The best tools for tracking brand visibility in AI search right now (honest breakdown)

Wanted to put together an honest breakdown of what to actually look for and what's worth using based on my experience! 

What to actually look for...

• Prompt volume data: Does the tool show you how many people are actually searching for your category inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity? Knowing you show up is one thing. Knowing whether the prompts you're tracking have meaningful demand behind them is another. Without this you're optimising blind.
• Multi-model citation tracking: Not just whether you show up but which specific pages are being cited, on which platforms, and how that's trending. Reddit accounts for 24% of Perplexity citations but barely registers on Gemini. YouTube is the #1 cited domain on Gemini and #90 for ChatGPT. You don’t want a tool that just averages across platforms.
• The visibility-citation gap: You can appear in 80%+ of AI responses about your category and still only have 1-2% citation share meaning engines know your brand but your own pages aren't powering those answers. A good tool shows you both signals separately.
• Share of voice over time: Only 30% of brands stay visible from one AI answer to the next. Point in time snapshots are almost meaningless. You need trending data to understand whether you're gaining/losing ground.
• Actionable recommendations not just reporting. Does the tool tell you why you're not showing up and what to do about it? Monitoring and optimisation are very different things.

Top options on the market right now

1. Profound: strongest option for teams serious about this. Prompt volume data based on 100M+ real user conversations, citation supply chain analysis showing exactly which sources are powering answers in your category, and visibility rank separated from visibility score. Rank tells you where you actually stand against competitors. A little bit more pricey but the depth is unmatched (there are also “starter packages” as well for smaller teams).
2. Otterly: solid for prompt-level tracking, good fit for smaller teams or agencies who need something accessible without the enterprise price tag.
3. SE Ranking: makes sense if you're already in their ecosystem and want AEO layered onto existing SEO reporting. Convenient but not as purpose built for AI-specific analysis.
4. Peec: low friction starting point for teams who just need a baseline. You'll outgrow it but it gets you enough signal to know whether you have a problem worth solving.
5. Athena: not bad for small agencies, good for lead gen and GEO certification, lacks prompt volume data.

Feel free to add your own recommendations/criteria and we can make this a master thread!