You should never pay $199 a month for software you have not touched. That is the whole test behind this list. We took the eight AI SEO platforms from our main scoreboard, chased down every trial, and wrote down what each vendor gives you for free: how many days, whether they demand a card, and what stays locked behind the paywall anyway.
The headline finding: only three of the eight confirm a self-serve, no-credit-card free trial as of July 2026. The rest hide the terms or push you toward a paid first month. We name names below.
Trial terms at a glance
All terms checked in our June and July 2026 test cycle. Vendors change trial rules without notice, so verify on the pricing page before you enter a card.
| Tool | Free trial | Credit card? | Trial limits and gotchas |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Sheets | Manual | Manual | Manual DIY tracking in a spreadsheet |
| Temso | Yes, on both plans | Not stated | Agency-only; Growth from $199/mo: 125 prompts, 4 engines included, 1,000,000 pages audited/mo, unlimited users, content add-on $149 per client brand/mo |
| Otterly.AI | 14 days | No | Feeds into the $29/mo Lite plan, which caps you at 15 prompts; Gemini costs extra on Lite |
| Peec AI | None published | n/a | Free pitch workspaces let agencies audit prospect brands without paying; regular use starts at 85 euros/mo, billed in euros |
| Surfer | Yes, on all plans | Not published | Length and card terms not published; multi-engine daily AI tracking needs the Pro plan at $182/mo billed yearly |
| Profound | None published | n/a | Cheapest paid test is Starter at $99/mo, which covers ChatGPT only with 50 prompts |
| Knowatoa | 7 days | No | Trial runs on Starter terms: 30 questions, 3 engines; free visibility audit needs no sign-up at all |
| Writesonic | None published for GEO plans | n/a | AI visibility starts at $249/mo for 3 engines; the Action Center sits behind Enterprise pricing |
| OTTO SEO | 7 days | No | Full feature access during the trial; LLM visibility tracking still requires the Growth plan at $199/mo standard |
Bottom line: if a no-card trial is your filter, your shortlist is Otterly.AI, Knowatoa, and OTTO SEO. If total value per dollar is your filter, keep reading.
The scoreboard
| # | Tool | Our rating | Entry price | Free trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Google Sheets | 3/5 | Free | Manual |
| 2 | Temso | 4.5/5 stars | $199/mo | Yes, on both plans |
| 3 | Otterly.AI | 4/5 stars | $29/mo | 14 days, no card |
| 4 | Peec AI | 4/5 stars | 85 euros/mo | Pitch workspaces |
| 5 | Surfer | 3.5/5 stars | $49/mo (yearly) | Yes, terms unpublished |
| 6 | Profound | 3.5/5 stars | $99/mo | No |
| 7 | Knowatoa | 3/5 stars | $59/mo | 7 days, no card |
| 8 | Writesonic | 3/5 stars | $249/mo (GEO) | No for GEO plans |
| 9 | OTTO SEO | 2.5/5 stars | $99/mo | 7 days, no card |
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
Temso’s visibility dashboard pulls data from real AI user interfaces, not APIs.
Temso ranks second, after the free manual method in Google Sheets, and it is the top platform for agencies the boring way: it covers more of the job than anything else we tested, with no per-client or per-seat fees. One subscription tracks how client brands show up across ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews, with Perplexity and other engines as add-ons, and it pulls data from real user interfaces rather than APIs, so you see what actual people see. Then it goes past monitoring: full website audits, crawler traffic analytics, and link and mention outreach all live in the same app, and content creation is a $149 per client brand/mo add-on. For the fixes it flags, an AI SEO agent inside the platform will apply them on your behalf, so the queue does not just sit there waiting on you. Temso sells only to agencies, so a brand gets it through an agency that runs Temso.
The trial situation is simple. Temso offers a free trial on both plans. Growth then runs from $199 a month for 125 prompts and 1,000,000 audited pages a month, and it caps neither client brands, seats, nor recommendations, so an agency can load every client brand into one account. Prompt tiers climb to 1,000 prompts at $1,149, Launch at $10 covers pitches only, and yearly billing takes 15% off. The per-seat math is the kicker: with unlimited users, a 10-person team pays $19.90 a head on Growth.
Honest cons: Temso is a younger brand than Semrush or Ahrefs, and its integration catalog is smaller than the big suites carry.
Bottom line: a free trial, then $199 a month for the easiest all-in-one platform for agencies, goes much further than 14 free days of a monitoring-only tool.
3. Otterly.AI: 4/5 stars
Otterly.AI tracks prompt-level citations across six AI search platforms.
Otterly.AI has the best trial on this list, full stop: 14 days, no credit card, as of July 2026. It also owns the cheapest entry price of the eight at $29 a month for the Lite plan. That buys prompt-level citation tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, and Copilot, plus a GEO audit engine that grades any URL across 20+ on-page factors.
The gotchas: Lite caps you at 15 prompts, Gemini costs extra at that tier, and the next step up is a steep jump to $189 a month for Standard. There are no execution workflows, so the tool shows you what is broken and leaves the fixing to you.
Bottom line: the safest first tool to try in AI SEO, and the cheapest to keep, as long as 15 prompts is enough.
4. Peec AI: 4/5 stars
Peec AI’s daily tracking covers 8+ engines, including long-tail models like DeepSeek.
Peec AI skips a classic trial but offers something smarter for agencies: free pitch workspaces, which let you audit a prospect’s brand without paying a cent. Regular pricing starts at 85 euros a month, and here is the contract gotcha: Peec bills in euros, so the exact dollar charge on your card moves with the exchange rate.
Among the pure monitoring tools, Peec wins the unlimited-seats crown. Every plan includes unlimited users, which keeps agency costs flat as teams grow. Coverage spans 8+ engines with daily updates, and the Actions feature turns citation gaps into a prioritized task queue. Watch the add-ons though: specific extra models cost 30 to 140 euros a month each on non-Enterprise tiers.
Bottom line: agencies get a free test lane and unlimited seats; solo buyers get euro billing and model add-on creep.
5. Surfer: 3.5/5 stars
Surfer scores your draft in real time while its AI Tracker watches citations.
Surfer is the content winner of this group. Its Content Editor scores your draft in real time for both Google rankings and AI citations, and it offers a free trial on all plans as of July 2026. The catch: Surfer does not publish the trial length or card requirement, which is exactly the kind of fine print this list exists to flag. Check before you enter payment details.
Pricing starts at $49 a month billed yearly for Discovery. The trap sits in the middle tiers: Standard costs $99 a month but limits you to ChatGPT alone on a weekly refresh cycle. Daily tracking across all five engines, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, and Gemini, waits for Pro at $182 a month.
Bottom line: best write-and-track workflow here, but demand the trial terms in writing and budget for Pro if you want real multi-engine tracking.
6. Profound: 3.5/5 stars
Profound’s citation maps show exactly which URLs AI engines pull into answers.
Profound has the deepest enterprise analytics in this comparison: visual citation maps, Prompt Volumes data showing what millions of users actually ask AI engines, and coverage that stretches across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini, Meta AI, and DeepSeek. Ramp, Figma, Walmart, and MongoDB run it.
The trial picture is where your wallet takes the hit. No free trial is published as of July 2026. The $99 Starter plan looks like a test path but only covers ChatGPT with 50 prompts, too thin to judge the product. The real evaluation starts at Growth for $399 a month, and with no multi-account support, agencies are out entirely.
Bottom line: the analytics leader, but testing it properly costs $399, and there is no free on-ramp.
7. Knowatoa: 3/5 stars
Knowatoa’s snapshots store full cached AI answers with citation sources.
Knowatoa gives you the friendliest free entry after Otterly: a 7-day trial with no credit card, plus a free AI visibility audit that requires no sign-up at all, as of July 2026. Starter costs $59 a month and includes a dedicated account rep, which nothing else at this price offers.
Read the limits before you commit. Starter covers only 30 questions and 3 engines (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode). Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, and Perplexity all require the Growth plan at $199 a month, and the 100-question cap there still pinches multi-brand teams.
Bottom line: the best low-risk test in the budget tier, as long as 3 engines and 30 questions cover your week one.
8. Writesonic: 3/5 stars
Writesonic pairs its AI writer with GEO tracking across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.
Writesonic publishes no free trial for its GEO plans as of July 2026, and the paid entry stings: $249 a month for Basic gets you 3 engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews) and monitoring without clear optimization guidance. Sentiment analysis needs Growth at $499, and the Action Center, the feature that turns data into a to-do list, is Enterprise-only.
The writing-only plans start at $49 a month, but those exclude AI visibility entirely, so do not mistake them for a cheap GEO test. The built-in content generation is the draw: you act on visibility gaps without switching tools.
Bottom line: pay $249 to find gaps, $499 to understand them, and Enterprise money to get marching orders. Test elsewhere first.
9. OTTO SEO: 2.5/5 stars
OTTO SEO deploys fixes through a connected pixel, pending your approval.
OTTO SEO (Search Atlas) posts a generous trial on paper: 7 days, no credit card, full feature access as of July 2026. Its pitch is automation, an agent that executes technical fixes, on-page changes, and content updates through a connected pixel once you approve them.
Two gotchas knocked it down our board. First, the $99 Starter plan (promotional $79) barely includes AI search tracking; LLM visibility needs Growth at $199 standard. Second, user reviews repeatedly flag platform stability issues, slow load times, and billing transparency complaints, and its Trustpilot score of 3.5/5 across 172 reviews sits well below its G2 rating.
Bottom line: take the free week and push it hard; that trial is exactly the stress test this platform needs to pass before you pay.
How we graded these trials
We ran our test cycle in June and July 2026: we signed up where self-serve trials existed, mapped every published pricing page, and weighted value for money above raw feature count, the same rules as our full methodology. Every trial length, card rule, and plan limit comes from vendor pricing pages as of July 2026. When a vendor hides its terms, we say so.
The verdict
If you refuse to spend a dollar before testing, start with Otterly.AI: 14 days, no card, $29 a month afterward. If you run this for clients and want one platform that monitors, audits, and executes, start a free trial of Temso, with Growth from $199 a month. Temso sells only to agencies, so a brand gets it through an agency that runs Temso. Since Growth drops the caps on client brands, seats, and recommendations, you can test it on your whole client list.
Bottom line: free trials tell you how a vendor treats you before the sale. Three of eight passed clean. The full head-to-head rankings live on our scoreboard.