What does an AI visibility tool measure?
An AI visibility tool asks AI assistants a set list of buyer questions, called prompts, every day or week, and records whether your business is named. Most also show the tone of each mention, which websites the answers cite, and your share of voice: how often you are named compared with competitors on the same prompts.
Two numbers drive the price: how many prompts you follow and on how many assistants. Peec AI, for example, counts 50 prompts on three assistants, asked daily, as 4,500 AI answers a month.
A South African business should check that a tool can ask from South Africa, because buyers here ask for local businesses. Otterly.AI includes unlimited countries on every plan, and Semrush lists South Africa among the regions its overview reports cover. The pricing pages of Peec AI, HubSpot and Profound don't name South Africa: ask them before you pay. Four of the five price in US dollars, which means the rand cost moves with the exchange rate.
Source: HubSpot, AEO product page and FAQ, checked November 2026
Source: Peec AI, pricing page, checked November 2026
Source: Otterly.AI, pricing page, checked November 2026
Source: Semrush Knowledge Base, “AI Visibility Toolkit”, regions covered, checked November 2026
Which AI visibility tools fit a small business budget?
Otterly.AI is the cheapest way for a small business to try AI visibility monitoring: its Lite plan was US$29 a month when checked in November 2026. That buys 15 prompts asked daily on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews (the AI summary above Google's results), Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode cost extra. Otterly built Lite for solo marketers and small teams, and every plan allows unlimited team members.
HubSpot AEO, named for answer engine optimisation, sells on its own for US$50 a month. It covers ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, with a visibility score, the tone of each mention, share of voice and the sources behind each mention. HubSpot labels it beta, an early version still being finished. It does most for businesses already on Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise, where it suggests prompts from your customer records and lets you write a blog post to fill a gap without leaving HubSpot.
Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit suits a business that already uses Semrush for search. For US$99 a month, with no free trial, it asks 25 prompts daily on platforms including ChatGPT and Google AI Mode. It adds prompt research and a site audit that flags anything stopping crawlers (the programs AI companies use to read websites) from reading your pages. If you use neither HubSpot nor Semrush, start with Otterly.AI's Lite plan.
Source: Otterly.AI, pricing page (US dollars, excluding tax), checked November 2026
Source: HubSpot, AEO product page (US dollars), checked November 2026
Source: Semrush Knowledge Base, “AI Visibility Toolkit”, checked November 2026
Which AI visibility tools are built for marketing teams?
Peec AI and Profound are built for marketing and search teams that follow many prompts. Peec AI's Starter plan, at US$95 a month, asks 50 prompts daily on any three of ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI, with unlimited users. Peec aims it at search and content managers new to AI search, and higher plans add prompts, countries and projects.
Profound publishes no paid price. Its free seven-day trial asks 50 prompts daily on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, from a set Profound picks for your industry that you can't edit. After that, plans are custom and cover up to nine AI engines, including Claude, Perplexity and DeepSeek, with your full history. For a small business, the trial is a free week of daily data.
Source: Peec AI, pricing page (US dollars), checked November 2026
Source: Profound, pricing page and FAQ, checked November 2026
When is a free one-off check enough for a small business?
A free one-off check is enough for a small business that wants to know where it stands today: whether AI assistants name it, who they name instead, and what to fix first. Until you change something, daily monitoring measures the same odds of being named, day after day.
Ongoing monitoring pays once you are acting on the results, by publishing pages, earning reviews or getting mentioned in the press, and want to see which changes move the answers. Paid tools also add which websites the answers cite, which shows where being listed or reviewed would help most.
Repeats matter because AI answers shift. In a January 2026 SparkToro study, ChatGPT and Google's AI gave the same list of brands under 1% of the time when the same prompt was repeated. How often you are named over many repeats is the steadier measure. A researcher from Gumshoe.ai, which sells AI monitoring tools, worked on the study.
What does the free Loomis findability check show?
The Loomis findability check is free and needs only your website address, with no sign-up. It asks Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok a few questions a buyer might ask about what you sell, several times each, and shows every answer word for word with your name marked. Asking more than once matters for the reason SparkToro found: one answer on its own can mislead.
The assistants answer without web search, from what they learned in training, so the check shows how well each one already knows your business. It also checks which of your pages Google has indexed (lists in its results) and which sites, such as Reddit and YouTube, your buyers use to discuss businesses like yours. Once you know what to fix, the guide “How to get your business recommended by AI” covers the work.
Does Loomis monitor your AI visibility over time?
Loomis runs the findability check when you ask, with no schedule and no history chart. Each website gets a limited number of free checks in a set period, and asking again within it shows you the last result. Loomis Social accounts can run fresh checks as often as their plan allows.
On 1 November 2026, Loomis Social plans started at R249 a month, a launch price half the normal R499. Loomis Social is a full social media workflow, from brand brief to campaign, posts and replies, and the findability check is one part of it.
This is where the paid tools above are stronger. They capture the live answers buyers see, which search the web, along with the sites those answers cite, and they keep your history over time. If you need that, choose one of them.
Source: Loomis Social plans, in rand, checked 1 November 2026
