Compared 6 AI Visibility Tools: $199 Ahrefs Actually Costs $974/Mo at Scale
Informal-Dust4499 · reddit · 2026-09-04
A hands-on comparison of 6 AI visibility/AEO tools reveals misleading headline pricing: in a standard mid-market setup (1 brand, 5 engines, 200 prompts, 3 seats), Scrunch costs $417/mo and Ahrefs $974/mo despite its $199 ad price; the $29/mo Otterly lands at $638/mo due to engine add-ons. The tools also measure different things—consumer panel prompts (Profound), 317M+ clickstream (Semrush), UI scraping (Peec/Ahrefs), and crawler logs (Scrunch/Otterly)—so numbers aren't comparable. The post includes a who-is-it-for breakdown and a free DIY stack (GSC AI report, GA4 AI referrals, server log bot checks) to diagnose whether your problem is visibility, retrieval, or crawlability.
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