What is an AI visibility tracker?
An AI visibility tracker is a tool that asks AI assistants a fixed set of buyer questions on a schedule, then reports how often your brand is named, who is named instead, and which web pages the assistants cited. It is rank tracking for answers that have no fixed rank, because an assistant writes a new short list every time someone asks.
Full disclosure: we make one, AI Mention Watch. This guide covers the free way first, compares paid options with their own published prices, and says when you do not need any of them.
The four numbers a tracker measures
Why one check is not enough
Because the answers move. In our study of 96 buyer questions on October 10, 2026, we asked 24 of them twice, a few minutes apart. ChatGPT named only 48% of the same products the second time. ChatGPT and Gemini also disagree with each other: for the same question their lists overlapped by 34% on average, and by 7% for local businesses. The full numbers are in our study of 96 buyer questions.
Same engine, same question, asked twice
Percent that stayed the same across 24 repeated questions
- ChatGPT
- Gemini
| Products named again | 48% 74% |
|---|---|
| Same first pick | 61% 75% |
| Same sources cited | 45% 19% |
So a single screenshot of a single answer is a coin flip. A rate over many questions, repeated over weeks, is a measurement. That is all a tracker really is: the repetition, done for you.
How to check your AI visibility for free
This takes about 30 minutes a month and a spreadsheet with six columns: date, engine, question, were you named, your position, and the pages cited.
- Write five buyer questionsThe ones customers actually ask: best X for Y, alternatives to the leader, how do I Z. Keep them fixed from month to month.
- Use a fresh chatTurn off memory or use a new chat, so your own history does not steer the answer.
- Ask ChatGPT and Gemini, twice eachTwenty answers in all. Twice, because one answer is a sample of one.
- Write down names, order and sourcesWho was named, in what order, and every page cited. Copy the source links, not just the site names.
- Repeat next month and compareLook at your mention rate and at which sources keep coming back. Those sources are where to get listed.
The sources column matters most. When we did this at scale, ChatGPT mostly cited the official sites of the products it named, while Gemini cited other companies' blogs, Reddit and YouTube. What to do with that list is the subject of how to get recommended by ChatGPT.
When a tracker is worth paying for
Doing it by hand stops making sense when any of these is true:
- You want weekly numbers. Twenty answers a week by hand is an hour you will skip by week three.
- You want the sources added up for you. Counting which pages come back across dozens of answers is exactly the tedious part a tool removes.
- You track several engines or several brands. Agencies hit this first.
- You want to know if search happened. In our study Gemini skipped web search for 37 of 96 questions. A good tracker records that, because an answer from model memory and an answer from today's web need different fixes.
And it is not worth paying when you have no website yet, when you are still changing what you sell, or when you know you will not act on the results. A tracker that nobody reads is a subscription, not a strategy.
What AI visibility trackers cost in October 2026
Prices below are from each vendor's own pricing page on October 10, 2026. They change often, so check before you buy. The right pick depends far more on who you are than on features.
| Option | Price | What you get | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| By hand (a spreadsheet) | $0 | Your own questions, any engine, as often as you have time for | Anyone starting out, or checking once a month |
| Ahrefs free AI visibility checker | $0 | A one-time snapshot; the free preview shows the top 5 results per section | A first look at a known brand |
| kitstarter AI Mention Watch | $29/mo | 5 buyer questions written for your category, asked to ChatGPT and Gemini every week, with rivals and sources by email | Small businesses and app makers who want a weekly email, not a dashboard |
| Otterly.AI Lite | $29/mo ($25 billed yearly) | 15 prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot; Gemini is an add-on | Marketers who want a dashboard and pick their own prompts |
| Semrush, SEO + AI Search Starter | $199/mo | 50 prompts tracked daily, plus the Semrush SEO suite | Teams already paying for an SEO suite |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | $199 to $699/mo | Chosen AI platforms from $199; all platforms with 2,500 custom prompt checks at $699 | Agencies and brands with a marketing budget |
What to look for in any tracker
- Live web search, not just model memory. Both assistants can search the web, and ChatGPT did for 88 of our 96 questions. A tracker that only asks the bare model measures something different from what your buyers see.
- Sources, not only mentions. A mention rate tells you the score. The cited pages tell you how to change it.
- The engines your buyers use. ChatGPT and Gemini read very different pages, so a tracker that covers one gives you half the picture.
- Questions written like a buyer. “Best invoicing app” and “cheaper alternative to FreshBooks for a solo consultant” get different answers. Ask the second kind.
If the terms in this post are new, LLM visibility, explained plainly covers the basics first.
Questions people ask
What is an AI visibility tracker? A tool that asks AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Gemini a fixed set of buyer questions on a schedule, then reports how often your brand is named, who is named instead, and which web pages the assistants cited. It is rank tracking for answers that have no fixed rank.
Is there a free AI visibility checker? Yes. You can check by hand by asking ChatGPT and Gemini five buyer questions twice each and writing down who they name and cite. Ahrefs offers a free one-time snapshot, and kitstarter's free check asks ChatGPT one buyer question for your category and shows the sources it used.
How often should I check my AI visibility? Monthly is enough by hand, weekly with a tool. Answers drift: in our October 2026 test, ChatGPT named only 48% of the same products when asked an identical question twice, so the trend over several checks matters more than any single one.
Are AI visibility tracker results the same as what customers see? Close, not identical. A tracker that uses the official APIs, as ours does, asks the models directly with web search on. The consumer apps can add personal history and location and may use a different model, so a customer can see a different answer. That is why trackers report rates over many questions instead of one screenshot.
See where you stand today, free
Tell us your business and what it does. We ask ChatGPT one real buyer question for your category and show you who it named and the pages it read. If you want it every week, with Gemini too, that is $29 a month.