Buyer Guides

The 12 best AEO tools in 2026: execution platforms, dashboards, and suite add-ons

The Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) category consolidated fast in 2026: Adobe closed its Semrush acquisition in April, Sitecore bought Scrunch in June, and HubSpot launched a $50-a-month standalone AEO product. This guide sorts 12 tools by the job you are hiring them for (execution platforms, measurement-first dashboards, SEO-suite products, and marketing-suite modules), then treats retail and local AI search as a separate track. Every vendor fact was checked on the vendor's own pricing, product, or documentation pages as of September 2026. Disclosure: SolCrys publishes this guide and is listed first, so apply the same skepticism to our entry that you apply to everyone else's.

Published 2026-05-13 · Updated 2026-09-26

Questions this guide answers

What are the best AEO tools in 2026?
Which AEO platform should I choose?
What is the difference between AEO dashboards and execution engines?
What are the best answer engine optimization software tools?
Which AEO tools track ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude?

Direct answer

The 12 best AEO tools in 2026, grouped by what they actually do: SolCrys, Profound, and AirOps (execution-oriented platforms); Otterly AI, Peec AI, and AthenaHQ (measurement-first dashboards that now add recommendations); Semrush, Ahrefs Brand Radar, and SE Ranking's SE Visible (SEO-suite AEO products); and HubSpot AEO, Conductor, and Scrunch (AEO inside larger marketing or digital-experience suites). Retail and local brands should also evaluate Yotpo Discover or Birdeye Search AI on a separate track.

Disclosure: SolCrys publishes this guide and is listed first; we are not neutral. We checked every vendor fact below on the vendor's own live pages on Sept. 26, 2026, and we name each competitor's genuine strengths. Pricing and engine lists change often, so confirm them with the vendor before you buy.

The 12 tools at a glance

A flat 1-to-12 ranking hides the real buying decision: what job are you hiring the tool to do? The four groups below are different products. Engines and prices are as each vendor published them on Sept. 26, 2026.

Tool	Category	Best for	Engines (as published)	Entry pricing
SolCrys	Governed AEO execution	Teams that need approved fixes shipped and re-tested, not just reports	ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude (Starter 3; Pro any 4; Custom all 5)	Free workspace; Starter $99/mo; Pro $399/mo
Profound	Enterprise AEO platform with agents	Enterprise teams that want deep analytics plus agent workflows	Trial: ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews; Enterprise: up to 9, incl. Perplexity, AI Mode, Copilot, Claude	Free 7-day trial; Enterprise custom
AirOps	Content workflow with AEO insights	Content-led teams that want production and AI visibility together	Solo: ChatGPT only; Pro: "7+ answer engines" per pricing page	Solo and Pro start free; task-based, no list prices
Otterly AI	Monitoring dashboard	SMB and mid-market monitoring on a budget	Included: ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot. Paid add-ons: AI Mode, Gemini, Claude	Lite $29/mo; Standard $189/mo
Peec AI	Analytics dashboard with recommendations	Marketing teams that want clean analytics and exports	Self-serve: choose 3 models (Perplexity via add-on); Enterprise: up to 13	Starter $95/mo (US); Pro $245/mo
AthenaHQ	Credit-based monitoring with action tools	Teams that want broad model coverage without an enterprise contract	Starter: 11 models incl. Claude, Grok, DeepSeek; free tier: 5	Free Essential; Starter $295/mo
Semrush (part of Adobe)	SEO-suite add-on	Existing Semrush teams	AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini (varies by report)	AI Visibility Toolkit $99/mo; Semrush One from $199/mo
Ahrefs Brand Radar	SEO-suite AI index	Research on any brand across a large prompt index	AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot; Claude for custom prompts	From $199/mo; Custom Prompts from $50/mo
SE Ranking (SE Visible)	SEO-suite AI visibility product	SMBs and SE Ranking users	ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode, Perplexity, AI Overviews	SE Visible from $99/mo
HubSpot AEO	Marketing-suite module	HubSpot customers	ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity	$50/mo standalone; in Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise
Conductor	Enterprise SEO and AEO suite with agents	Enterprise content teams	ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Grok, Copilot, Perplexity	Usage-based; no list prices
Scrunch (part of Sitecore)	AEO plus an agent-facing site layer	Brands that want to serve AI agents an optimized version of their pages	Core: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Copilot; Enterprise: 9, incl. Claude, Gemini, AI Mode	Core $250/mo; Enterprise custom

What changed since our May 2026 edition

"Monitoring-only" no longer describes most vendors: nearly everyone recommends actions, several draft content, and MCP servers are common. What still separates tools is what happens after the recommendation: who drafts, who approves, who publishes, and whether the same prompts are re-run.

Ownership: Adobe completed its Semrush acquisition on April 28, 2026. Sitecore announced it had acquired Scrunch on June 3, 2026.
Pricing: Profound now lists only a free Trial and custom Enterprise for brands; Peec AI lists Starter at $95, Pro at $245, and Advanced at $495 a month in the US; HubSpot AEO launched at $50 a month; Ahrefs sells Brand Radar standalone from $199 a month.
Execution: Conductor launched AgentStack in April 2026, AirOps launched its Quill agent on May 13, 2026, Peec AI added Actions (in beta), Scrunch repositioned around its Agent Experience Platform (AXP) in July 2026, and Profound raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation on Sept. 15, 2026, to build what it calls an AI Marketer.
Data access: Profound, Peec AI, Otterly AI, AirOps, AthenaHQ, Ahrefs, Semrush, Conductor, and SolCrys all document MCP servers. The useful questions are what each exposes, on which plan, and whether it can write.
Analyst coverage: Gartner published its first Market Guide for Answer Engine Visibility Tools on March 9, 2026.

What is an AEO tool, and what should it actually do?

An Answer Engine Optimization tool measures and improves how a brand shows up in AI-generated answers across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, and, for retail, assistants such as Amazon Alexa for Shopping and Walmart Sparky. The minimum bar is measurement: which prompts your brand appears in, how often it is cited, which competitors take your share, and which sources the engines pull from.

The higher bar is execution: moving from "we found a gap" to "we shipped an approved fix and re-tested the same prompts." That takes content work that respects approved claims, governance over who publishes what, and a re-test of the same prompt set. Most vendors now recommend and several draft; far fewer combine human approval with a re-test.

The four evaluation axes we use

We score every tool below against the same four axes, the framework from our AI Visibility Platform Buyer's Guide.

Measurement coverage: which engines, how often, retail vs generic, and prompt-set quality.
Diagnosis: does the tool tell you why a gap exists and which sources are missing, or only that it exists?
Execution: does the tool help produce the fix (content brief, page update, FAQ entry, citation outreach), and can it route that work through approval?
Verification: does the tool re-run the same prompts after the fix and show whether the answer moved?

How we chose these 12

We chose vendors with a live, documented AEO product as of September 2026 that we see named most often in category roundups and in the evaluations prospects describe to us, and that together cover four distinct jobs. That is not the same as "the 12 best," and it is not a market-share ranking.

We don't rank 1 to 12; the right order depends on the job. A monitoring-only SMB and an enterprise content team will pick different tools and both be right.

Execution-oriented platforms

These tools go beyond measurement: they turn gaps into recommended work and help produce the fix. They differ on governance (who approves), publishing (whether the tool writes to your CMS), and verification (whether it re-runs the same prompts). They demand more operating discipline than a dashboard.

1. SolCrys

Disclosure: this is our platform. We list it first because the rest of the list is organized around whether a tool ships fixes or only reports, and that is the bet we made.

SolCrys is a governed AEO execution platform built around one loop: Measure → Diagnose → Execute → Verify. It measures five engines (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude), with coverage set by plan: Starter tracks ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews; Pro tracks any 4 of the 5; Custom runs all five. Corporate Context holds your approved facts, claims, and guardrails at the organization level, and Answer Accuracy grades AI answers against it. Deep Analyses and Content Audits diagnose gaps; each approved recommendation becomes an Action Hub task with an owner and a human approval step. Your team publishes the fix in its own CMS (SolCrys has no CMS connector and never publishes on your behalf), and an assistant connected through the SolCrys MCP server can mark an approved task as published. SolCrys then re-runs the same frozen prompt set on the same engines, and a Content Audit re-audit shows whether a page's score recovered. Before/after movement is an observation, not proof of cause.

Best for: teams that need approved fixes shipped and re-tested, not another monitoring dashboard.
Strongest at: the path from gap to approved task to re-test, Corporate Context governance, and Answer Accuracy against your own facts.
Honest limitations: no CMS connector and no public REST API (data access is the app, CSV export, and an 18-tool MCP server with 2 opt-in write tools); fewer engines than Profound Enterprise, Conductor, or AthenaHQ, and no Microsoft Copilot; it requires a committed prompt set and a content review cadence.
Pricing posture: free workspace (10 ChatGPT prompts and 1 content audit, email-verified, no credit card); Starter $99/mo; Pro $399/mo; Custom from $2,000/mo; Agency $1,499/mo and Agency Pro $4,999/mo.

2. Profound

Profound raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation on Sept. 15, 2026. Its strength is analyst-grade measurement at enterprise scale, and it has moved firmly into execution. Profound Agents are reusable workflows that, per Profound, can connect to your CMS and publish approved content; the company announced an "AI Marketer" teammate alongside the Series D; and its MCP server can both read data and start Agents.

Best for: enterprise teams that want deep analytics, broad engine coverage, and agent workflows from one vendor.
Strongest at: engine breadth (up to 9 on Enterprise, including Copilot, DeepSeek, and Claude), Agent workflows, and enterprise controls (SSO/SAML, SOC 2).
Honest limitation: brand self-serve is a 7-day trial (50 prompts on ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, with no exports or API), so ongoing use means an Enterprise contract.
Pricing posture: free Trial; Enterprise custom; separate agency plans (see our agency guide).

3. AirOps

AirOps started as a content workflow platform and rebuilt around AI search. Its Quill agent (launched May 13, 2026) finds opportunities and turns them into content work through Playbooks with human review and approval. AirOps Insights tracks AI visibility, and the Pro plan connects to CMSs including WordPress, Contentful, Sanity, Strapi, and Webflow.

Best for: content-led teams that want production workflows and AI visibility in one tool.
Strongest at: content operations at volume, Brand Kits and knowledge bases, CMS integrations, and an MCP server on Pro and Enterprise.
Honest limitation: pricing is task-based and not published; the Solo plan tracks ChatGPT only, and AirOps' docs say Claude tracking is on by default only for Enterprise.
Pricing posture: Solo and Pro start free; Enterprise through sales.

Measurement-first dashboards

These tools lead with measurement: where you appear, who wins instead, and which sources the engines cite. All three now add recommendations, but the fix still happens in your own workflow. They are strong starting points for sizing the problem.

4. Otterly AI

Otterly has the lowest paid entry price in this list ($29 a month) and is quick to start. Every plan tracks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot; Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Claude are paid add-ons. Plans include GEO audits and recommendations, and Standard and above include API and MCP access.

Best for: SMB and mid-market teams, and SEO practitioners, who need fast, low-cost prompt tracking.
Strongest at: price-to-coverage at the low end, clean per-prompt tracking, and an agency partner program with pitch workspaces and branded Looker Studio reports.
Honest limitation: add-on engines raise the real cost (Claude adds $109 a month on Standard), and the work after the report happens outside Otterly.
Pricing posture: Lite $29/mo (15 prompts), Standard $189/mo (100), Premium $489/mo (400), Enterprise custom.

5. Peec AI

Peec AI is an analytics-first platform with one of the cleanest dashboards in the category and a fast-growing surface around it: Actions (in beta) ranks site-audit, owned, and earned opportunities with evidence and a suggested brief; a fact-checking feature checks AI answers against facts you set; and its MCP server exposes both read and write tools. Self-serve plans let you choose 3 models, with Perplexity and others available as add-ons, and Enterprise covers up to 13.

Best for: marketing and SEO teams that want strong analytics and exports and will act on recommendations in their own workflow.
Strongest at: dashboard quality, unlimited users on every plan, Looker Studio and CSV exports, and a broad MCP tool set.
Honest limitation: self-serve plans track 3 models before add-ons, and Actions recommends and tracks work but, per Peec, does not write the content.
Pricing posture: Starter $95/mo, Pro $245/mo, Advanced $495/mo (US pricing on Sept. 26, 2026; €85, €205, and €425 in Europe); Enterprise custom.

6. AthenaHQ

AthenaHQ prices by credits (1 credit equals 1 AI response) and has the widest model list of any self-serve plan in this guide: 11 models on Starter, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI, and Mistral. Its Action Center turns opportunities into content, citation-outreach, and commerce workflows.

Best for: teams that want broad model coverage and prompt-level benchmarking without an enterprise contract.
Strongest at: model breadth, a free Essential tier, a content optimization agent, and an MCP server.
Honest limitation: credit pricing makes cost depend on prompts × models × frequency, and API access is a paid add-on on Starter.
Pricing posture: Essential free (300 credits), Starter $295/mo (3,600 credits), Enterprise custom.

SEO-suite AEO products

AEO products from established SEO platforms. They fit when your team already lives in that suite and the AI module is incremental cost; the trade-off is that the action layer is usually the suite's existing content tools.

7. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

Adobe completed its acquisition of Semrush on April 28, 2026, and Semrush now sits in Adobe's customer-experience business. The AI Visibility Toolkit covers Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, with coverage varying by report, and draws on a prompt database Semrush sizes at 317 million prompts.

Best for: teams already on Semrush that want AI visibility next to keyword and site-audit data.
Strongest at: one vendor and one contract for SEO and AI visibility, prompt research at scale, and a Semrush MCP server.
Honest limitation: Semrush's own knowledge base lists different engines for different reports, and execution runs through Semrush's broader content tools rather than an approval-and-re-test loop.
Pricing posture: AI Visibility Toolkit $99/mo (25 tracked prompts); Semrush One (SEO plus AI search) from $199/mo; Enterprise AIO custom.

8. Ahrefs Brand Radar

Brand Radar's moat is scale: an index Ahrefs sizes at 449M+ prompts on its Brand Radar page (475M+ on its pricing page), modeled from real searches, so you can research any brand with no setup. Custom Prompts track your own questions, and Brand Radar also covers YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit visibility in beta.

Best for: SEO teams and researchers who want instant, category-wide AI visibility data on any brand, including competitors.
Strongest at: index scale, integration with Ahrefs' backlink and content data, and API plus MCP access to Brand Radar data.
Honest limitation: Claude is available only for custom prompts, and there is no execution or approval layer; the team takes the insight and acts elsewhere.
Pricing posture: standalone from $199/mo (Ahrefs' help center lists $199/mo per platform index and $699/mo for all platforms); Custom Prompts packages from $50/mo, with a small allowance included on paid Ahrefs plans.

9. SE Ranking (SE Visible)

SE Ranking sells SE Visible as a standalone AI visibility product and also builds AI tracking into its core SEO plans. SE Visible tracks ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode, Perplexity, and AI Overviews, and lists Claude as coming soon.

Best for: SMBs and SE Ranking users who want approachable AEO measurement.
Strongest at: prompts per dollar (200 prompts on the $99 Basic plan), a 10-day free trial, and SE Ranking's SEO data alongside.
Honest limitation: SE Ranking says white-label reporting is not yet available for SE Visible, and there is no execution layer.
Pricing posture: SE Visible Basic $99/mo, Core $189/mo, Plus $355/mo.

Marketing-suite and DXP-native AEO

These are AEO products inside larger marketing or digital-experience platforms. The buying question is whether integration with the broader suite is worth more than dedicated AEO depth.

10. HubSpot AEO

HubSpot launched HubSpot AEO on April 14, 2026, at $50 a month standalone (no HubSpot plan required) and inside Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise. It tracks ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity and connects prompt suggestions and recommendations to HubSpot CRM data. HubSpot's free AI Search Grader (formerly AEO Grader) remains a quick first check.

Best for: HubSpot customers extending inbound marketing into AI search.
Strongest at: price, CRM-powered prompt suggestions, and recommendations tied to HubSpot's content tools.
Honest limitation: three engines, 25 prompts on the standalone plan, and no Google AI Overviews or AI Mode tracking listed.
Pricing posture: $50/mo standalone ($45/mo billed annually); included in Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise.

11. Conductor

Conductor is an enterprise SEO and AEO platform. Its AI Search Performance module tracks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Grok, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity. AgentStack, launched in April 2026, adds an MCP server, a data API, native apps in ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot, and turnkey agents for content and technical AEO. Conductor's Writing Assistant drafts from briefs, and Optimizely launched an AEO platform powered by Conductor in June 2026.

Best for: enterprise content teams standardized on Conductor.
Strongest at: unified SEO and AEO data, agent infrastructure, enterprise certifications (SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 42001), and a large agency partner network.
Honest limitation: no published prices, and the platform is sized for enterprise programs rather than a quick start.
Pricing posture: usage-based Essentials, Growth, and Enterprise tiers through sales; AgentStack offers a free 3-week trial.

12. Scrunch

Sitecore announced its acquisition of Scrunch on June 3, 2026. Scrunch now leads with its Agent Experience Platform (AXP), which serves AI agents a parallel, AI-ready version of your pages at the CDN layer while humans see the normal site. Core tracks 4 engines; Enterprise supports 9, including Claude, Gemini, and AI Mode.

Best for: brands, especially Sitecore customers, that want monitoring plus an agent-facing delivery layer.
Strongest at: AXP, bot-traffic analysis, and a digital-experience platform owner behind it.
Honest limitation: AXP is Enterprise-only, Core covers 4 engines and 125 prompts per brand, and each tracked brand needs its own subscription. Serving agents a separate version of your pages is a different bet from improving the canonical page, so review it with your SEO and brand owners.
Pricing posture: Core $250/mo (7-day free trial); Enterprise custom.

Retail and local AI search (separate evaluation track)

Retail and local AI search differ from open-web AEO in the assistants (Amazon Alexa for Shopping, Walmart Sparky, ChatGPT's shopping results, local AI answers), the data (catalogs, reviews, Q&A, listings), and the fixes (listing rewrites, attribute completion, review coverage). If they drive meaningful revenue, evaluate them on their own track. Our generic AEO vs retail AEO guide has the full breakdown.

Yotpo Discover: tracks how ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity rank and recommend your products, with onsite, content, and activation agents; custom-priced.
Birdeye Search AI: built for local and multi-location brands, with location-level tracking across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Grok, plus agents for listings, reviews, and local pages.
Modules inside broader platforms: Profound Enterprise includes ChatGPT Shopping, Peec AI offers AI Shopping with SKU-level tracking, and SolCrys sells a Retail AI add-on for Amazon Alexa for Shopping, with Walmart Sparky coverage delivered as a service.

How to pick the right tool for your team

Start with the job, not the tool. These four steps get most teams to a two-tool shortlist.

Step 1: Decide whether you need a dashboard (measure and recommend) or an execution platform (measure, diagnose, route approved work, and re-test). Most teams over-buy dashboards and under-buy execution.
Step 2: Decide whether retail or local engines matter. If they drive revenue, treat them as a separate buy on a separate track.
Step 3: Decide whether you need integration with a suite you already run (HubSpot, Semrush, Ahrefs, SE Ranking, Conductor, Sitecore) or whether a specialist is worth a second contract.
Step 4: Run a 30-day pilot with one or two shortlisted tools on the same prompt set, and grade them on the same four axes: measurement coverage, diagnosis, execution, and verification.

Mistakes we see most often

The patterns we see when teams pick the wrong tool, or use the right one the wrong way.

Buying a dashboard when the job is execution. The team gets clean reports and zero shipped fixes.
Treating retail and generic AEO as one buy. The mechanics differ, and one tool rarely covers both well.
Comparing vendor composite scores to each other. Each vendor calculates its visibility score differently, so the absolute numbers are not comparable.
Reading a single run as a result. AI answers vary run to run; judge visibility across repeated runs of the same prompts.
Skipping the verification step. If a tool cannot re-test the same prompts after the fix, you cannot tell whether anything moved.

Sources

FAQ

Which AEO tool should I buy first?

Run a 30-day pilot of two tools, not one. Pick one execution-oriented platform and one measurement-first dashboard, run both on the same 25 to 50 prompts, and decide based on whether your team actually shipped fixes during the pilot. Teams that ship fixes need an execution platform; teams that only need monitoring should pick the simpler dashboard.

Are SEO-suite AEO add-ons good enough?

For teams already standardized on Semrush, Ahrefs, or SE Ranking, often yes: the incremental cost is low and the integration is real. For mid-market and enterprise teams running a serious AEO program, specialists usually offer more engines, more prompt depth, or an action layer. Re-evaluate every year; the suites are closing the gap.

Do I need both a generic AEO tool and a retail AEO tool?

Yes if marketplace or local revenue is meaningful, no if it is not. Generic AEO platforms cover ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, and Claude. Retail tools cover shopping assistants such as Amazon Alexa for Shopping and Walmart Sparky and ChatGPT's shopping results. The engines, data sources, and fixes differ enough that one tool rarely covers both well.

Do AEO tools work for B2B SaaS, or only for ecommerce?

The 12 tools in this guide are built primarily for open-web buying journeys, which includes B2B SaaS and services. They measure the engines B2B buyers use during research: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, and Claude. Retail and local tools (Yotpo Discover, Birdeye Search AI, or SolCrys's Retail AI add-on) are for ecommerce, marketplaces, and multi-location businesses. See our B2B buyer guide for a B2B-specific comparison.

How long does it take to see AI visibility movement after using an AEO tool?

A dashboard gives you a usable baseline within days of configuring a prompt set. Fixes take longer to register because each engine refreshes its retrieval on its own schedule, so plan for a 90-day window before judging a fix-and-verify loop. Measure visibility as a percentage across repeated runs of the same prompts: SparkToro's January 2026 study found less than a 1-in-1,000 chance that two runs return the same brand list in the same order. Treat before/after movement as an observation, not proof of cause.

Can I run an AEO tool alongside my existing SEO platform?

Yes, and most teams do. SEO-suite products (Semrush, Ahrefs Brand Radar, SE Visible) sit next to the SEO seat, and AEO-first platforms run alongside any SEO tool because they measure a separate surface with different signals: mentions, citations, and recommendations. For Google's AI surfaces, strong SEO remains the foundation; Google's May 2026 guide says optimizing for generative AI search is still SEO.

When were these vendor facts last checked?

On Sept. 26, 2026, on each vendor's own pricing, product, or documentation pages. Where a vendor's pages disagreed (Ahrefs' index size, Semrush's engines by report), we say so. Prices change often, so confirm before you buy. If you find an error, tell us and we will correct it.

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