AI visibility tool pricing in 2026

AI visibility tools published entry prices from $20 to $295 a month when we checked on 21 September 2026, with a median of $79 across the thirteen competitors that publish a number at all. One vendor, Profound, publishes no self-serve price. A single-location business should expect to pay between $25 and $45 a month for a tool that actually fits it.

What counts as an entry price here

Entry price means the cheapest published self-serve monthly plan that a buyer can subscribe to without a sales call, quoted at monthly billing before any annual discount. Free tiers are listed separately because a free tier is not a price. Where a vendor's cheapest tier ships capacity it does not publish, the table says so rather than pretending the number means something.

Every figure was read off the vendor's own pricing page on 21 September 2026. Several had moved since the write-ups circulating elsewhere. BrightLocal Track is $41 monthly rather than the $39 its own page metadata still claims, Promptwatch Essential is $95 rather than $99, Scrunch now shows a single $250 Core tier for brands, and Profound's self-serve tiers are gone from its pricing page entirely.

Every verified entry price, sorted

The numbers behind the table

Across the thirteen competitors that publish an entry price:

• Range: $20 to $295 a month.
• Median: $79 a month, which is LLMrefs.
• Lower quartile: roughly $29 a month.
• Upper quartile: roughly $99 a month.
• Under $50 a month: six of thirteen, which is more than this category's reputation suggests.
• Over $200 a month: two of thirteen.
• No published price: one of fourteen.

Adding AnswerFix at $39 to the set moves the median of all fourteen tools to $69 a month.

Two cautions about the median. First, it is a median of published entry prices, not of what people actually pay, and several entry tiers are too thin to use for real work. Rankscale's $20 Essentials does not publish a credit allowance, Ahrefs' $129 Lite includes five tracked AI prompts, and Otterly's $29 Lite includes fifteen prompts. Second, per-domain and credit-based models mean the same headline price can produce wildly different bills.

Free tiers and free trials, which are not the same thing

Six tools let you look without paying and without a card:

• AthenaHQ Essential: free, 300 credits worth $25 of usage, five engines.
• Promptwatch Explore: free, no time limit stated.
• LLMrefs: free account, no credit card required.
• Local Falcon: 100 free credits at signup.
• Profound Trial: free, 10 prompts run once, ChatGPT only.
• AnswerFix: free score, re-runnable once a month, no card.

Semrush also publishes a free AI Search Visibility Checker among its free tools, and Ahrefs offers a free account for your own verified site.

Time-limited trials, which expire:

• BrightLocal: 14 days, full access, no card.
• ZipTie.ai: 7 days, 25 daily prompts on 3 engines, no card.
• Scrunch AI: 7 days, no card.
• Rankscale.ai: 7 days on Pro, no charge until day 7.
• Semrush, Otterly.ai and Knowatoa each reference a free trial on their pages.

If you are early in this, work through the permanent free tiers before any trial. A trial clock starts the moment you have least idea what you are looking for.

What a local business should expect to pay

Some honest bands, based on the verified table above.

Nothing, at first. Run two or three permanent free tiers and see whether the engines already name you. If they do, your problem is monitoring drift, not visibility, and the cheapest tool that watches is enough.

$25 to $45 a month is the realistic band for one location. Local Falcon at $24.99, Otterly.ai at $29, AnswerFix at $39, BrightLocal at $41 monthly or $31 annually, and ZipTie from $42.75 all sit here. Four of those five are local-first or local-capable, and BrightLocal at this price also covers citations, reviews and rank tracking.

$59 to $99 a month buys broader engine coverage or a platform. Knowatoa at $59 with unlimited sites, LLMrefs at $79 with every engine and unlimited domains, Peec AI at $95 with unlimited seats, Promptwatch at $95 with an API, Semrush at $99 if you are already a customer.

$129 and above is brand and enterprise territory. Unless you have several locations or a marketing team, this band is unlikely to return its cost for a single local business.

Watch two pricing shapes. Per-domain pricing, which Semrush uses at $99 a domain, multiplies badly for an agency: ten local clients is roughly $990 a month. And credit pricing, which Local Falcon, Rankscale and AthenaHQ all use, is hard to forecast before you have a month of history, because spend is driven by scan geometry or engine count rather than by a number on the plan card.

For a small agency, the per-client maths is the whole decision. LLMrefs at $79 for unlimited domains and Knowatoa at $59 for unlimited sites are the cheapest ways to cover ten clients. BrightLocal scales by location, which is predictable and easy to pass through. Rankscale Growth at $385 adds white-label reporting and an API.

Before you trust any of these prices

Prices in this category move quickly. Profound withdrew its published self-serve tiers, BrightLocal's own metadata is out of step with its own pricing page, and LLMrefs labels $79 as limited time only. Every figure here links to the page we read, and if the vendor's page disagrees with this one, the vendor is right.

Also worth knowing before you spend: AI answers vary between runs for the same question, which is documented on our methodology page, so no tool at any price can promise a fixed rank. If you want to start without spending anything, our free tools cover three concrete fixes, and the full comparison table sets every tool here side by side on engines, local intent and what it actually hands you.