Four of the six AI visibility tools we read on 18 September 2026 let you run a check without an account. Two use the word free for a trial instead. That difference is the whole question if you only want to know whether ChatGPT names your brand, and the pricing pages do not make it obvious which you are getting.
Disclosure: GetIntel publishes this and operates one of the checks below. We do not win it. Ahrefs covers five engines to our three, read from their page on 18 September 2026 and ours on 17 September, and its checker is the page currently holding this search term. We run more buyer questions per check. Both facts are in the CSV and JSON.
What separates a free check from a free trial?
A free check runs without an account and returns a result. A free trial asks for a signup, usually a card, and ends. Vendors market both with the same word, and the gap between them is the difference between an answer in two minutes and a calendar reminder to cancel.
Of the six read on 18 September 2026, with our own figures verified the day before, four offer a check you can run without signing up: Ahrefs, GetIntel, Siftly and LLMrefs. Two offer a trial and no public check: Otterly.AI, whose FAQ states a 7-day free trial for new users, and Peec AI, whose free offer is a 7-day pitch project aimed at agencies running a prospect rather than at a buyer checking their own brand.
Neither of those two is doing anything dishonest. They simply answer a different question from the one you are asking.
Which free AI visibility checkers actually work without signup?
The four checks below are ranked by what each one returns, read live on 18 September 2026.
| Checker | Engines stated | Signup needed | What the free check returns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs | 5 | No | Whether a brand appears in AI search results, via Brand Radar |
| GetIntel | 3 | No | 60 AI checks across 20 buyer questions, roughly 2 minutes |
| Siftly | Not stated | No | A visibility check its page describes as "30 seconds" |
| LLMrefs | Partial in our capture | No | A keyword box on the homepage, no card required |
Read live on 18 September 2026, except the GetIntel row, read 17 September. Two further vendors, Otterly.AI and Peec AI, market a free offer that turns out to be a trial rather than a check, which is the distinction this article exists to draw. Full rows in the published dataset.
1. Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker, five engines, no signup
Ahrefs runs the broadest free check in this category. Its page states it shows whether a brand appears in AI search results across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google AI Overviews, five engines, with "No signup required" printed on the page, read 18 September 2026. It is powered by Ahrefs Brand Radar underneath.
This is also the page currently holding the search term this article targets, which is worth saying plainly rather than pretending the ranking is open.
Choose it when you want the widest engine sweep in one go, including Copilot, which almost nothing else covers free.
2. GetIntel, 60 checks across 20 buyer questions, no signup
GetIntel runs fewer engines and more questions. The free check covers ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, three engines, and runs 60 checks across 20 buyer questions in roughly two minutes with no signup, read 17 September 2026.
The trade is real and it goes both ways. Ahrefs tells you about five engines. We tell you what happened across twenty different ways a buyer might ask, which is where the useful variation lives: a brand is often named on "best X for startups" and absent on "X alternatives", and a single-query check cannot see that.
Choose it when you want depth on how the question is phrased rather than breadth across engines. If engine coverage is what you need, the entry above is the better free check.
3. Siftly, a free check plus a genuinely free plan
Siftly offers a free AI visibility check on its free-tools page, described there as showing where you stand in 30 seconds, read 18 September 2026. Engine coverage is not stated on that page, so we have not listed a count rather than infer one.
It also runs a genuine $0 plan rather than only a trial, which is unusual in this set and worth knowing if you want something ongoing without paying.
Choose it when you want the fastest possible answer. A 30-second check and a 20-question run are different depths of measurement, and the quick one is genuinely useful for a first look.
4. LLMrefs, a keyword box on the homepage
LLMrefs puts the check on its homepage: a keyword field with "No credit card required" beneath it, read 18 September 2026. Creating an account is also free. The homepage names Google AI Overviews and Perplexity in its surrounding copy, though the full engine list was not stated in our capture, so we have not published a count.
Choose it when you want to check a keyword rather than a brand, which is a slightly different question and the one its box is shaped for.
What should you actually get from a free check?
A free check can tell you three things, and most give you only the first.
- Whether you were named. Every check here does this much.
- Whether you were recommended or merely mentioned. Being named inside an answer and being the thing the answer tells a buyer to use are different outcomes. On our own tracked data, read 17 September 2026, these diverge sharply by engine: ChatGPT recommended us in 5 of the 7 answers that named us, while Perplexity named us 11 times and recommended us in none.
- Which sources the answer cited instead. The competitor list and the cited URLs are the actionable part. A score without them tells you that you have a problem and nothing about where it came from.
How do you check by hand if you would rather not use a tool?
A manual check runs your ten most commercial buyer questions through ChatGPT and Perplexity while logged out, five times each, recording three columns: were you named, was anyone named, and were you recommended or just mentioned.
Logged out matters because a signed-in session carries memory and personalisation, and will describe your own account back to you rather than the market. Five runs matter because answer engines are non-deterministic, which is also why a single-run free check of any kind is a starting point rather than a measurement.
That is roughly an hour of work and it is the honest baseline every tool on this page is automating.
How this was put together
Each vendor's free-tool page or homepage was fetched directly on 18 September 2026, except GetIntel's own figures which were verified on our pricing and homepage on 17 September. What is recorded is what each page states about engine coverage, signup and scope.
Two limits worth stating. This is a read of what vendors publish, not a hands-on run of every tool end to end, so a vendor could operate a free check we did not find. And where a page renders its tool in JavaScript, we left the engine count null rather than guess, which is why two rows in the dataset have no number in that column.
For the paid side of the same question, the best AI visibility tools in 2026 ranks thirteen on real pricing, and what ChatGPT displacement actually looks like covers the engine where a competitor is named instead of you 60% of the time. Our own free checks all sit together under tools.