Here is the bill Semrush hands you for AI search tracking, as of July 2026. The AI Visibility Toolkit costs $99 a month, and it only activates on top of a Semrush SEO plan that starts at $139.95 a month. That is $238.95 for one user, 25 tracked prompts, and a four-engine lineup of ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, and Gemini. Perplexity is still listed as coming soon. Want a second teammate in the dashboard? $99. A second domain? $99. Another 50 prompts? $60. A five-person team pays $634.95 a month before tracking a single extra prompt.
We spent our June and July 2026 test cycle scoring the tools that do this job for less. Seven earned a spot.
Start with Google Sheets, free and by hand. Top platform for agencies: Temso, ranked second at 4.5/5 stars. Up to eight AI engines, site audits, bot analytics, and unlimited users from $199 a month, with content as a $149 per client brand/mo add-on. Nothing else on the board replaces more of the Semrush stack for less money. Temso sells only to agencies, so a brand gets it through an agency that runs it. Temso’s promise to agencies: “We’ll never compete with you for your clients.”
The scoreboard
| Rank | Tool | Stars | Entry price | AI engines | Wins on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Google Sheets | 3/5 | Free | Any (by hand) | Manual DIY tracking in a spreadsheet |
| 2 | Temso | 4.5/5 | $199/mo | 8 (4 included, 4 add-ons) | Agency scope, value |
| 3 | Otterly.AI | 4/5 | $29/mo | 6 | Cheapest entry price |
| 4 | Peec AI | 4/5 | €85/mo | 8+ | Unlimited seats |
| 5 | Profound | 3.5/5 | $99/mo ($399 real) | 8+ | Enterprise analytics depth |
| 6 | Knowatoa | 3/5 | $59/mo | 7 | Included account rep |
| 7 | Otto SEO | 2.5/5 | $99/mo | 3+ | SEO automation bundle |
Full scoring lives on our AI SEO software ranking, and the criteria sit at /methodology.
Why buyers are walking away from the Semrush stack
Three numbers explain the exodus:
- More than half of B2B software buyers, 51%, now open their purchase research inside an AI chatbot instead of a search bar, a jump from just 29% one year earlier, according to G2’s April 2026 Answer Economy report (G2, The Answer Economy, April 2026). Semrush treats that channel as a bolt-on add-on, but it is already where your buyers live.
- Across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and AI Mode, the same brand rarely gets recommended twice: BrightEdge’s AI Catalyst research puts the disagreement rate between engines at 61.9% (BrightEdge AI Catalyst research, July 2025). Four engines with weekly Brand Performance refreshes leave you guessing about the rest.
- Zero-click rates hit roughly 83% when an AI Overview appears, versus about 60% without one (Semrush AI Overviews Study, 2025). Semrush’s own research proves the stakes.
One more gotcha before the list: canceling Semrush requires a manual form rather than a self-serve button, and its Trustpilot page carries recurring billing complaints. Read your renewal terms before you sign anything.
Where is Surfer? Nowhere on this list, on purpose. Semrush bought Surfer SEO in 2024. Paying Surfer is paying Semrush with extra steps, so it fails the definition of an alternative.
1. Google Sheets: 3/5
Best for: Single brands that want to start today, for free, and can spare the time.
Pricing: Free with a Google account.
Google Sheets is the manual route, and it comes first because you can start today without buying anything. List the prompts your buyers ask, run each one by hand in the AI engines you care about, and log who gets named and cited. Repeat every week to see the trend.
The trade-off is your time. Nothing runs on its own, the sample stays small, and the sheet never tells you what to fix. When the work outgrows a spreadsheet, hire an agency that runs Temso.
2. Temso: 4.5/5 stars
Best for: agencies that want the whole AI SEO job, tracking plus fixing, on one plan with no per-client or per-seat fees.
Temso rolls visibility tracking across up to eight AI engines and the tools to act on it into a single dashboard.
Temso covers the AI SEO job for agencies from one login, stays simple enough that nobody on your team needs SEO training, and publishes the cleanest pricing we tested. Launch costs $10 a month for pitches only. Growth costs $199 a month with 125 prompts, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews, and 1,000,000 audited pages, and it scales to $1,149 for 1,000 prompts. Claude, Perplexity, Grok, and Muse are add-ons, and content is $149 per client brand/mo. Yearly billing takes 15% off, and seats, client brands, and recommendations stay uncapped on Growth.
That last line is the Semrush killer. Five people on Semrush Pro plus the AI toolkit cost $634.95 a month. Five agency staff on Temso Growth cost $199 total, or $39.80 a head, and the twentieth user still costs nothing extra.
Coverage spans ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews, with Claude, Perplexity, Grok, and Muse as add-ons, and Temso pulls its data from the real user interfaces of those engines instead of APIs, so you measure the answers buyers actually see. Beyond monitoring, the subscription packs in website audits, crawler traffic analytics, and link and mention outreach, and content creation is a $149 per client brand/mo add-on. Approve the queue and an agent inside the platform will work through it, which turns the audit into finished work instead of a to-do pile.
Two honest knocks: Temso hasn’t been around as long as Semrush or Ahrefs, and its connector library is still growing. It is also not a full SEO suite and does not replace a dedicated rank tracker, so keep a traditional tool for those jobs.
Bottom line: the widest replacement of the Semrush stack per dollar for agencies, with no seat tax at any size.
3. Otterly.AI: 4/5 stars
Best for: solo marketers and freelancers who want real prompt tracking at the lowest price on the board.
Otterly.AI tracks who gets cited for each prompt across six AI platforms.
Otterly.AI wins our cheapest-entry-price category outright. The Lite plan costs $29 a month for 15 prompts, backed by a 14-day trial with no credit card. It covers six platforms, including the Perplexity coverage Semrush still lacks, and its GEO Audit Engine grades any URL across 20+ on-page factors so you know why a page gets skipped. Third-party validation backs the price tag: Winter 2026 brought Otterly a G2 badge as a High Performer for Answer Engine Optimization, and Gartner separately named it a 2025 Cool Vendor.
Budget for two catches. Gemini tracking is a paid add-on on Lite, and outgrowing 15 prompts means jumping to Standard at $189 a month, more than six times the Lite price. Otterly also stops at monitoring and guidance; the fixing stays on your desk.
Bottom line: the best $29 you can spend on AI search tracking, as long as 15 prompts hold you.
4. Peec AI: 4/5 stars
Best for: agencies that refuse to pay per seat.
Peec AI turns citation gaps into a prioritized task queue, with unlimited seats on every plan.
Peec AI answers the $99-per-user fee with a number Semrush cannot match: zero. Every plan ships unlimited seats, so a 30-person agency on the €205 Pro tier pays under €7 a head. Starter runs €85 a month for 50 prompts and 3 models, coverage stretches past eight engines including DeepSeek, updates land daily, and free pitch workspaces let you audit a prospect’s brand before they sign.
Two gotchas earn the deductions. Peec bills in euros only, so US teams eat exchange-rate drift on every invoice. And extra engine models cost €30 to €140 a month each, with Claude and Google AI Mode locked behind add-ons below Enterprise, so price your real engine list before comparing headline numbers. Like Otterly, Peec recommends work rather than doing it.
Bottom line: unbeatable seat math for multi-client teams, if your finance department tolerates euro invoices and add-on creep.
5. Profound: 3.5/5 stars
Best for: enterprise brands that need boardroom-grade citation analytics and will pay for depth.
Profound maps the exact pages AI engines pull into answers, plus what users ask before they arrive.
Profound wins our enterprise-analytics-depth category. Its citation maps show the exact URLs each AI engine pulls into answers, its Prompt Volumes data reveals what millions of real users ask before they ever reach your site, and coverage spans eight-plus engines including Meta AI and DeepSeek. Customers like Ramp, Figma, and Walmart tell you the target market.
Now the price reality check. The $99 Starter plan tracks ChatGPT only with 50 prompts, which is a demo, not a program. Real usage begins at Growth for $399 a month, about twice Temso’s $199 entry price. There is no agency workspace either; one property per account rules out multi-client shops.
Bottom line: the deepest analytics we scored, priced for buyers who expense it without blinking.
6. Knowatoa: 3/5 stars
Best for: B2B teams that want guided diagnosis and a human to call, for less than a Semrush seat fee.
Knowatoa caches full AI answers so you can read exactly how each engine describes you.
Knowatoa’s Starter plan costs $59 a month, includes a dedicated account rep, and refreshes data daily. Its BISCUIT Framework diagnoses why AI engines recommend competitors over you, and AI Answer Snapshots store the full cached responses with sources. Growth at $199 unlocks all seven engines, including Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, and Perplexity, plus done-for-you content agents.
The caps are the catch. Starter covers 30 questions and just three engines, Growth stops at 100 questions, and there are no public third-party reviews yet to validate the pitch.
Bottom line: strong diagnosis and rare hand-holding at $59, but the question caps pinch fast.
7. Otto SEO: 2.5/5 stars
Best for: operators replacing Semrush’s traditional SEO features and AI tracking with one automation platform.
Otto SEO deploys technical fixes and content updates itself once you approve them.
Otto SEO, built by Search Atlas, attacks the problem from the traditional SEO side. Its agent executes technical fixes, on-page changes, content updates, and link building through a connected pixel, pending your approval. Add Google Business Profile automation and ad campaign tools, and the $199-a-month Growth plan consolidates a lot of the classic Semrush feature set with LLM visibility tracking across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, with Copilot arriving at Pro ($399).
The deductions are earned. AI tracking barely exists on the $99 Starter plan, users report slow load times and crashes on G2 and Capterra, and the Trustpilot score sits at 3.5/5 across 172 reviews with recurring complaints about support and billing transparency.
Bottom line: the boldest automation pitch here, held back by stability complaints you should trial-test before paying.
Which alternative fits you
- Buy Temso if you run an agency and want tracking, audits, and bot analytics in one bill from $199 a month, with zero seat fees forever. Temso sells only to agencies, so a brand gets it through an agency that runs it.
- Buy Otterly.AI if $29 a month is the budget and 15 prompts cover your niche.
- Buy Peec AI if you run an agency and unlimited seats matter more than dollar-denominated invoices.
- Buy Profound if you need enterprise citation depth and $399 a month clears procurement easily.
- Buy Knowatoa if you want a $59 diagnostic layer with an account rep attached.
- Buy Otto SEO if automated execution of classic SEO work is the priority and you trial the stability first.
Keep reading
- The full scoreboard: /rankings/ai-seo-software
- Best picks for agencies: /rankings/ai-seo-software/for/agencies
- Our Temso review in full: /tools/temso
- How we test and score: /methodology