A Brand Radar tracking report existed on our own Ahrefs account, configured to track ChatGPT daily, and calling the API endpoints that actually return its data, brand-radar-ai-responses and brand-radar-cited-pages, returned "Missing addon: Brand Radar" for both ChatGPT and Perplexity. Checked 2 August 2026, not re-verified since. The report was set up. The underlying paid add-on that makes the report return data was not licensed on that account. That gap between "you can configure it" and "you can actually pull the data" is the finding this piece is about.
Disclosure: GetIntel is an AI visibility tool and competes with Ahrefs' Brand Radar in the broader AI-search-visibility category, so weigh the comparison accordingly. The error described below came from GetIntel's own Ahrefs account, checked 2 August 2026, and is one account's experience rather than a claim about every Ahrefs plan.
What Exactly Happened When We Called Brand Radar's API?
Two things, both worth separating, because they're different kinds of gap.
First, the addon-licensing error: Missing addon: Brand Radar ["Chatgpt"/"Perplexity"], returned by both data-retrieval endpoints on 2 August 2026, against a report with a real, specific report ID (019fa4d8-b7e1-7e85-be60-18bc04fbacbb) that Ahrefs' own system had already created and was tracking on a schedule. Per GetIntel vs Ahrefs: What Brand Radar Really Costs, Brand Radar's per-AI-platform tracking is priced as a $199/month add-on on top of a base Ahrefs plan starting at $129, or $699/month for all platforms at once, read from ahrefs.com/pricing. A Brand Radar report can apparently exist and be configured to track an engine without that per-engine add-on actually being licensed on the account, which is exactly the state this account was in.
Second, and separately: the report's own custom-prompts field returned empty, {"prompts": []}, on the same check. That's not an addon-licensing issue; it's a setup step that hadn't been completed, distinct from the billing gap above. Even with the add-on properly licensed, a report with no custom prompts configured wouldn't have anything meaningful to track yet.
Why Would a Configured Report Not Have the Addon Licensed?
Because Brand Radar's tracking configuration and its data-access entitlement appear to be two separate things, not one purchase.
Ahrefs' own pricing structure, per its published pages, treats each AI platform Brand Radar tracks as its own metered add-on ($199/month per platform, or $699/month bundled). It's plausible to set up a report, pick which engines to track in the interface, and have that configuration saved, while the account behind it hasn't actually purchased the specific add-on that makes those engines' data retrievable via API. Whether the same disconnect is visible inside Ahrefs' own dashboard UI, versus only surfacing through the API the way it did here, is something this piece did not check.
What Does This Mean for a Buyer Evaluating Brand Radar?
Confirm the add-on is actually licensed for the specific engines you plan to track, not just that a report exists for them, before assuming the data will be there.
A report existing is not the same signal as data being retrievable. If your evaluation process involves setting up tracking and then checking back later for results, an unlicensed add-on could sit silently configured-but-empty for a while before anyone notices the gap, especially since the failure here is a clean API error rather than a UI warning a report-viewer would necessarily see.
How Would You Check This Before You Buy?
Ask for a worked example before assuming a Brand Radar report will return data.
If you're evaluating Brand Radar as a buyer, the practical version of this finding is a question to ask sales or support directly: does the specific add-on you're being quoted cover the specific engines a demo report is configured to show, and can they confirm that by pulling live data on the call rather than by describing the plan. A report existing in a demo or a trial doesn't confirm the underlying add-on is active for your account the way a live data pull would. This is the same category of gap Dageno's undefined agent credits fall into: a feature that's visible and configurable on the page without enough information to confirm it actually does what you'd expect once you're paying for it.
What Doesn't This Piece Settle?
Real limits on what one account's experience proves, worth naming rather than glossing over.
- Whether this is a billing lapse specific to this account, or a broader pattern. This piece checked one Ahrefs account on one date. It can't say how common this disconnect is across other accounts or plans.
- Whether the error is visible in Ahrefs' own dashboard, not just its API. This piece called the API directly; it didn't check whether Ahrefs' own UI surfaces the same "not licensed" state clearly to a user browsing the report in a browser.
- Whether this is still true today. Checked 2 August 2026, not re-verified since. Billing and licensing states change; treat this as a dated data point, not a current-state claim.
Where Did This Finding Come From?
The error and the empty prompts field both came from GetIntel's own Ahrefs account, checked via direct API calls on 2 August 2026. For the full breakdown of what Brand Radar actually costs when the add-on is licensed, and how that compares to GetIntel's own pricing, see GetIntel vs Ahrefs: What Brand Radar Really Costs, which draws on Ahrefs' own published pricing pages rather than on this account-specific finding.