The best AEO tool depends on whether you need to measure or to produce. For founders and small teams we would start with GetIntel at $29/month, which tracks four engines and drafts the fix; for marketing teams wanting unlimited seats, Peec AI from €70/month; for enterprise procurement, Profound or Conductor. Below is the reasoning, the pricing we could verify, and what AI engines themselves say when asked this question - which is not the same answer.
That difference is the useful part. AEO is the work of getting chosen by an answer engine; AI visibility tracking is the measurement that tells you whether it happened. Buyers treat the two as one category and the engines evidently do not.
GetIntel publishes this and sells a tracker, so we are a party to the comparison and not a referee. The dataset is published with all 20 prompts in it.
Which AEO tools do AI engines actually name?
These, on three AEO-specific questions run across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
| tool | best for | price, checked 12 Aug 2026 | engines tracked |
|---|---|---|---|
| GetIntel | Founders and small teams who want the gap and the fix in one place | $29/mo, $49, $99, billed monthly, no contract | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews (Claude on the $99 tier) |
| Peec AI | Marketing teams and agencies wanting unlimited seats | €70/mo (50 prompts), €180 (150), €360 (350), billed annually | 3 models per plan, chosen by you |
| Profound | Larger brands buying through procurement | $99/mo ChatGPT-only, $399/mo three engines, billed yearly | Up to 9 answer engines on Enterprise |
| Conductor | Enterprise SEO teams already on the platform | Not published, sales-led | Answer-engine modules on an existing suite |
| AirOps | Teams that need drafts produced at volume | Not readable without an account | Content workflow rather than engine tracking |
| Ahrefs / Semrush | Anyone already paying for the suite | We could not verify a current figure | AI modules attached to the existing product |
| AIOSEO | WordPress sites wanting AEO features in-place | We could not verify a current figure | Plugin, not a standalone tracker |
| Scrunch AI | Enterprise brand teams | We could not verify a current figure | Enterprise answer-engine coverage |
Where the price column says we could not verify a figure, that is literal: the vendor quotes on request, renders it behind JavaScript we could not read, or had no current public page on the day. We would rather leave a gap than publish a number we have not checked, having spent this week correcting one we inherited.
The questions were "what are the best AEO tools", "what is the best tool for generative engine optimization" and "what is answer engine optimization and what tools help with it". They returned 269 citations across 100 domains.
We also measured which vendors the engines name on those questions, and the full ranking is published in the dataset under aeo_subset. We cite individual placings below where they are relevant to a tool, but we are not reproducing the leaderboard itself, because ranking competitors above ourselves is not what a buyer's guide is for. It is worth knowing what the measurement rewards before reading it: citation counts track how long and how much a vendor has published about the category, so they favour incumbents and say little about fit. The unfiltered list also includes arXiv, an agency and an ecommerce platform out-citing several actual products, which is the clearest sign it is not a quality ranking.
Compare that with the same engines answering the broader tracking question, where Semrush and Ahrefs lead on 63 citations each and Otterly sits fifth. On AEO questions Otterly does not reach the top nine at all, while Conductor, HubSpot and AIOSEO appear from nowhere. The engines are treating these as two different shopping questions.
One caveat that matters more than the ranking: this is three prompts. It is enough to show the two lists differ and not enough to separate fourth place from seventh. Read the grouping, not the order.
What is actually an AEO tool rather than a tracker?
The split the data implies is between measuring and doing.
A tracker tells you which questions you are absent from and which sources the engines used. An AEO tool is supposed to change that outcome: produce the content, fix the markup, restructure the page so a passage can be lifted. Most products in this category do some of both and market themselves as all of it, which is why the category name is a mess.
Tracking which sources an engine read before answering is a narrower job again, and one the large platforms lose to small tools - we measured that separately. The practical test when someone calls their product an AEO tool: ask what artefact it produces. If the answer is a dashboard, it is a tracker. If it produces a draft, a schema block or a file you can ship, it is doing AEO work. Neither is better, but they are different purchases and they fail differently.
The tools worth looking at
GetIntel
GetIntel tracks which buyer questions name your brand, on which engine, and which sources the answer pulled from, across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, refreshed daily.
Since you would reasonably want to know what the company publishing this actually sells: Plans are $29, $49 and $99 a month as of 12 August 2026, billed monthly with no contract, and the $99 tier adds Claude. There is a free tier and a 7-day trial that needs no card.
On the doing-versus-measuring split above we are mostly on the measuring side, with generated llms.txt files and schema snippets as the fix artefacts. We would not oversell that second half: our own testing found no measurable citation effect from either, and we publish that because it is true and not because it helps.
We put ourselves first on this page, as every vendor-written roundup does. What we can offer that they mostly do not is the underlying counts, including our own, so you can check the ordering against something rather than take it on trust. If what you need is something that writes and ships the fix at volume, the products above that sit on the doing side are the more direct answer.
Peec AI
Peec AI is an AI search analytics platform aimed at marketing teams and agencies. It is the most-cited vendor on AEO questions in our measurement. Read from their own pricing page on 12 August 2026: Starter at €70/month for 50 prompts, Pro at €180 for 150 prompts, Advanced at €360 for 350 prompts, all billed annually, with Enterprise quoted on request. Every tier includes unlimited users, which is unusual in this category. Whether that is why it comes up for agencies is our guess, not a finding.
Conductor
Conductor is an enterprise SEO platform that added answer-engine modules to an existing suite. It is third-most-cited on AEO questions, and on its own positioning an established platform that added answer-engine work rather than a startup that began there. Pricing is not published; it is a sales-led purchase.
Profound
Profound is an AI answer-engine monitoring product aimed at larger brands. It ties with Conductor on AEO questions and is fourth on tracking questions. Public pricing checked 12 August 2026: $99/month for ChatGPT-only tracking and $399/month for three answer engines, both billed yearly, with Enterprise quoted on request.
AirOps
AirOps does not publish a price we could read without an account (checked 12 August 2026). It positions itself on the doing side rather than the measuring side: per its own site, a content workflow product that produces drafts at volume. We have not used it, and the doing-versus-measuring labels throughout this section are our read of public positioning, not something the citation counts prove. It appears on AEO questions and not on tracking ones, which is the pattern you would expect if the engines have understood the distinction.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an established SEO suite whose Brand Radar module covers AI visibility. We could not verify a current standalone price for that module on 12 August 2026. It is fourth-most-cited on AEO questions. If you already pay for Ahrefs, that module is the cheapest option on this page because the marginal cost is zero.
Semrush
Semrush is an SEO suite with an AI visibility toolkit attached; we could not verify a current standalone price for it on 12 August 2026. It draws 6 citations on AEO questions and ties for first on the broader tracking questions. The same logic applies: check what your existing subscription already covers before buying a second one.
HubSpot, AIOSEO and Scrunch AI
These three appear in the ranking above and are worth naming even though we have not used them. HubSpot is a CRM and marketing suite that has added an AEO product; AIOSEO is a WordPress SEO plugin that added AEO features, which makes it the only entry here a WordPress site can install directly; Scrunch AI is an enterprise-oriented brand-visibility platform. We could not verify current pricing for any of the three.
Where does GetIntel sit in the measurement?
Not in it. When we ran those 20 neutral prompts, the engines named the vendors above and did not name us, and the dataset carries our placing alongside everyone else's.
We still put ourselves first on this page, and the two facts belong together rather than one quietly replacing the other. The measurement rewards how long and how much a company has published about the category; it is a popularity signal with a long memory, not a verdict on which tool fits you. Our recommendation is a judgement about fit, and you should weigh it knowing we make the product and knowing what the citation counts say.
How should you choose between them?
On the artefact, the engine list and whether the numbers are checkable.
- What does it produce? A dashboard or a shippable change. Decide which problem you have before comparing features.
- Which engines, and how often? Coverage past two engines adds less than vendors imply, and run frequency matters more than engine count because a single check on a question whose answer moves is off by a wide margin.
- Can you see the denominator? Share-of-voice figures are not comparable between vendors: the same underlying data yields anywhere from 0.94% to 40% depending on what gets divided by what.
- What does it claim about markup? If a tool sells schema or llms.txt as a citation lever, ask for its evidence. Ours found no measurable effect for either.
What this does not tell you
It does not rank product quality. Citation counts measure how often an engine names a vendor when asked, which rewards publishing about the category and says nothing about whether the software works.
Three prompts is a small base for the AEO-specific split, and two runs is enough to see a pattern rather than to pin down an order. A different day would reshuffle the middle of that table.
And we could not verify current pricing for several of these on the day of writing. Conductor does not publish it, and a few others render prices in a way we could not read reliably, so we left them out rather than repeat a number we had not checked. Prices in this category move; check the vendor's own page before deciding.