Best AI visibility tools for developer-tool companies
Updated September 2026
AI-visibility tools answer one question: when someone asks an assistant which tool solves their problem, does your name come up? Almost every vendor in the category sells to a generic marketing buyer. This list asks the narrower question of which ones are worth money if you sell to developers.
Quick answer
MarketHQ and OpenScout are the only tools here that also watch developer communities, making them the closest fit for a company that sells to developers; no other tool in this category was built for that buyer. Otterly.ai and Rankscale.ai are the cheapest dedicated trackers. Profound, AthenaHQ, Scrunch AI, Goodie AI and Evertune sell up-market. Peec AI and Nightwatch publish no price on the pages we read, and Ahrefs Brand Radar is an add-on.
Key points
- Entry prices run from $20 a month to $800 a month among the vendors that publish one.
- Two vendors on this list, Peec AI and Nightwatch, publish no price we could read.
- Only MarketHQ and OpenScout also watch where developers actually talk.
What sources does MarketHQ cover?
Free: Hacker News, GitHub, RSS, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Lobsters. Paid plans add Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, Quora, Web, Perplexity, Product Hunt, Broader web crawl, Bluesky.
- 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
- 7-day trial for $0.99 on paid plans
- Free tier with no card and no end date
Method: every tool was read on its own website in September 2026 and included only if the vendor publishes what it tracks. Prices are quoted only where the vendor publishes them; where a vendor gates or does not render a price, the entry says pricing is not published rather than repeating a third-party figure. Ordering reflects fit for a developer-tool company, not popularity or market share. Nothing here is paid placement, and MarketHQ is our own product.
MarketHQ
Developer-market intelligence rather than a GEO dashboard: a weekly read on how AI assistants answer buying questions in your category, joined to the community mentions behind those answers, gap analysis, an action plan and chat instead of charts. Our own product, listed first because the page is ours.
- Best for
- Developer-tool teams that want the AI-answer question and the community feed in one place.
- Pricing
- Free tier; Lite $29, Startup $99, Growth $199 a month; 7-day trial for $0.99 on paid plans. Tiers differ by tracking capacity only.
- Sources covered
- Hacker News, GitHub, Reddit, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Lobsters and RSS on every tier including free; the weekly AI-answer read, gap analysis and paid social and web lanes are on paid plans.
- AI visibility
- Yes
OpenScout
The only other tool here that starts from developer communities. It tracks which threads Google and AI cite for your buyers' questions and who gets named inside them, and sells a done-for-you tier that writes the replies.
- Best for
- Founders who want AI citations traced back to the specific threads that produced them.
- Pricing
- Starter listed at $49 a month, marked down from $89; Autopilot $99, marked down from $199; a custom multi-brand tier by request. 3-day free trial, no credit card, as of September 2026.
- Sources covered
- Reddit, Hacker News, X and LinkedIn, matched against your keywords and subreddits.
- AI visibility
- Yes
Otterly.ai
The cheapest dedicated AI-search tracker with a real entry plan. You build a prompt library of the questions prospects actually ask, and it reports brand mentions, cited links and share of voice against competitors.
- Best for
- Small teams that want a prompt set tracked daily without a five-figure contract.
- Pricing
- Lite $29 a month or $25 billed annually; Standard $189 or $160; Premium $489 or $422; Enterprise custom from $1,000 a month, as of September 2026.
- Sources covered
- ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot on every plan; Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini cost extra as add-ons.
- AI visibility
- Yes
Rankscale.ai
Credit-metered rather than seat-metered, which suits a team that wants to track a lot of prompts occasionally rather than a few constantly. It also runs page audits and exports to CSV or Sheets.
- Best for
- Teams that would rather buy a pool of checks than a fixed prompt count.
- Pricing
- Essentials starting at $20 a month; Pro $99 or $84.15 billed annually; Growth $385 or $327.25; Enterprise $780 or $663, plus a custom plan. 7-day free Pro trial, as of September 2026.
- Sources covered
- ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, DeepSeek, Mistral, Claude, Grok and Copilot.
- AI visibility
- Yes
Profound
The most-cited name in the category, and the one that treats agent traffic as a first-class metric alongside answer tracking. Its entry plan is narrow on purpose: one engine, one language, one region.
- Best for
- Marketing teams that need the category-standard tool and can live with per-engine gating.
- Pricing
- Starter $99 a month billed yearly with ChatGPT tracking only and 50 prompts; Growth $399 billed yearly with 3 answer engines and 100 prompts; Enterprise custom, up to 9 answer engines, as of September 2026.
- Sources covered
- ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek and Claude, by plan tier.
- AI visibility
- Yes
AthenaHQ
The only AI-visibility-first vendor here with a usable free tier, and the one with the most technical founding story in the category. Credits rather than prompt counts, and a content-optimisation agent on the paid plan.
- Best for
- Teams that want to test the category before committing a budget to it.
- Pricing
- Essential free with $25 of credit, listed as 300 credits; Starter $295 a month with 3,600 credits and a 17% annual discount; Enterprise custom. API access is a paid add-on, as of September 2026.
- 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
Peec AI
A European AI-search tracker aimed at SEO and content teams, with four tiers and a detailed feature matrix. We could not read a price for any of them, so we do not quote one.
- Best for
- SEO teams already running a formal procurement process.
- Pricing
- Pricing not published in a form we could read: the page lists Starter, Pro, Advanced and Enterprise with monthly and annual toggles, but no figure rendered when we fetched it in September 2026.
- Sources covered
- AI search answers. The pricing page describes tracking coverage without naming engines per plan, so we do not list them.
- AI visibility
- Yes
Scrunch AI
Sold on personas and industry prompt libraries rather than a prompt count you assemble yourself, with agent-traffic monitoring and page audits included. Priced for a marketing team, not a founder.
- Best for
- Companies that want a prepared prompt set and several seats from day one.
- Pricing
- Starter $300 a month, or $250 billed annually; Growth $500 or $417; Enterprise custom. 7-day free Starter trial with no credit card, as of September 2026.
- Sources covered
- ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, and Meta.
- AI visibility
- Yes
Goodie AI
Positions AEO as a channel to be run rather than a metric to be watched, bundling a monthly quota of optimisation actions with the tracking. Model coverage is the thing that scales with price here.
- Best for
- Teams buying execution alongside measurement.
- Pricing
- Core $399 a month with 5 models and 100 prompts; Pro $999 with 8 models and 250 prompts; Enterprise custom with up to 12 models. Separate agency plans from $350. 7-day free trial on Core, as of September 2026.
- Sources covered
- ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, AI Mode and Copilot on Core; Gemini, Alexa and Sparky added on Pro; Claude, Meta, DeepSeek and Grok on Enterprise.
- AI visibility
- Yes
Evertune
The enterprise end of the category, sold on volume: a six-figure prompt count tracked across eleven models, with content production and bot analytics attached. One published price and a demo for everything else.
- Best for
- Large brands treating AI answers as a measured marketing channel.
- Pricing
- Pro $800 a month, with 100,000 prompts tracked across 11 AI models and 25 optimised articles a month; Enterprise custom, priced by demo, as of September 2026.
- Sources covered
- 11 AI models, not individually named on the pricing page.
- AI visibility
- Yes
Ahrefs Brand Radar
Not a standalone product. If you already pay for Ahrefs, it is the cheapest way to start, and the only tool here that reports Reddit and YouTube visibility in the same view as AI answers.
- Best for
- Existing Ahrefs customers who want AI answers next to their rank tracking.
- Pricing
- An add-on requiring an Ahrefs subscription. Custom prompts start at $50 a month; the AI Visibility Index is $199 a month for 83 prompts a day and 2,500 checks, with overage at $0.020 a check, as of September 2026.
- Sources covered
- Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Copilot and Claude, plus YouTube and Reddit.
- AI visibility
- Yes
Nightwatch
A rank tracker with AI tracking bolted on, which is a reasonable shape if you already want rank tracking. Its AI page describes the feature and the trial but never the cost.
- Best for
- Teams already shopping for a rank tracker that want AI answers in the same tool.
- Pricing
- Pricing not published on the AI tracking page we read in September 2026. The page offers a 14-day trial and a free start with no credit card, but shows no monthly figure.
- Sources covered
- ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot.
- AI visibility
- Yes
What does an AI visibility tool actually do?
It asks AI assistants a fixed set of buying questions on a schedule, records whether your brand is named and which pages get cited, and charts that against your competitors.
The mechanics are nearly identical across the category. You supply a prompt set, the tool runs it against a list of engines, and you get named-or-not, share of voice and the citation list. What differs is how many prompts, how many engines, how often, and whether anything is attached to the measurement.
That is why prices in this list span from $20 a month to $800 a month for what looks like the same chart. You are buying prompt volume and engine breadth, and at the top end, people and content production.
Which of these were built for developer-tool companies?
None of them, strictly. MarketHQ and OpenScout come closest because both also watch the developer communities that feed those answers.
The gap matters more than it sounds. An AI assistant recommending a Postgres client is drawing on GitHub issues, Hacker News threads and Stack Overflow answers. A tool that reports you are invisible without showing you the threads that produced the answer has told you the score and withheld the tape.
OpenScout tracks which threads Google and AI cite for your buyers' questions and who gets named inside them, across Reddit, Hacker News, X and LinkedIn. MarketHQ joins the weekly AI-answer read to Hacker News, GitHub, Reddit, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Lobsters and RSS, then turns the difference into a gap analysis and an action plan. Every other vendor here measures the answer and leaves the source material to you.
What does AI visibility tracking cost in September 2026?
Between $20 and $800 a month among the vendors that publish a price, with the useful cluster for a small team sitting under $100.
At the bottom: Rankscale Essentials starting at $20 a month, Otterly.ai Lite at $29, OpenScout Starter listed at $49, Profound Starter at $99 billed yearly, Rankscale Pro at $99, MarketHQ Lite at $29. Ahrefs Brand Radar custom prompts start at $50 a month but require an Ahrefs subscription underneath.
Above that the jumps are steep: AthenaHQ Starter $295, Scrunch AI Starter $300, Goodie AI Core $399, Evertune Pro $800. Those buy seats, prepared prompt libraries, more engines and in two cases content production. For a developer-tool company with one marketer, they are not the right shape.
- Under $100 a month: Rankscale, Otterly.ai, OpenScout, Profound Starter, MarketHQ.
- $295 to $800 a month: AthenaHQ, Scrunch AI, Goodie AI, Evertune.
- Free to start: AthenaHQ Essential, MarketHQ's free tier, and trials at OpenScout, Rankscale, Scrunch AI, Goodie AI and Nightwatch.
Which vendors do not publish a price?
Peec AI and Nightwatch, on the pages we read in September 2026, plus the enterprise tier at Profound, AthenaHQ, Scrunch AI, Goodie AI and Evertune.
Peec AI lists four plans with monthly and annual toggles and a full feature matrix, but no figure rendered when we fetched the page. Nightwatch describes its AI tracking and its 14-day trial without a monthly cost. We record both as not published rather than repeating a number from a review site, because a price we cannot read on the vendor's own site is a price we cannot stand behind.
Demo-gated enterprise tiers are normal and not a criticism. Demo-gated entry tiers are a signal about who the vendor wants to sell to, which for a small developer-tool team is usually not you.
Do you need a separate AI visibility tool at all?
Not yet, if your buyers still find you through search and forums and nobody has told you they asked an assistant first.
The honest test is your own pipeline. Ask the last ten people who signed up how they built their shortlist. If none names an assistant, a $300-a-month tracker measures a channel you do not have. Run the prompts by hand once a month and spend the money elsewhere.
If two or three of them do, the question changes from whether to measure to what you do about it, and most of this category stops at the measurement. That is the line we built MarketHQ on, and it is also the line where AthenaHQ's free tier or Otterly.ai's $29 plan is a perfectly sensible first purchase.
What would a small developer-tool team actually buy?
Probably one cheap tracker and nothing else for the first quarter. The scenario below is illustrative, not measured.
Illustrative: you sell a CI runner, you have one marketer, and two of your last ten signups mentioned asking an assistant which runner to use. You want twenty prompts tracked and the list of cited pages.
AthenaHQ's free tier gets you started at no cost. Otterly.ai Lite at $29 a month covers 15 prompts across four engines. Rankscale Essentials from $20 gives you a credit pool to spend as you like. If you also need the GitHub issues and Hacker News threads behind those answers, and want the gap written up rather than charted, MarketHQ Lite is $29 a month with a seven-day trial for $0.99. Anything at $300 a month waits for proof the channel exists.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest AI visibility tool?
Among vendors publishing a price in September 2026, Rankscale.ai Essentials starts at $20 a month. Otterly.ai Lite and MarketHQ Lite are both $29. AthenaHQ offers a free Essential tier with $25 of credit, which is the cheapest way to try the category at all.
Which AI visibility tools have a free plan or trial?
AthenaHQ lists a free Essential tier and MarketHQ has a free tier. Trials run 3 days at OpenScout, 7 days at Rankscale, Scrunch AI and Goodie AI, and 14 days at Nightwatch. MarketHQ's paid trial is 7 days for $0.99.
Do any of these tools cover Hacker News, GitHub or Stack Overflow?
Only two. MarketHQ covers Hacker News, GitHub, Reddit, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Lobsters and RSS on every tier, plus a weekly AI-answer check on paid plans. OpenScout covers Reddit, Hacker News, X and LinkedIn. The rest measure AI answers and leave the underlying communities to you.
Which AI assistants do these tools track?
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Gemini appear on nearly every vendor's list. Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek and Mistral appear on the wider plans at Rankscale, AthenaHQ, Scrunch AI and Evertune. Coverage usually scales with price rather than with the tool.
Why do some entries say pricing is not published?
Because we only quote a price we could read on the vendor's own site. Peec AI rendered no figure on its pricing page and Nightwatch shows none on its AI tracking page, so we say so rather than repeat a third-party number we cannot verify.
Related
- Best developer community monitoring tools — the other half of the job, judged the same way
- MarketHQ vs F5Bot — what changes when free keyword alerts stop covering it
- MarketHQ vs Syften — the head-to-head against the broadest developer feed
- Gap analysis for developer tools — what to do once you know an assistant is not naming you
- All category guides — every list we verified the same way
- Pricing — what the four MarketHQ tiers cost
Sources
- OpenScout home page: https://openscout.so/ (verified 2026-09-14)
- Otterly.ai pricing: https://otterly.ai/pricing/ (verified 2026-09-14)
- Otterly.ai home page: https://otterly.ai/ (verified 2026-09-14)
- Rankscale.ai pricing: https://www.rankscale.ai/pricing (verified 2026-09-14)
- Profound pricing: https://www.tryprofound.com/pricing (verified 2026-09-14)
- AthenaHQ pricing: https://www.athenahq.ai/pricing (verified 2026-09-14)
- Peec AI pricing: https://peec.ai/pricing (verified 2026-09-14)
- Scrunch AI pricing: https://scrunch.com/pricing (verified 2026-09-14)
- Goodie AI pricing: https://higoodie.com/pricing (verified 2026-09-14)
- Evertune pricing: https://evertune.ai/pricing (verified 2026-09-14)
- Ahrefs Brand Radar: https://ahrefs.com/brand-radar (verified 2026-09-14)
- Nightwatch AI tracking: https://nightwatch.io/ai-tracking/ (verified 2026-09-14)