The short version. Ahrefs at $129 is still the best data, and it gives you five tracked AI prompts. Semrush costs $139 for SEO and $199 the moment you want AI visibility. Surfer from $49 is the one that helps you actually write the page. Frase from $39 a month annually is the cheapest serious option for briefs. Otterly at $29 tracks whether ChatGPT cites you for a fraction of what the big platforms charge for the same thing.
Every price here came off the vendor’s own pricing page on 15 August 2026.
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The thing that changed, and what it costs you
Ranking and getting traffic used to be the same sentence. Now a growing share of searches end with an answer that names two or three sources, and the rest of the results never get looked at. So there is a second question sitting alongside the old one: not just where do I rank, but do the answer engines quote me.
Every major SEO platform has shipped something for that in the last year, and this is where the money has moved. The unit they all sell is a tracked prompt, meaning one question you want to watch across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and the rest. What nobody puts side by side is how differently they price it.
Here is that comparison, because it is the most useful thing in this article:
- Ahrefs includes 5 tracked AI prompts on Lite at $129, 10 on Standard at $249, 20 on Advanced at $449. Its dedicated product, Brand Radar AI, starts at $199 a month on top.
- Semrush gives you none on the $139 SEO plan. AI Search starts on Starter at $199, with 50 daily prompts.
- Surfer tracks 25 prompts on Standard at $99 and 50 on Pro at $182, and sells AI Search Analytics standalone at $158 for 100.
- Otterly does 15 prompts for $29 and 100 for $189, and does nothing else.
So the same capability ranges from about $2 per tracked prompt per month to considerably more, depending on how much other software it arrives attached to. We ranked with that in mind, alongside the usual question of whether the tool tells you something you would act on.
1. Ahrefs: still the best data, and priced like it
Starter $29/month with limited data access. Lite $129/month, or about $107 billed annually, with 5 tracked AI prompts and 100,000 crawl credits. Standard $249, or about $207 annually, with 10 prompts and 500,000 credits. Advanced $449, or about $373 annually, with 20 prompts and 1.5 million credits. Enterprise $1,499. Brand Radar AI starts at $199/month and Content Kit from $99/month. Verified 15 August 2026.
If you buy one platform, this is usually it. The backlink index is the best in the business, the site audit finds real problems rather than a hundred cosmetic ones, and the keyword data holds up when you check it against reality, which is more than can be said for some of this category.
For a publisher the most valuable screen is the one showing which of your existing pages lost position and to whom. Most content sites have more to gain from repairing what already ranks than from publishing something new, and this is the tool that makes that obvious.
Five tracked AI prompts on the $129 plan is not a serious allowance, so treat AI visibility as something you buy elsewhere unless you are going up to Brand Radar at $199. That is a $328 monthly stack for the two things, which for most publishers is the moment to look at Otterly instead.
Who it is wrong for: anyone whose main need is help writing the page. Ahrefs tells you what to write about and is close to useless at helping you write it.
2. Semrush: the widest toolkit, with the AI upsell built in
SEO plan $139/month, or $117.33 billed annually. Starter, which adds AI Search, $199/month, or $165.17 annually, tracking 50 daily prompts. Pro+ $299, or $248.17, with 100 prompts. Advanced $549, or $455.67, with 200 prompts. Add-ons start at $10 to $90 a month. Verified 15 August 2026.
Semrush does more things than anything else here. Keyword research, competitor analysis, site audit, backlinks, paid search, social, local, plus AI visibility. If you want one login for everything and you will genuinely use half of it, that breadth is worth paying for.
Read the plan names carefully, because this is where the pricing has been reorganised. The $139 plan is SEO only. AI Search, which is the thing you probably came for, starts at $199. That $60 difference buys 50 daily tracked prompts, which is actually a reasonable allowance and better value than Ahrefs at the same job. It is just not what the entry price implies.
The add-ons deserve a look too. Several things people assume are included are $10 to $90 a month extra, and a stack assembled without checking gets expensive quietly.
Who it is wrong for: solo publishers. You will use a fraction of it and pay for all of it, and Ahrefs plus a cheap visibility tracker does more of what you need for less.
3. Surfer: the one that helps you write the page
Discovery $49/month with 120 create or optimize documents and 10 pages tracked. Standard $99 with 360 documents and 25 AI prompts refreshed weekly. Pro $182 with 360 documents, 50 prompts refreshed daily, and 5 brand workspaces. Peace of Mind $299 with unlimited documents and 100 prompts. AI Search Analytics is sold standalone at $158/month for 100 prompts. Verified 15 August 2026.
Ahrefs and Semrush tell you what to target. Surfer sits inside the draft and tells you what the page is missing while you write it, which is a different job and the one most publishers actually feel the lack of.
The honest description is that it is a structured checklist informed by what currently ranks. Used well, it stops you publishing something thinner than the competition without noticing. Used badly, it turns into keyword stuffing by numbers, and you can spot sites that have done that.
Discovery at $49 with 120 documents is the right starting tier for most publishers. Note the AI prompt tracking only begins at Standard and refreshes weekly rather than daily, which for a fast-moving topic is a meaningful difference.
Who it is wrong for: writers who already know their subject deeply. If you are the expert, an optimisation score will push you toward the shape of everyone else’s article, and being the same as everyone else is not a strategy.
4. Frase: the cheapest serious way to brief
Starter $49/month, or $39 billed annually, with 10 articles a month, 50 audit pages, 1 seat and 1 site. Professional $129, or $103 annually, with 40 articles, 250 audit pages, 3 seats and 5 sites. Scale $299, or $239 annually, with 100 articles, 1,000 pages, 5 seats and 10 domains. FraseCMS hosting is included with 100,000 page views a month. Verified 15 August 2026.
Frase does the research-to-brief step: pull the pages currently ranking, extract what they cover, and produce an outline you or a writer can work from. That is the least glamorous part of content production and it is where the hours go.
At $39 a month on annual billing it is the cheapest thing here that does real work, and the Starter tier’s limits are honest about who it is for. Ten articles a month is a genuine publishing cadence for a small site rather than a token allowance.
The multi-site limits are worth noting if you run more than one property, since Starter covers one site and Professional covers five. Publishers with a small portfolio hit that ceiling before they hit the article limit.
Who it is wrong for: teams already paying for Surfer or Semrush’s content tools. There is real overlap and buying both is a common way to spend $150 a month on one job.
5. Otterly: the cheapest way to find out if you are being quoted
Lite $29/month, or $25 billed annually, tracking 15 prompts. Standard $189, or $160 annually, tracking 100. Premium $489, or $422 annually, tracking 400. Covers ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, with Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode as paid add-ons. Verified 15 August 2026.
This does one thing. It watches a set of questions and reports which AI engines answer them by naming you, naming a competitor, or naming nobody.
The case for it is arithmetic. Fifteen tracked prompts for $29 is enough for a small publisher to cover their money pages, and getting the same coverage inside a big platform means moving up a tier or buying an add-on that costs several times more. If AI visibility is the specific thing you want to measure, buying it from a company that only does that is cheaper.
Do check which engines are included before you commit. The base plans cover four, and Claude, Gemini and Google’s AI Mode are add-ons, so the engine your audience actually uses may not be in the price you were quoted.
Who it is wrong for: anyone hoping the report tells them what to change. It tells you the score, not the fix. Pair it with something that looks at the page.
Publishers this list will not help
Local businesses. Your problem is the map pack and reviews, which is a different toolset entirely.
Ecommerce stores. Product and category page optimisation has its own shape, and the platforms here are aimed at articles.
Enterprise SEO teams. You need log file analysis, crawl budget management at scale and integration with a data warehouse. That is a different budget and a different list.
Anyone hoping tools replace knowing the subject. Answer engines quote sources that say something specific and verifiable. Software that helps you produce the average of what already ranks is, structurally, helping you produce something not worth quoting.
Considered, and left off
Clearscope. Excellent content optimisation, priced well above Surfer, and aimed at teams with a content budget rather than publishers running their own site.
Profound and the enterprise AI visibility platforms. This is where the serious money in AI search tracking is going, and it is sold by demo to brands rather than published for publishers. Ask again when someone puts a price on a page.
Google Search Console. Free, essential, and not an AI tool, which is the only reason it is not ranked. If you are not reading it weekly, buy nothing until you are.
Screaming Frog. Still the best technical crawler for the money and largely untouched by the AI wave. Buy it if your problem is technical rather than editorial.
Questions publishers ask us
What does it cost to track whether ChatGPT cites me?
From $29 a month with Otterly for 15 prompts. Inside a bigger platform it costs a lot more: Semrush wants $199 rather than $139, Ahrefs includes five prompts on a $129 plan and sells Brand Radar from $199, and Surfer sells AI Search Analytics standalone at $158 for 100 prompts. The capability is similar. The packaging is what you are paying for.
Do I need both an SEO platform and an AI visibility tool?
For now, probably yes, and that is annoying. The platforms’ included allowances are too small to be useful and their dedicated products are priced as separate purchases. A sensible small-publisher stack is Ahrefs Lite at $129 plus Otterly Lite at $29, which is less than Semrush’s AI tier alone.
Is AI search actually taking my traffic?
Check rather than assume, because it varies enormously by topic. Informational queries with a short factual answer are the most affected. Anything requiring a decision, a comparison or trust in who is speaking still sends people through. Search Console will show you the shape of it for free before you buy anything.
What is the cheapest stack that does the job?
Search Console, Frase Starter at $39 a month annually, and Otterly Lite at $29. Under $70 a month covers briefs, research and citation tracking. Add Ahrefs when competitor and backlink data starts deciding what you publish.
Should I optimise for AI engines or for Google?
Mostly the same work, with one difference that matters. Answer engines quote pages that answer directly and carry clean structure, so burying the answer under 600 words of preamble now costs you twice. Say the thing, then explain it.
Will AI kill affiliate and content sites?
It is killing the ones whose value was ranking for a question and answering it adequately. Sites with something specific to say, original testing, or a reason for a reader to trust the byline are being quoted rather than replaced, and a citation is worth something even without the click. The uncomfortable part is that this rewards doing actual work.
See our maintained directory shortlists for content publishers, including tools for finding which old posts are worth saving.
Last reviewed: 15 August 2026. Every price was read off the vendor’s own pricing page on that date. Annual figures for Ahrefs are calculated from the stated 17% discount rather than listed directly. We review this page quarterly.
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