# Best AI visibility tools for startups Updated October 2026 A startup checking AI visibility usually has one person doing it between other jobs and a monthly budget measured in tens of dollars, not hundreds. Most vendors in this category price for a marketing team at a funded company. This list picks out the ones that fit a startup's budget and the one person who has to set the thing up quickly, without a sales call standing between a decision and a working dashboard. The startups it has in mind sell all kinds of products, not only software. ## 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. Keyword.com's AI Visibility plan is cheaper in isolation, and Otterly.ai, Knowatoa, Waikay, Rankscale and Peec AI sit between $29 and $99 a month. - MarketHQ has a free plan with no end date before any paid plan; its first paid step is Lite at $29 a month, with a $0.99 7-day trial. - MarketHQ turns each lost buying question into an action plan, which matters for a one-person team that needs a next step more than another chart. - MarketHQ Lite at $29 is the lowest-priced option here that pairs the AI-answer check with competitor monitoring; Keyword.com's AI Visibility plan is $7.83 a month billed annually, and Rankscale's Pro plan is $99. ## 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 ## List Method: every tool was checked on its own pricing page in October 2026 and included only if it publishes an entry price a startup could pay without a sales call. Prices are quoted as published and render live from our verified vendor records. Ordering is by entry price and setup simplicity, not feature count or market share. MarketHQ is our own product and is listed first because this is our page. 1. MarketHQ Competitor monitoring free from day one across news, blogs, forums and a taste of Bluesky, with the weekly check of six AI engines and a gap analysis with an action plan added once you move to the $29 Lite plan. - Best for: A startup that wants to start tracking today for free and add AI-answer checks when it can pay. - 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 2. [Otterly.ai](https://markethq.ai/directory/otterly-ai) A dedicated AI-search tracker. Lite is $29 a month for 15 prompts across four engines, Standard is $189 for 100 prompts, and a free trial is available for new users. - Best for: A startup that wants a focused AI-visibility tool with a low entry price. - Pricing: From $29/mo - Sources covered: Not published 3. [Knowatoa](https://markethq.ai/directory/knowatoa) A Starter plan for small teams covering ChatGPT, AI Overviews and AI Mode, with gap analysis and agents that draft content to close the gaps. Claude, Gemini, Meta AI and Perplexity arrive on the Growth plan. - Best for: A startup whose one marketer wants the tool to suggest the content fix, not just the number. - Pricing: From $59/mo - Sources covered: Not published 4. [Waikay](https://markethq.ai/directory/waikay) A Small Teams plan for in-house brand managers tracking up to 120 prompts, plus a limited-time early-adopter special for one user. It tracks visibility against competitors and lists AIO Action Plans. - Best for: A very early-stage startup testing the category before committing to a full plan. - Pricing: From $24.95/mo - Sources covered: Not published 5. [Keyword.com](https://markethq.ai/directory/keyword-com) A search-visibility platform that tracks Google rankings alongside brand presence in AI assistants. The AI Visibility plan is its lowest-priced AI option, and a 14-day free trial needs no card. - Best for: A startup that already cares about search rankings and wants the lowest possible bill for basic AI tracking. - Pricing: From $3/mo - Sources covered: Not published 6. [Rankscale](https://markethq.ai/directory/rankscale) An AI-visibility platform whose Pro plan has a flat monthly price and a 7-day free trial, covering a wide list of engines with 1,200 credits, 10 brand dashboards and 50 page audits. - Best for: A startup that wants a wide published engine list at one flat price. - Pricing: From $99/mo - Sources covered: Not published 7. [Peec AI](https://markethq.ai/directory/peec-ai) Tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and more with daily tracking and an MCP server plus API. Plan prices appear through an interactive calculator on its pricing page. - Best for: A startup willing to use the pricing calculator to find a plan sized to its prompt volume. - Pricing: Not published - Sources covered: Not published ## Which AI visibility tool is actually free for a startup to try? MarketHQ's free plan has no end date; the others here offer a free trial or a free option to try, which can run out. MarketHQ's free plan covers news, blogs, forums and a taste of Bluesky, with no card and no end date, so a startup can start today and decide later whether the $29 Lite plan's weekly AI-answer check and gap analysis are worth paying for. Free is capped at 2 competitors and 3 keywords. Otterly.ai offers a free trial for new users, Rankscale a 7-day free trial on Pro, Keyword.com a 14-day free trial with no card, Knowatoa a free trial on paid plans, and Waikay a free option to try before paying. A startup's point of paying for AI tracking is often later than its point of paying for basic mention tracking, so starting free and upgrading when the AI-answer question becomes real avoids paying early. ## What is the cheapest way to track AI visibility at a startup's budget? Keyword.com's AI Visibility plan has the lowest sticker price, and MarketHQ's $29 Lite plan is the lowest-priced option here that adds competitor monitoring and an action plan. Keyword.com lists its AI Visibility plan at $7.83 a month billed annually, or $9.80 billed monthly. It is a search-visibility product first, so check what the plan covers before comparing it to a dedicated tracker. Waikay's limited-time early-adopter special is $24.95 a month for one user and eight credits a month. Among tools that publish a clear engine list, MarketHQ's $29 Lite plan and Otterly.ai's $29 Lite plan ($25 billed annually, 15 prompts across four engines) are the two cheapest. Knowatoa's Starter is $59 a month, Waikay's Small Teams plan is $69.95, and Rankscale's Pro plan is $99. ## How much setup does a one-person team need to budget for? Most of these tools are built for self-serve setup; only Peec AI's plan prices sit behind an interactive calculator. MarketHQ, Otterly.ai, Knowatoa, Waikay and Rankscale publish prices a founder can read and decide on without talking to anyone. Sign up, enter a brand name and a handful of competitor names, and the first results follow. That self-serve path is what a one-person team needs. Peec AI's Starter, Pro and Advanced plans are priced through an interactive calculator on its pricing page, which means a startup spends a few minutes clicking through options. Its Starter plan includes 50 prompts and daily tracking, and was read at $95 a month on our check date. ## When should a startup start paying for AI-visibility tracking? Once there is a defined category and real buyers asking questions in it, not before. Paying earlier mostly buys an empty dashboard. AI assistants answer buying questions from what has been written and discussed about a category, which takes time to accumulate. A startup that launched last month, with no reviews, community discussion or press yet, may see empty or near-empty results from any AI-visibility tool, paid or free. The better sequence is usually to get the product in front of real users, let discussion accumulate, then start checking AI-answer visibility once there is a plausible chance of appearing. MarketHQ's free plan is built for that waiting period, since it watches news, blogs, forums and competitors at no cost before the AI-answer check becomes worth paying for. ## Does a startup need to track every AI engine, or just the popular ones? Start with the engines your own buyers use. A longer list, like Rankscale's 17-plus engines, is useful only if your buyers are on those engines. A startup paying for a wider engine list is paying for coverage that may not match its buyers' habits. MarketHQ checks six assistants, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and DeepSeek, and Otterly.ai's Lite plan tracks four. Ask your first customers which assistants they use before paying for breadth. This changes if a startup sells into a market or language where a less common engine has an unusually large following. Outside that case, breadth of engine coverage is one of the less important differences between the tools on this page, next to price, prompt allowance and what the tool does after the score. ## What is a realistic first-month workflow for a founder using one of these tools? Sign up, name the brand and two or three competitors, write ten buying questions, then review results weekly rather than daily. Most of these tools are built for that lightweight workflow: enter a handful of names, pick the questions that matter, and let the check run on its own schedule. MarketHQ, Otterly.ai, Knowatoa and Waikay are all aimed at a small team running the whole process without a dedicated analyst. The mistake to avoid is reacting to noise. MarketHQ runs its AI-answer check weekly, while Otterly.ai and Peec AI list daily tracking, and a founder who checks daily may see the same answer repeated. Pick a cadence you will actually act on, and write down the one change you will make after each review. ## What might a two-person startup do in its first month? Run a free plan for news and forum monitoring, then a Lite plan for ten buying questions once the product has some public discussion. The scenario below is illustrative, not measured. Illustrative: a two-person startup launches and starts on MarketHQ's free plan to watch news, blogs and forums for its name and two competitors. After six weeks it has some discussion to draw on, so it takes the $0.99 7-day Lite trial and tracks ten buying questions across six assistants. The first weekly check shows a competitor named on three questions where the startup is absent. The gap analysis points to a missing comparison page and an active community thread, and the action plan turns them into two tasks for the following week. ## FAQ ### What is the best free AI visibility tool for a startup? MarketHQ: its free plan has no end date and covers news, blogs, forums and a taste of Bluesky, with no card. Add the $29 Lite plan when you need the weekly check of six AI engines and a gap analysis. ### Which AI visibility tool is cheapest for a startup on a tight budget? MarketHQ Lite at $29 a month is the cheapest option that pairs the AI-answer check with competitor monitoring and an action plan. Keyword.com's AI Visibility plan is cheaper by sticker price at $7.83 a month billed annually, though it is built around search rankings. ### Do any of these tools charge extra per AI engine? MarketHQ's plans check all six tracked assistants with no per-engine add-on. Otterly.ai's Lite plan tracks four engines, and Knowatoa's Starter plan covers three engines with Claude, Gemini, Meta AI and Perplexity on its Growth plan. ### Is it worth paying for AI visibility tracking before product-market fit? Usually not yet. Start with MarketHQ's free plan for news, blog and competitor monitoring, and add a paid AI-visibility plan once you have a defined category and buyers who could plausibly ask an assistant about it. ### How was this list put together? Every tool was checked on its own pricing page in October 2026 and included only if it publishes an entry price without a sales call. Prices are quoted as published. MarketHQ is our own product and is listed first. ## Related - [MarketHQ vs Otterly](https://markethq.ai/compare/markethq-vs-otterly) — the two cheapest named-engine trackers side by side - [MarketHQ vs Peec AI](https://markethq.ai/compare/markethq-vs-peec) — a flat price versus a calculator-only plan - [Best AI visibility tools for SaaS](https://markethq.ai/best/ai-visibility-tools-for-saas) — the same category at a higher budget - [Best brand monitoring tools for startups](https://markethq.ai/best/brand-monitoring-tools-for-startups) — the listening side of the same budget question - [All category guides](https://markethq.ai/best) — every list we judged the same way - [Pricing](https://markethq.ai/pricing) — what MarketHQ's own tiers cost ## Sources - Otterly.ai pricing: https://otterly.ai/pricing (verified 2026-10-08) - Knowatoa home page: https://www.knowatoa.com (verified 2026-10-08) - Waikay home page: https://waikay.io (verified 2026-10-08) - Keyword.com pricing: https://keyword.com/pricing (verified 2026-10-08) - Rankscale pricing: https://www.rankscale.ai/pricing (verified 2026-10-08) - Peec AI pricing: https://peec.ai/pricing (verified 2026-10-08)