ranking, and we will not invent one. We have never bought any of these products and have no access to their customers, so scoring rivals out of ten would be the least trustworthy thing on this site.
Decide
How to actually decide
- Write down who will do the fixing. If the answer is “nobody yet”, buy managed, not a dashboard.
- Count the questions and brands you need tracked. That, not seats, drives the price.
- Ask which engines are covered and how. “All the AI platforms” can hide engines that are checked by hand or scraped.
- Ask to see one real report before you buy. Vagueness here predicts vagueness later.
- Check what happens to your data if you leave.
The long form, with good and bad answers and our own: the seven questions to ask an AEO vendor.
Which tool fits you
The one thing worth deciding first
It is not about features: after the measurement tells you which pages are missing, who writes them? Answer that and the category is decided for you.
Start hereWho writes the pages?
If it isAn in-house writer or SEO with capacity
A self-serve tracker
You are buying data you can already act on. Paying for the work twice is the common mistake.
If it isAn agency you already pay
A tracker, and brief them from it
The findings are the brief. You need the numbers, not another supplier.
If it isNobody, honestly
A managed subscription
A dashboard nobody acts on produces a monthly reminder that nothing happened.
If it isA team across several markets
An enterprise platform
Breadth of engines and markets is the thing you are short of, and that is what they sell.
Check it yourself
How to check any of this yourself, today
Don’t take a vendor’s summary of other vendors on trust, this page included. Four free checks, doable in an afternoon.
Ask the engines
Put “best AEO tools” and “alternatives to Profound” to Perplexity and ChatGPT yourself and read who gets named and what gets cited. That is the same method we run; nothing about it is proprietary.
Read each vendor's own pricing page and note the date you read it
Prices in this category move, which is why the figures on this page are dated and sourced to a stored run rather than presented as current.
Ask each one for their own audited visibility score
They all sell the measurement, so they can all run it on themselves. Ours is published, and it is the worst one available.
Open Bing Webmaster Tools
Its AI Performance report is free and first-party for Copilot, and you can open it yourself without any vendor.
A note on this page: we track these competitors in our own tool, so we see how assistants describe them. We have kept the descriptions to what the companies publish about themselves and what the answers say — no invented weaknesses.
FAQ
Common questions
What is the best AEO tool?
It depends on who is doing the work. Enterprise platforms such as Profound are built for in-house teams with the capacity to act on a dashboard. Self-serve trackers such as Peec AI and Otterly suit marketers who want the numbers and will do the fixing themselves. A managed subscription such as Bungad AEO suits owners who want the measurement and the work done for them. If nobody on your side will act on the data, a dashboard is the wrong purchase.
When is Bungad AEO the wrong choice?
If you have an in-house SEO team that only needs data, a self-serve tracker is cheaper and gives you more dashboards. If you need coverage of a dozen markets and languages today, an enterprise platform will fit better. If you have no website content to fix yet, spend the money on content first — measurement of an empty site tells you what you already know. And if you want a vendor the assistants already recommend, it is not us: Bungad’s own audited visibility score is 0 out of 100, published at https://bungad.com/our-score.
How much do AEO tools cost?
Self-serve AI visibility trackers had reported entry prices between $29 and $295 a month in run A when we checked on 19 September 2026, and run B a minute later topped out at $250. Our managed subscription, which includes some fixing work done by a person, is $99, $299 or $799 a month depending on how many brands and questions you track and how much a person does. Profound publishes no monthly price and quotes per contract. Always check what is counted: tracked questions, engines and brands drive the price more than seats.
Which AEO tool covers ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews?
We do not, and you should check the claim rather than take anyone's word for it, ours included. Only Perplexity is keyed for us; our ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini adapters are built and unkeyed. The structural fact worth knowing is that Google AI Overviews and Microsoft Copilot have no public consumer API, so no vendor queries those two through one: any figure for them came from scraping a results page or from a person looking at a screen. Ask every vendor which engines are queried through an API and which are scraped or reviewed by hand.
Which AEO providers have the best reputation, and why?
Three things are checkable and the rest is opinion. First, whether the vendor publishes its own audited AI visibility score: we know of none published by Profound, Peec AI, Otterly, AthenaHQ or Scrunch AI, and Bungad publishes 0 out of 100 in full at https://bungad.com/our-score. Second, what the assistants themselves say, which you can reproduce in an afternoon: across the eight buyer questions in our September 2026 self-audit, identical in both runs, Profound was named in 2 answers, Peec AI in 2, Otterly in 2, AthenaHQ in 1, Scrunch AI in 1 and Bungad in none. Third, whether the vendor will answer in writing which engines are queried through an API, what the price is, what happens to your data if you leave, and where the product is the wrong purchase. We publish no ranking of these vendors, because we have never bought any of them and a score out of ten for qualities we cannot observe would be the least trustworthy thing on this site.
How much do Otterly, AthenaHQ and Scrunch AI cost?
Read on 1 October 2026, Scrunch AI on 3 October 2026, and every third-party figure here is reported rather than verified by us. Otterly.AI publishes an entry plan at $29 a month. AthenaHQ publishes a paid entry plan at $295 a month above a free tier, the same figure run A reported. Scrunch AI publishes a Starter plan at $250 a month billed annually, the same figure run B reported, and charges more for it billed month to month. Peec AI showed plan names without a monthly figure in the copy we fetched. Profound publishes no monthly price at all, only a free trial and a custom enterprise quote. The vendor’s own pricing page is the only authority on its current price, so check it before you believe any of this.
Do I need an AEO tool at all?
Not if you are willing to do it by hand and your question list is short. Put your ten most important buyer questions to Perplexity and ChatGPT once a month, write down who is named and which sources are cited, and you have the measurement. A tool is worth paying for when the list is too long to do by hand, when you want the history kept consistently, or when you want somebody else to write the pages the findings point at.
See whether you appear
3 questions on Perplexity. Were you named, was your site cited, and can AI crawlers read your homepage? Free, no account.
Or start free with 1 brand and 5 tracked questions. A domain checked in the last week shows its stored run; the daily free allowance resets at midnight UTC.
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