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Alternatives

Rankscale.ai alternatives for AI visibility

Updated October 2026

Rankscale.ai is the cheapest self-serve way we found to track ten AI assistants at once, and its credit model is unusually explicit about what you are buying. Teams look elsewhere when they want to try before paying, when counting credits against answers turns into a spreadsheet, or when the score alone does not tell them what to change. Every fact below was read off the vendor's own site.

Quick answer

MarketHQ checks six AI engines weekly on every paid plan from $29, then turns gaps into gap analysis and an action plan, with chat, an API and MCP on paid plans. Rankscale.ai tracks ten AI engines from $20 a month on credits, with page audits. The field also includes Otterly.ai, AthenaHQ, Profound, Scrunch AI, Ahrefs Brand Radar, Evertune and Peec AI.

Key points

  • Every MarketHQ plan, from Lite, covers blogs, forums, RSS feeds you add and Bluesky; AthenaHQ is the only AI-only free tier here.
  • MarketHQ Lite is $29 with weekly AI visibility, gap analysis and an action plan; Otterly.ai is $29 for 15 prompts.
  • MarketHQ countries run from 1 on Lite to 10 on Enterprise, with AI questions shared across them.

Why choose MarketHQ instead of Rankscale.ai?

MarketHQ is built for teams that need to understand what an AI answer means and change it, not just measure it across more engines.

Rankscale.ai is the right pick when you want ten named engines checked on a credit model at the lowest self-serve entry price in the category. MarketHQ covers six engines weekly on every paid plan from $29 and joins the check to the news, blog, social and community conversations that shaped those answers.

The output differs. Rankscale delivers a score per engine and page audits; MarketHQ runs gap analysis with an action plan, sends a Slack daily digest, answers questions about your evidence in chat, and includes API and MCP access on paid plans. Countries run from 1 on Lite to 10 on Enterprise. Tiers differ by tracking capacity only.

What sources does MarketHQ cover?

Every plan: Hacker News, GitHub, RSS, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Lobsters, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, Perplexity, Broader web crawl, Bluesky.

Hacker NewsGitHubStack OverflowDev.toLobstersRSSRedditLinkedInXYouTubeBlueskyDocs & changelogs
  • Grouped Slack daily digest
  • Drafted replies from your own strengths
  • Gap analysis and action plans
  • Weekly AI-answer visibility (paid plans)
  • Chat over your own evidence
  • API and MCP on every paid plan
  • Flat capacity pricing, tiers differ by tracking volume only
  • 4-day trial on Lite and Startup, charged on day 4
  • Free one-time check, no account needed

Checked on each vendor's own pricing pages in September 2026; ordered by fit, not price.

  1. MarketHQ

    Built for any company tracking its brand and competitors. A weekly AI-answer check on six engines on every paid plan from $29; the output is a gap analysis and an action plan drawn from it and from what people are saying in public.

    Best for
    Teams that want the score explained, not just reported.
    Pricing
    Lite $29, Startup $99, Growth $199/mo. Lite and Startup start with a 4-day trial, charged on day 4. Growth is charged at signup. Tiers differ by tracking capacity only, and API and MCP access come with every paid plan from Lite up.
    Sources covered
    The weekly AI-answer check, labelled mentions, X, Reddit, LinkedIn, blogs, forums, RSS feeds you add and Bluesky — all on every paid plan from Lite.
    AI visibility
    Yes

  2. Otterly.ai

    The simplest counting model in the category. You buy a number of search prompts, they are checked daily against four engines, and nothing is metered behind them, which makes the monthly bill predictable.

    Best for
    Teams that want a fixed price and no credit arithmetic.
    Pricing
    Lite $29 a month for 15 prompts, Standard $189 for 100, Premium $489 for 400, Enterprise custom from $1,000. Annual billing takes 15% off. API and MCP start at Standard. 7-day free trial, no card.
    Sources covered
    ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot on every plan; Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini as paid add-ons.
    AI visibility
    Yes

  3. AthenaHQ

    The closest match to Rankscale's credit model, with the difference that you can run it without paying. One credit buys one AI response, and the free tier arrives with 300 of them.

    Best for
    Finding out whether you have a visibility problem before you buy.
    Pricing
    Essential is free with $25 of credit, or 300 credits. Starter is $295 a month with 3,600 credits and 11 models. Enterprise is custom. Annual billing takes 17% off, and API access is a paid add-on.
    Sources covered
    ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot on the free tier; 11 models including Claude, Grok, DeepSeek and Mistral on Starter.
    AI visibility
    Yes

  4. Profound

    The category's best-known name, and the one whose entry plan is narrowest: Starter tracks ChatGPT and nothing else. Engine breadth is what you pay for as you move up, rather than volume.

    Best for
    Teams that want the vendor a buyer has already heard of.
    Pricing
    Starter $99 a month billed yearly, 50 prompts, ChatGPT only; Growth $399 billed yearly, three answer engines, 100 prompts; Enterprise custom with up to nine engines. Growth offers a free trial.
    Sources covered
    ChatGPT on Starter; ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews on Growth; Gemini, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek and Claude on Enterprise.
    AI visibility
    Yes

  5. Scrunch AI

    Sells personas and prompt libraries rather than a keyword list, so the unit of work is a buyer type rather than a query. It suits a team running AI visibility as an ongoing programme with reporting attached.

    Best for
    Marketing teams tracking several personas at once.
    Pricing
    Starter $250 a month billed annually or $300 month-to-month, with 3 licences, 350 custom prompts, 1,000 industry prompts, 3 personas and 5 page audits; Growth $417 or $500; Enterprise custom. 7-day free trial, no card.
    Sources covered
    ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews and Meta.
    AI visibility
    Yes

  6. Ahrefs Brand Radar

    The cheapest addition rather than the cheapest tool, because Custom Prompts come with an Ahrefs subscription you may already have. It also reports Reddit and YouTube visibility next to the AI answers.

    Best for
    Teams already paying for Ahrefs.
    Pricing
    Custom Prompts start at $50 a month and are included with paid Ahrefs plans from Lite up; the AI Visibility Index is listed at $199 a month. A free "Check AI Visibility" preview is offered.
    Sources covered
    AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Claude, plus YouTube and Reddit.
    AI visibility
    Yes

  7. Evertune

    The enterprise end of the same idea, sold on volume: a hundred thousand tracked prompts across eleven models, with content generation and retargeting attached. Both plans route through a demo.

    Best for
    Large brands running AI visibility as a paid-media-scale programme.
    Pricing
    Pro $800 a month with 100,000 prompts tracked across 11 AI models and 25 AI-optimised articles a month; Enterprise custom. No free tier or trial is listed on the pricing page.
    Sources covered
    Eleven AI models, not individually named on the pricing page.
    AI visibility
    Yes

  8. Peec AI

    A European option positioned at brands and agencies, tracking the major assistants. It is the one entry here whose figures we could not confirm, so the shape is verified and the price is not.

    Best for
    Shortlists that need a European vendor and will request a quote anyway.
    Pricing
    Four tiers, Starter, Pro, Advanced and Enterprise, with monthly and annual options. The prices render dynamically and we could not read them from the page, so we quote no figure.
    Sources covered
    ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, per its own pricing page.
    AI visibility
    Yes

What does Rankscale.ai actually give you?

Tracking of brands, products and ads across ten named AI engines, metered in credits, plus page audits and competitors identified automatically from the results.

Essentials starts at $20 a month. Pro is $99 with 1,200 credits and up to 4,800 tracked answers; Growth $385; Enterprise $780. Pro has a 7-day free trial with no charge until day 7.

Page audits are the differentiator at this price: more than 200 factors, an AI-readiness score and a bot crawlability check.

Which alternative lets you try it without paying?

AthenaHQ, whose Essential tier is free rather than a trial: $25 of credit, or 300 credits, with one credit buying one AI response.

That covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot, enough to learn whether assistants name you at all before any card is involved. Ahrefs also offers a free AI Visibility preview.

Everything else here is a trial: Rankscale offers 7 days on Pro with no charge until day 7, Otterly 7 days with no card, Scrunch 7 days on Starter with no card.

How should you compare credits against prompts?

Convert everything to tracked answers a month, then divide by the price, because the tiers are not counting the same thing.

Rankscale states the conversion itself: Pro's 1,200 credits buy up to 4,800 tracked answers. AthenaHQ is simpler, at one credit for one AI response, so its $295 Starter is 3,600 answers a month.

Prompt-based pricing hides the same number behind a frequency. Otterly's 15 prompts on Lite are checked daily, so the monthly answer count depends on how many engines each prompt hits. Compare the answers, not the nouns.

Does a score tell you what to change?

Not on its own, and this is the gap every pure visibility tracker shares.

Knowing an assistant named a competitor in eight answers out of ten is a measurement, not an instruction. The useful question is which public material the assistant is reading; for many brands that is a news article, a blog comparison, a Reddit thread or a community post.

Rankscale's page audits address half of this by scoring your own pages for AI readiness and bot crawlability. MarketHQ addresses the other half: watching the web conversation, running the weekly visibility check, and producing a gap analysis and an action plan on which buying questions get answered without you and what to do next.

Which of these fit a growing brand?

MarketHQ and, on price, Rankscale itself; most of the rest are built for consumer brands, agencies or enterprise marketing teams.

Scrunch's personas, Evertune's retargeting and content volume, and agency-shaped plans elsewhere all assume a marketing organisation with several buyer types.

The realistic shortlist for a small technical team is Rankscale Essentials from $20, Otterly Lite at $29, AthenaHQ free to start, or MarketHQ Lite at $29 if you want gap analysis and an action plan in the same tool.

Where does Rankscale.ai win?

Rankscale.ai tracks ten named engines from $20 on an explicit credit model; MarketHQ covers fewer engines but adds gap analysis, an action plan and the web conversations those answers draw from.

Ten engines on every plan, a pricing table that states how many tracked answers each credit bundle buys, and page audits covering AI readiness and bot crawlability. If engine breadth and page scoring are the requirement, Rankscale is the honest value at this price.

Every MarketHQ plan, from Lite at $29, covers blogs, forums, RSS feeds you add and Bluesky, plus weekly AI-answer visibility on six engines, gap analysis and an action plan, and API and MCP access. For a growing team, knowing what to change matters as much as the score.

  • Choose Rankscale.ai if ten named AI engines on a credit model is what you need.
  • Choose Rankscale.ai if a $20-a-month entry tier beats paying more for gap analysis and an action plan.
  • Choose Rankscale.ai if page audits with AI-readiness and bot-crawlability scoring are part of the requirement.

What does a year of this cost?

Between nothing and several thousand dollars, for broadly the same answer. The numbers here are illustrative, not measured.

Illustrative: you sell a hosted message queue. The questions that matter are "best managed Kafka alternative", "cheapest queue for a small team", three competitor comparisons and your brand name. Six questions, checked weekly, across the engines developers actually use.

AthenaHQ's 300 free credits cover a few weeks. Rankscale Essentials from $20 a month covers it across ten engines. Otterly Lite covers it for $348 a year. MarketHQ Lite is also $348 and tells you which GitHub issue and which Hacker News thread the assistants are reading.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Rankscale.ai cost?

Essentials starts at $20 a month. Pro is $99 with 1,200 credits, Growth $385 with 5,500, and Enterprise $780 with 12,000, each with a yearly option saving 15%. Pro has a 7-day free trial with no charge until day 7, as listed in September 2026.

Does Rankscale.ai have a free plan?

MarketHQ has no free plan; every plan, from Lite, covers blogs, forums, RSS feeds you add and Bluesky. Rankscale.ai has no free plan either; its only no-cost entry is a 7-day Pro trial. AthenaHQ's Essential is free with 300 credits across five engines. Ahrefs offers a free AI-visibility preview.

What is a credit worth?

Rankscale states that Pro's 1,200 monthly credits track up to 4,800 AI answers, Growth's 5,500 track 22,000 and Enterprise's 12,000 track 48,000. AthenaHQ is simpler: one credit equals one AI response, so its 3,600-credit Starter is 3,600 answers.

Which alternative offers a REST API?

MarketHQ includes an API key and an MCP endpoint on every paid plan from Lite at $29 a month up. Rankscale lists REST API access on Growth and Enterprise. Otterly starts API and MCP at Standard. AthenaHQ sells API access as a paid add-on.

Do any of these watch Reddit or GitHub?

MarketHQ does: Reddit on paid plans, and GitHub and Hacker News among its public communities. Ahrefs Brand Radar reports Reddit and YouTube visibility. Rankscale, Otterly, AthenaHQ, Profound, Scrunch, Evertune and Peec read AI answers and monitor no communities.

Related

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Sources

  • Rankscale pricing: https://rankscale.ai/pricing (verified 2026-09-14)
  • Rankscale home page: https://rankscale.ai/ (verified 2026-09-14)
  • Otterly.ai pricing: https://otterly.ai/pricing/ (verified 2026-09-14)
  • AthenaHQ pricing: https://www.athenahq.ai/pricing (verified 2026-09-14)
  • Profound pricing: https://www.tryprofound.com/pricing (verified 2026-09-14)
  • Scrunch AI pricing: https://scrunch.com/pricing (verified 2026-09-14)
  • Ahrefs Brand Radar: https://ahrefs.com/brand-radar (verified 2026-09-14)
  • Evertune pricing: https://www.evertune.ai/pricing (verified 2026-09-14)
  • Peec AI pricing: https://peec.ai/pricing (verified 2026-09-14)