Competitor Comparisons

SolCrys vs Ahrefs Brand Radar

Ahrefs Brand Radar is the AI-visibility module of the Ahrefs SEO suite - its moat is a 381M+ search-backed AI prompts database plus cross-platform visibility into YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit, sold at $398/mo (select platforms) or $699/mo (all platforms, with 2,500 custom prompt checks). We built SolCrys as a PLG-first AEO workflow product. The honest choice: Brand Radar if your team lives in Ahrefs and your buying criterion is database scale or AEO inside one SEO bill; SolCrys if your buying criterion is the answer-gap-to-action-brief-to-re-test loop with Corporate Context governance as a weekly workflow.

Updated 2026-05-13

Questions this guide answers

Should I use SolCrys or Ahrefs Brand Radar for AI search visibility?
What is the difference between SolCrys and Ahrefs Brand Radar?
Is SolCrys an Ahrefs alternative for AEO?
Which is better for teams not already on Ahrefs?

Direct answer

Ahrefs Brand Radar is the AI-visibility module of the Ahrefs SEO platform - its moat is the 381M+ search-backed AI prompts database plus cross-platform visibility into AI answers, YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit, sold at $398/mo (Select platforms) or $699/mo (All platforms, with 2,500 custom prompt checks per month). Custom Prompts as a separate add-on starts at $50/mo. We built SolCrys as a standalone PLG-first AEO workflow product organized around an answer-gap loop with Corporate Context governance. Pick Brand Radar if your team already uses Ahrefs or if database scale is your top criterion; pick SolCrys if you want the workflow loop as a weekly rhythm.

Disclosure: we build SolCrys, so this is opinionated. We use Ahrefs's own Brand Radar product page as the source of truth for what Brand Radar does.

Scope of this comparison: this is a positioning-level review drawn from each platform's public marketing surface - homepages, product pages, pricing pages. We have not run both products side-by-side on the same workspace, so the comparison is between published positioning and verifiable feature claims, not between practitioner-validated outcomes. Treat it as buyer orientation, not a tested product review.

Side by side

Verifiable facts from each platform's own surface.

Dimension	SolCrys	Ahrefs Brand Radar
Primary positioning	PLG-first AEO workflow product for marketing teams and agencies	AI visibility module of the Ahrefs SEO suite - 'See how any brand shows up in AI search'
Entry price (published)	Free Audit; Starter $29/mo; Growth $99/mo; Pro $349/mo	Brand Radar Select platforms $398/mo; All platforms $699/mo (includes 2,500 custom prompt checks). Custom Prompts add-on $50/$100/$250 per month.
Database scale	Workspace-specific prompt sets generated from keyword and autocomplete evidence for your brand and category	381M+ search-backed AI prompts across AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity
Cross-platform coverage	AI answer engines plus retail AI assistants via the Retail AI add-on	AI answers plus YouTube plus TikTok (soon) plus Reddit visibility, all in one product
Bundle context	Standalone AEO product; MCP read access on paid workspaces	Bundled with the Ahrefs core SEO suite (Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, Rank Tracker, Site Audit, etc.); 'standalone tool available to all free and paid Ahrefs users' per product page
Center of gravity	Measure - Diagnose - Execute - Verify loop with Corporate Context as governance	AI visibility database plus visibility analytics - the team takes the insight and decides what to do
Retail AI (Rufus, Sparky, ChatGPT Shopping)	Scoped Retail AI add-on	Not in scope on the current Brand Radar product page
Agency plans	Agency $1,499/mo (10 client orgs); Agency Pro $4,999/mo (25 client orgs)	Not a dedicated agency tier on the Brand Radar page; Ahrefs has broader agency programs at the suite level

What Ahrefs Brand Radar does, in their own words

Brand Radar is the AI-visibility surface of the Ahrefs SEO platform. We summarize each capability from ahrefs.com/brand-radar so the comparison is grounded in their own positioning.

AI Share of Voice - 'Discover what percentage of AI chats mention your brand' across the 381M+ prompts database.
Search Demand - branded search volume growth as a brand-awareness signal.
Web Visibility - publications and domains citing the brand organically.
Video Visibility - brand mentions across YouTube thumbnails, titles, descriptions, and transcripts; TikTok in beta.
Reddit Visibility - tracks where brands appear in Reddit results ranking in Google Search.
AI citations tracking and prompt clustering for content opportunities.
Custom Prompts add-on tracks brand-specific questions in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot - $50/mo for 2,500 checks, scaling to $250/mo for 25,000 checks.

What SolCrys is, in our own words

SolCrys is an AEO workflow product organized around four published platform layers.

AI Visibility Measurement - mentions, citations, share of recommendation, competitors, sentiment, and answer accuracy at the prompt level across plan-included engines, with daily monitoring on priority prompts and rolling 7/30-day windows.
Corporate Context Layer - approved brand facts, claims, proof, voice, and competitor framing as the governed source for every AEO action.
AEO Agent - today SolCrys turns answer gaps into Deep Analyses, content briefs, comparison sections, FAQ improvements, and source recommendations. Publish-ready drafting and agent-assisted CMS shipping are being built.
Action-to-Result Tracking - after an action ships, we re-run the same prompt set across the same engines and report movement on citation rate, answer accuracy, and recommendation share.

Where we agree with Ahrefs

The places we agree shape the rest of the comparison.

AI demand data at scale is genuinely valuable - knowing which prompts users actually run is a real input to AEO strategy. Ahrefs's 381M+ search-backed database is not synthetic, and that matters.
Cross-platform visibility matters - YouTube and Reddit show up in AI answers and deserve their own coverage rather than being treated as side notes.
Citations and source tracking are first-class.
AEO needs to be evaluated as part of the broader content and brand visibility surface, not as a standalone metric divorced from organic search performance.

Where we made different bets

These are the choices that explain who each product is for.

Visibility database vs workflow loop

Brand Radar's primary value is the 381M+ search-backed prompts database plus the visibility analytics layer over it. The output is insight; your team takes the insight and decides what to do. We built SolCrys around the loop - gap detection routes into a Deep Analysis and brief, the team ships the fix, we re-test the same prompt set. Both are valid shapes; they imply different team rhythms.

SEO-suite bundle vs standalone AEO workflow

Brand Radar is positioned as 'standalone tool available to all free and paid Ahrefs users' - it lives inside a broader SEO platform with rank tracking, backlinks, site audits, and more. If you already use Ahrefs, that bundle is hard to beat on integration and on a single bill. We are standalone AEO; we do not compete on SEO suite breadth and we recognize the bundle argument.

Cross-platform visibility vs Corporate Context governance

Ahrefs invested in cross-platform reach (YouTube, TikTok, Reddit) plus the database scale. We invested in the supply-side governance layer (Corporate Context) and the action-to-result loop. If 'tell me everywhere my brand shows up' is the core job, Brand Radar's breadth wins. If 'ground every action in approved brand facts and prove the fix moved the answer' is the core job, Corporate Context plus our loop wins.

Custom prompts as add-on vs included

Brand Radar's 381M+ database is fixed-prompt at the platform level. Tracking custom brand-specific prompts requires the Custom Prompts add-on ($50 to $250/mo). Our prompt sets are workspace-specific from the start, generated for your brand and category from keyword and autocomplete evidence - not drawn from a global index. Different bets on how prompt sets get built.

When you should pick Ahrefs Brand Radar (we mean this)

If your team meets several of the criteria below, we would rather you buy what fits your job than buy us.

Your team already lives in Ahrefs and you want AEO inside the same bill.
Database scale (381M+ search-backed prompts) is a primary buying criterion for AI demand research.
Cross-platform visibility (AI answers plus YouTube plus TikTok plus Reddit) in one product is a single-vendor preference.
You want AI Share of Voice plus Web Visibility plus Search Demand in one place alongside organic SEO.
You are comfortable taking the insight and deciding the action layer separately - the workflow side is not the buying criterion.

When you should pick SolCrys

And these are the buying signals we built SolCrys for.

You want the workflow loop (measure - diagnose - execute - verify), not just a visibility database.
Corporate Context as a governance layer for what agents say about your brand matters.
You are a marketing team or agency that does not already use Ahrefs - no bundle-integration argument applies.
You sell on retail - Brand Radar does not cover Amazon Rufus, Walmart Sparky, or ChatGPT Shopping in the surface we can verify. Our Retail AI add-on covers these.
You are an agency packaging AEO as a service line and want client workspaces, white-label reporting, and pitch audits as dedicated tiers.

Sources

FAQ

Does SolCrys have a search-backed prompt database the size of Brand Radar's?

Different shape, not just smaller. Brand Radar's 381M+ search-backed prompts is a global AI-visibility database - the moat is scale across many brands. Every prompt SolCrys generates for a workspace carries its own intent-volume signal (high, medium, or low) drawn from keyword and autocomplete evidence for that specific brand and category - the data is real, it just ships as a workspace prompt set rather than a global index. If your buying motivation is global AI-demand research at index scale, Brand Radar; if your motivation is verified intent volume on the prompts you actually track in your own workspace, SolCrys ships that today.

If we already pay for Ahrefs, why would we add SolCrys?

If your need is 'we ship fixes, re-test the same prompts, and prove the fix moved the answer,' that is the workflow we built. Brand Radar inside Ahrefs is the cleaner answer when your need is 'show me the data and let the team figure out the action.'

Does Brand Radar cover retail AI engines?

Per the product page, Brand Radar covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit. Amazon Rufus, Walmart Sparky, and ChatGPT Shopping product search are not in scope on the surface we can verify today. Our scoped Retail AI add-on covers those engines.

Is SolCrys cheaper than Brand Radar?

At the entry tier, yes - SolCrys Starter is $29/mo against Brand Radar's $398/$699 - but we would push back on framing it that way. The products solve different jobs. Brand Radar at $398 gets you the 381M+ prompts database; SolCrys at $29 gets you a workspace-specific monitoring set with Deep Analyses and the workflow loop. Different shapes, different buyers.

Why is this comparison published by SolCrys?

Because pretending we are neutral would be worse. We do not quote Ahrefs's blog or research as authority - only Ahrefs's own Brand Radar product page. If you find a factual error here, tell us and we will correct it.

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