Free AI visibility checkers compared: what each one checks, and when to pay

Disclosure: Dottpace makes two of the tools on this page, the free audit and the AI bot checker. We've tried to describe every tool, ours included, only by what its own public page says, and to say plainly where the others are stronger. We read each tool's page on October 20, 2026, without signing up for anything, and we did not run the tools on a test site for this version of the guide. Free limits change often, so check the tool's page before you rely on a number here.

What does a free AI visibility checker actually measure?

"AI visibility" means whether assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews mention your brand and link to your site when people ask questions in your field. Free checkers get those answers in one of three ways, and the way matters more than the score at the end:

• A stored prompt database. The tool has already asked a very large set of prompts and stored the answers; your check looks up where your brand appears. Ahrefs and Semrush work this way. It's broad and instant, but the prompts are theirs, not the questions your buyers ask.
• An AI model asked directly. The tool asks one or more AI models about your brand or your field and scores the replies. HubSpot and Mangools work this way. It's quick, but the models it asks may not be the version of ChatGPT or Gemini your buyers use.
• Live answers to questions about your site. The tool asks buyer-style questions in the assistants now and records who is named and linked. Dottpace's free audit works this way. It's specific to you, but it's a handful of questions and one run.

How do the free checkers compare?

Ahrefs Free AI Visibility Checker

Ahrefs' free checker is the broadest free option we found. Its page lists ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google AI Overviews (its FAQ adds AI Mode), says "No signup required", and says there's no limit on how many brands you can check. The prompts come from Ahrefs' own data and are "search-backed", derived from what people actually search for.

Stronger than the others at: coverage. It lists the most assistants of any free tool here, including Copilot, without an account, and it shows which domains and pages are cited alongside you.

Limits: it's a preview, showing the top 5 results per section. The full data, history and competitor comparison are in Ahrefs Brand Radar, a paid product; its page showed us plans from €179 a month (prices may show in your currency).

Good for: a quick, wide first look at a brand that already has some search demand.

Semrush AI Search Visibility Checker

Semrush's free checker covers ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode and AI Overviews, works "without registering or creating an account", and allows three checks a day. It draws on the database behind Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit, "26M+ prompts and responses", which Semrush says it updates daily.

Stronger than the others at: context. Its report lists mentions and citations, the pages of your site that are cited most, your best-performing topics and a competitor comparison.

Limits: three checks a day, no Perplexity, and a single visibility score that blends many things. Deeper analysis and ongoing monitoring are in the paid toolkit.

Good for: seeing which of your pages AI answers cite, and how you compare with a few competitors.

HubSpot AI Search Grader

HubSpot's grader asks ChatGPT (its FAQ names GPT-5.4 mini), Perplexity and Gemini how they see your brand, and turns the replies into a score out of 100 across five parts: sentiment (up to 40 points), presence quality, brand recognition, share of voice and market competition. It's free and needs no account; the full report asks you to fill in a short form.

Stronger than the others at: tone. It's the only free tool here that focuses on how assistants describe you (positive, neutral or negative) and where they place you in your category.

Limits: the page says the results describe how the models characterize a brand from what they know, are AI-generated rather than reviewed, and reflect one moment. A single score can hide which questions you're missing from.

Good for: brand and marketing teams who care about how AI describes them, not only whether it names them.

Mangools AI Search Grader

Mangools asks several AI models prompts for the niche you describe and reports your visibility (the share of prompts where you appear in the top 20), your average position and an "AI Search Score" from 0 to 100, weighted by each model's market share. Without an account it uses three models: ChatGPT (GPT-5 Nano), Mistral Small and Llama 3.3. A free account adds Claude (Haiku 4.5), Gemini (2.5 Flash Lite) and DeepSeek.

Stronger than the others at: model variety, including open models no other free tool here checks.

Limits: the page says usage is limited but doesn't give the cap. The models it names are small API versions; the ChatGPT or Gemini app that searches the web can answer differently.

Good for: comparing how different models rank you against competitors in a niche.

Dottpace free audit and AI bot checker

Dottpace's free audit asks a small set of buyer-style questions about your kind of business in ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews (the example report shows 3 questions in each, 9 answers, one run). For each answer it shows whether you're named and linked, who is named instead, and any fact that doesn't match your own pages. Around the answers it checks which AI bots can read your site, what keeps pages out of Google, phone speed and your business facts. It gives no overall score; each issue comes with its evidence and pages. It asks for your email, confirmed with a code, because the report is sent there. Perplexity answers and backlinks are not in the free audit; they're in the paid plan.

The free AI bot checker doesn't read AI answers at all. It answers the question that comes first: can the AI search bots read your site? It reads your robots.txt for 17 bots, quotes the line that decides each one, and requests your home page as a browser, as GPTBot and as OAI-SearchBot. No sign-up. Why that matters is in robots.txt for AI crawlers: in our study of AI bot blocking, some sites block ChatGPT's search bot only through a catch-all rule, possibly without knowing it.

Where others are stronger: Ahrefs covers more assistants for free, and Ahrefs and Semrush draw on far larger prompt sets, with search demand behind them. HubSpot says more about tone. The audit needs an email, and a few questions in one run can miss answers that vary.

Good for: small businesses and site owners who want to see what assistants say on their own buyers' questions, with the technical reasons next to it.

What about Otterly, Peec AI and other trackers?

These are paid trackers that ask the prompts you choose on a schedule, rather than free checkers. They're worth knowing because some offer a trial:

• Otterly.AI says it offers a free trial with no credit card; its FAQ says 7 days and a sign-up prompt says 14, so check before you start. Its cheapest plan, Lite, is listed at $29 a month for 15 search prompts, tracking ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot, with Claude, AI Mode and Gemini as add-ons. It also lists free single-purpose tools, such as an AI crawler simulation.
• Peec AI shows a "Start Free Trial" button and says it covers ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. Its pricing page didn't show prices, trial length or prompt counts when we read it, so we can't confirm them here (unverified).
• Dottpace AI Search is part of the paid plan: 50 AI questions across 7 assistants on the one-site plan, asked every week, next to your rankings and the changes you make (see pricing).

Which free checker should you use?

• "Does AI mention my brand at all?" Start with Ahrefs for coverage, then Semrush for cited pages and competitors.
• "How does AI describe us?" HubSpot's grader.
• "Can ChatGPT even read my site?" The AI bot checker, then the fixes in OAI-SearchBot vs GPTBot.
• "What do assistants say when my customers ask?" Dottpace's free audit, or ask the questions yourself in a private window, as described in how to get your business recommended by ChatGPT.
• "Am I cited in Google's AI answers?" Semrush or Ahrefs for a wide view, then the page-level checks in how to get cited in Google AI Overviews.

Running two or three of them costs nothing but a few minutes, and the differences between them are informative in themselves.

When is a free check enough, and when should you track?

A free check is enough to answer "are we in the picture at all?" and to find a blocked bot or a wrong fact. It isn't enough to tell whether something you changed made a difference. AI answers vary from run to run and change on the assistants' own schedules, so one snapshot before and one after can mislead you. To judge a change, you need the same questions asked the same way, several times, before and after; the method is in how to tell if an SEO change worked. That repetition is what paid trackers charge for.

Sources

• Ahrefs, Free AI Visibility Checker (read October 20, 2026).
• Semrush, AI Search Visibility Checker (read October 20, 2026).
• HubSpot, AI Search Grader (read October 20, 2026).
• Mangools, AI Search Grader (read October 20, 2026).
• Otterly.AI, pricing and home page FAQ (read October 20, 2026).
• Peec AI, pricing (read October 20, 2026; prices not shown).