Best AI visibility tools for small business
Updated October 2026
Most AI-visibility tools were built and priced for a marketing team with a monthly listening budget, not a small business owner wondering for the first time whether ChatGPT even knows their company exists. Two of the five tools here have a free way to start, and the honest answer for many small businesses is that a free or low-cost test is enough until a customer actually mentions asking an assistant for a recommendation. This list sorts the cheap starting points from the ones priced for a bigger program, and says plainly when a small business should simply wait.
Quick answer
MarketHQ's free plan stays free with no card and no end date: your brand, 2 competitors and 3 keywords, across news, blogs, forums and a taste of Bluesky. AI answers start on paid plans from $29 a month, with a weekly check of six AI engines, a gap analysis and an action plan. AthenaHQ has a free plan, Otterly.ai Lite is also $29, and Profound's Enterprise plan is a custom quote.
Key points
- MarketHQ's free plan covers news, blogs, forums and a taste of Bluesky at no cost, and Lite at $29 a month adds the weekly check across six AI engines.
- MarketHQ pairs the AI-answer check with a gap analysis and action plan, so a small business gets a next step and not only a score.
- AthenaHQ's free Essential plan and Otterly.ai's $29 Lite plan are the two other low-cost ways to test the question.
What sources does MarketHQ cover?
Free: Hacker News, GitHub, RSS, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Lobsters. Paid plans add Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, 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 Lite and Startup
- Free tier with no card and no end date
Method: every tool was read on its own website and included only if it publishes what it tracks and what it costs to start. Pricing, free plans and AI-engine coverage render live from our verified vendor records, so a figure here cannot drift from the vendor's own page. Ordering reflects what a small business needs first, a cheap way to test the question, not market share, and MarketHQ is our own product, included for comparison rather than left off the list.
MarketHQ
Competitor, news, blog and forum monitoring with a weekly check of how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and DeepSeek answer buying questions on paid plans, joined into a gap analysis with an action plan attached. The free plan covers news, blogs, forums and a taste of Bluesky. Lite at $29 a month adds the AI-answer check.
- Best for
- A small business that wants mentions and AI-answer tracking together, without two separate subscriptions.
- Pricing
- Free (paid from $29/mo)
- Sources covered
- Hacker News, GitHub, RSS, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Lobsters, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, Perplexity, Product Hunt, Broader web crawl, Bluesky
- AI visibility
- Yes
AthenaHQ
Cross-platform AI-visibility tracking across eleven or more engines including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok and DeepSeek. The free Essential plan includes 300 credits, where one credit equals one AI response, and the paid Starter plan raises that to 3,600 credits a month.
- Best for
- A small business that wants to test AI-answer tracking across many engines for free first.
- Pricing
- From $0/mo
- Sources covered
- Not published
- AI visibility
- Yes
Otterly.ai
Tracks a brand across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and more, with daily tracking. Lite is priced for 15 search prompts across four engines, and a free trial is available for new users.
- Best for
- A small business that wants a simple, dedicated AI-answer tracker at a fixed low price.
- Pricing
- From $29/mo
- Sources covered
- Not published
- AI visibility
- Yes
Rankscale
Tracks brand mentions, citations and sentiment across 17-plus AI engines, metered in credits, with Page Audits that score AI readiness across more than 200 factors. Pro includes 1,200 credits a month and a 7-day free trial.
- Best for
- A small business that wants to fix its own pages as well as watch a score, and is comfortable with credit-based plans.
- Pricing
- From $99/mo
- Sources covered
- Not published
- AI visibility
- Yes
Profound
An AI marketing platform whose Enterprise plan tracks up to nine answer engines, with Agent Analytics for AI-sourced traffic. Enterprise is a custom package, and a limited 7-day free trial tier covers three engines.
- Best for
- A small business prepared to go through a custom quote for a dedicated AI-visibility platform.
- Pricing
- From $0/mo
- Sources covered
- Not published
- AI visibility
- Yes
Does a small business need a dedicated AI-visibility tool at all?
Only once a customer mentions asking an assistant for a recommendation, which is the honest signal that the channel exists before spending anything to track it.
It is tempting to assume every category now runs through an assistant first, but for many small businesses, especially local or service-based ones, customers may still find them through a search, a referral or a review site. Paying for AI-visibility tracking before that question has a real answer is money spent measuring a channel that may not matter yet for this business.
The test is simple and free: ask the last ten customers how they found the business, or how they chose it over an alternative. If none mentions an assistant, AthenaHQ's free Essential plan is enough to keep an eye on the question, and MarketHQ's free plan keeps watching news, blogs and forums until it is worth adding the AI-answer check on Lite. The answer can change in either direction as a category matures.
Which of these are free or near-free to start?
MarketHQ's free plan and AthenaHQ's free Essential plan cost nothing, and MarketHQ's 7-day Lite trial costs $0.99.
AthenaHQ's Essential plan is free with 300 credits included, covering engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Claude, which is a useful way to see whether a category gets any AI-answer attention at all. MarketHQ's free plan covers news, blogs, forums and a taste of Bluesky, with no card and no end date. The weekly AI-answer check arrives on the Lite plan at $29 a month.
Otterly.ai offers a free trial for new users, then Lite at $29 a month. Rankscale has a 7-day free trial on its Pro plan, and Profound has a limited 7-day free trial tier covering ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Trials end, so decide in advance what you want to learn from them.
What is the cheapest paid option once free is not enough?
MarketHQ Lite and Otterly.ai Lite are both $29 a month, while Rankscale's Pro plan is $99 a month and AthenaHQ's Starter plan is $295 a month.
MarketHQ Lite adds the weekly AI-answer check across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and DeepSeek, for up to 10 AI questions, 2 competitors, 10 keywords and 1 country. A small business already on MarketHQ's free plan adds AI-answer tracking without starting a second subscription from scratch. Otterly.ai Lite is a dedicated tracker for 15 prompts, and its pages list no community or competitor monitoring.
Rankscale's credit-based pricing suits a team that wants a pool of checks plus page-level audits, and its Pro plan includes 50 page audits a month. AthenaHQ's paid Starter plan raises the credit allowance sharply but is priced well above the entry plans. For most small businesses, the $29 plans are the logical first paid step.
When is Profound worth the custom quote?
Once a business treats AI-answer visibility as a measured channel with an owner and a budget, which is usually after it has stopped being a small business in the sense this page means.
Profound's Enterprise plan is a tailored package with usage for the whole team, a tailored prompt plan, up to nine answer engines, SSO and SAML, SOC 2 and API access. Those are features for a company with a security review and a team of users, and the absence of a posted price means a sales conversation comes before any number.
For many small businesses, a free plan or a $29 plan answers the same first question at a fraction of the effort, and skipping straight to a custom quote before confirming the channel matters is the more expensive mistake. Start cheap, confirm the signal, and only then consider whether a bigger platform earns its price.
What should a small business ask before paying for any of these?
Ask which questions the tool will check, how often, and what you are meant to do when it shows a gap.
A score with no next step is easy to ignore. Before paying, write down five questions a real customer would ask an assistant about your category, check that the tool can track exactly those, and decide who will act on the result each week. A tool that cannot be tied to a named owner and a concrete task will not earn its monthly fee, however cheap it is.
MarketHQ pairs the check with a gap analysis and action plan, so the next step is part of the product. With the other tools here, plan the follow-up work yourself.
What would a small local service business actually run?
Probably nothing paid for the first few months, then one $29 plan once a real signal shows up. The scenario below is illustrative, not measured.
Illustrative: a small landscaping company gets most new customers from local referrals and reviews, with no reason yet to think an assistant plays a role in how people choose a landscaper. It uses AthenaHQ's free Essential plan to run a handful of prompts, costing nothing.
A few months later, a new customer mentions asking ChatGPT to compare landscapers nearby before calling, and the company was not named. The owner starts MarketHQ Lite at $29 a month to check that question weekly, with the gap analysis showing what the named competitors have that the company does not.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest way for a small business to track AI-answer visibility?
Start with MarketHQ: free for news, blogs, forums and a taste of Bluesky, then Lite at $29 a month for the weekly check of six AI engines, with a $0.99 7-day trial. AthenaHQ's free Essential plan, with 300 credits, is another zero-cost way to look at the question.
Does a small business need to track AI-answer visibility before it has many customers?
Usually not. Ask the last ten customers how they found the business. If none mentions an assistant, AthenaHQ's free Essential plan can keep watching the question, and MarketHQ's free plan watches news, blogs and forums until a real signal justifies Lite at $29.
What is the difference between MarketHQ and a dedicated tool like Otterly.ai?
MarketHQ adds competitor and community monitoring and a gap analysis with an action plan to its weekly AI-answer check, so a small business gets a next step from one subscription. Otterly.ai is a dedicated AI-answer tracker with daily tracking, priced from $29 a month.
Is Rankscale a good fit for a small business?
It can be if you want AI-readiness page audits as well as tracking. Rankscale's Pro plan is $99 a month with a 7-day free trial, 1,200 credits and 50 page audits included, which is a higher entry point than the $29 plans from MarketHQ and Otterly.ai.
Why does Profound not publish a price for a small business to compare?
Profound's Enterprise plan is a tailored package sold through a sales conversation, alongside a limited free trial tier. For most small businesses, MarketHQ's free plan or a $29 plan answers the same first question at far lower cost and effort.
Which of these also tracks mentions outside AI assistants?
MarketHQ does. It monitors competitors across news, blogs and forums, with a taste of Bluesky on the free plan. Paid plans add social networks, labelled mentions and Reddit, joined to the weekly AI-answer check. The other four describe their products as AI-answer tracking.
Related
- MarketHQ vs Otterly.ai — the dedicated-tracker comparison, side by side
- MarketHQ vs Profound — how the enterprise-leaning tool compares on price and coverage
- Best brand monitoring tools for small business — the broader mention-tracking version of this same budget question
- Best AI visibility tools for agencies — what changes once there is more than one brand to track
- All category guides — every list we checked the same way
Sources
- AthenaHQ pricing: https://athenahq.ai/pricing (verified 2026-10-08)
- Otterly.ai pricing: https://otterly.ai/pricing (verified 2026-10-08)
- Rankscale pricing: https://www.rankscale.ai/pricing (verified 2026-10-08)
- Profound pricing: https://www.tryprofound.com/pricing (verified 2026-10-08)