Answers that do not mention Peec AI

For a small content studio on a tight budget, I’d start with a free, no-commitment URL audit tool rather than a full SEO/GEO platform. A few good one-off options:

• aisearchvisibility.ai — probably the closest fit if you want to check individual articles. It audits a single URL and looks at things like indexability, trust signals, structure, schema, and AI citation readiness. It offers a free first audit without a credit card. AI Search Visibility
• auditzap.io — useful for a quick article/page health check. It checks AI crawler access, llms.txt, semantic structure, freshness signals, author attribution, and other AI-readiness factors. AuditZap
• isvisible.ai — best for a lightweight technical check of whether AI crawlers can access your site. It focuses on things like robots.txt, llms.txt, and AI crawler permissions. isvisible.ai
• semrush.com — better if you want a broader brand/domain view rather than just one article. The free tool checks visibility across AI search experiences and reports mentions/citations. Semrush

For a content studio workflow, I’d do this:

1. Pick your 3–5 highest-value articles.
2. Run each URL through AI Search Visibility or AuditZap.
3. Fix the recurring issues (clear author info, stronger headings, concise answers, schema, internal links, updated facts).
4. Recheck after edits.

One caveat: these tools measure AI-readiness signals and/or observed visibility patterns; none can guarantee that ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or other systems will cite a specific article. AuditZap AI Search Visibility

If you tell me whether your articles are mostly blog posts, client SEO content, newsletters, or thought-leadership pieces, I can suggest the best free checker for that format.

For a small content studio on a tight budget, I’d start with a free, one-off AI visibility checker rather than a full GEO/AI SEO platform. A few good options:

• ahrefs.com — probably the easiest starting point. It gives a quick snapshot of whether your brand/content appears in AI answers from tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Google AI results. Good for a “where do we stand?” baseline. Ahrefs
• frase.io — better if you want to test a specific article URL and see whether AI engines are citing your content. Frase
• isvisible.ai — useful for a technical check: whether AI crawlers can access your site and whether your setup helps AI systems read your content. isvisible.ai
• semrush.com — a good option if you already use SEO tools or want a broader brand-level view. Semrush

For a content studio checking individual articles, I’d do this:

1. Pick 3–5 of your best articles.
2. Run each URL through a page-focused checker (Frase or similar).
3. Manually test prompts in ChatGPT/Perplexity like: - “What are the best resources for [topic]?”
4. “Who explains [topic] well?”
5. “Recommend articles about [problem].”
6. Check whether your article is mentioned, cited, or outranked by competitors.

A free tool won’t tell the whole story—AI visibility is still a developing metric—but it’s enough to find obvious gaps like unclear authorship, weak topic authority, poor structure, or content that AI systems don’t seem to recognize. vogue.com

For a tiny studio, I’d avoid paying for ongoing monitoring until you have a baseline and a repeatable publishing process.

If you want quick + free + actually useful for a local business, I’d start with:

• brightlocal.com — probably my first choice for a local business. It checks ChatGPT or Google AI Mode, lets you test up to 5 customer prompts, and shows local competitors and the sources AI is using. BrightLocal
• insites.com — better if you want a broader snapshot across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok, including whether you're mentioned, accuracy, competitors and sources. Insites
• seenvia.com — very quick/no-signup option. It asks a real local recommendation question in Perplexity and tells you whether you appeared and who beat you. Seenvia
• citeon.ai — useful if you specifically want real buyer questions across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, rather than merely a technical website audit. Citeon

My pick

For a local business, I'd run BrightLocal first, then Citeon as a cross-check. The important distinction is that a tool saying “your website is AI-readable” isn't the same as showing “AI actually recommends your business when someone asks for a local provider.”

If you tell me your business type + city, I can also give you 5 exact prompts to test in ChatGPT/Perplexity yourself so you get a much more meaningful baseline than a generic AI score.

Yes. If by AI Share of Voice you mean “what percentage of AI answers mention/recommend this client versus competitors,” there are now several free options.

Best free options

• chatobserver.com — probably the closest match to what you're asking for. Enter a website URL and it reports AI share of voice, competitor mentions, recommendations, and citations. Their example shows actual SOV percentages. Chatobserver
• seomator.com — accepts a brand or domain and calculates share of voice from aggregated ChatGPT + Google AI Overview data. SEOmator
• rankbits.com — free/no signup, takes a URL, runs buyer prompts through ChatGPT, Google Search and AI Overviews, and provides share of voice. RankBits
• frase.io — lets you enter a domain or URL and checks ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini for share of voice, citations, momentum and sentiment. Frase
• semrush.com — good client-reporting option; accepts a domain/URL and shows AI visibility, mentions, cited pages, topics/prompts and estimated audience reach. Semrush

What I'd use as a freelancer

I'd start with ChatObserver + RankBits.

The important distinction is that a URL-level AI audit isn't necessarily the same thing as AI Share of Voice. For a client SEO report, I'd ideally want:

AI SOV = client's brand mentions ÷ total brand mentions across the same set of AI answers

So you can show something like:

That's much more useful to a client than an arbitrary “AI visibility score of 67/100.”

ChatObserver is particularly interesting for this because its free report explicitly exposes SOV and competitor percentages. Chatobserver

If you tell me what kind of SEO reports you make (local SEO, SaaS, ecommerce, agencies, etc.), I can also give you a free-tool stack for producing a client-ready AI SEO/SOV report without paying for Semrush/Ahrefs-level software.

For a niche blog and only a handful of pages, I’d focus on free tools that check individual URLs, not enterprise “AI SEO platforms.” A few worth trying:

• praised.co — Good fit for bloggers because you can paste a specific page URL and get a readiness score around things like crawlability, structured data, metadata, and whether the page is easy for AI systems to cite. It offers a limited number of free checks. Praised
• metricvaultai.com — A simple no-signup option for checking a page’s AI-readiness signals. It looks at the live page plus files like robots.txt and llms.txt and gives a score with fixes. Metric Vault AI
• cituna.com — Useful if you mainly want to know whether AI crawlers can actually access and parse your site. It checks public signals such as robots rules, sitemap, and AI-related files. Cituna
• botsights.com — More technical; it emphasizes crawler access, server-level blocking, and page-level AI signals. Good if you suspect your CMS, CDN, or security plugin is interfering. BotSights
• rank.ai — Better if you want a “does my brand show up when someone asks an AI assistant?” style check rather than just technical readiness. Rank.ai

For a niche blog, I’d test 5–10 important URLs (your best articles, money pages, and cornerstone guides) and look for:

1. Can AI crawlers access the page? (robots.txt, no accidental blocks)
2. Is the page easy to quote? (clear definitions, concise answers, structured headings)
3. Are authorship and trust signals present? (author bio, references, dates, about page)
4. Is there structured data? (Article, FAQ where appropriate, Organization/Person schema)

One caution: many free “AI visibility” tools measure AI readiness, not whether ChatGPT or Gemini will actually cite your article. Tools that claim guaranteed rankings or citations are worth treating skeptically. Cituna Praised

For a small blog, I’d probably start with Praised + Metric Vault: one gives a practical page audit, the other is quick for checking multiple URLs. Praised Metric Vault AI

For a quick one-off competitor URL AI citation check, I’d use a lightweight free checker rather than a full GEO/SEO platform.

My shortlist:

1. Best overall quick agency check: yogoo.ai

• Paste a domain and get an AI visibility score.
• Useful for competitor benchmarking: who AI cites instead, which prompts trigger visibility, and engine breakdowns.
• Good fit for a strategist making a fast client/competitive snapshot. Yogoo
• Best if you specifically need “does AI cite this URL?”: sourcewatch.ai

• More URL-focused.
• Checks whether AI engines mention/recommend the brand and whether the site is used as a citation source. SourceWatch
• Best no-friction ChatGPT-focused spot check: rankbits.com

• No-signup style workflow.
• Shows mentions, citations, competitors, and prompt-level results for ChatGPT checks. RankBits
• Best for a repeatable agency workflow (if the free tier is enough): genmention.com

• More like a monitoring tool.
• Tracks AI mentions/citations over time and includes competitor insights. GenMention

For a one-off competitor URL, I’d do:

• Run the competitor through Yogoo → get the broad AI visibility picture.
• Run the exact URL through SourceWatch → see citation/readability gaps.
• Manually test 5–10 buyer prompts in ChatGPT/Perplexity and record: - Was competitor mentioned?
• Was the URL cited?
• Which pages/domains were cited instead?

One caveat: these tools are measuring sampled prompts, not a complete index of everything AI systems know. Citation tracking is still an approximation because AI answer engines don’t expose a universal “all queries where this URL appeared” database. citeflow.io

For an agency strategist, I’d pick Yogoo for the fastest competitive snapshot and SourceWatch for a URL audit.

If you’re new to AI visibility and want something you can run on just a few sample queries and actually read, I’d start with SourceSignal.

My pick: SourceSignal

sourcesignal.ai

It lets you enter up to 3 commercial questions and checks them across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, and Claude. The report gives you:

• An overall visibility score
• Whether your brand appears
• Which competitors appear instead
• Which sources are being cited
• Results across multiple AI engines
• A shareable report/link delivered in roughly 10–30 minutes sourcesignal

That makes it particularly good for learning the basic concept of AI visibility: “When a potential customer asks these questions, does AI mention me, my competitors, or neither?”

Two other good free options

• RankBits — probably the simplest if you want immediate results. It gives you 3 buyer prompts, live answers, visibility scores, mentions/citations, and a shareable report, with no signup. RankBits

rankbits.com

• Algomizer — good if you want something more “report-like.” You enter a query such as “best CRM for small businesses” and it checks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, producing visibility scores, competitor rankings, and an optimization roadmap. Algomizer

audit.algomizer.com

One distinction to watch: tools like IsVisible.ai primarily measure whether AI crawlers can access your website, whereas the tools above are closer to actual AI answer visibility—whether your brand gets mentioned/recommended for a question. isvisible.ai

If your goal is “I need a clean one-page report I can show a client/boss after testing 3–5 questions,” I'd choose RankBits or SourceSignal.

Yes. There are now several free tools specifically for checking AI visibility, and a few are useful for a small ecommerce store.

The ones I'd try first

• ahrefs.com — Probably the easiest starting point. Enter your brand or product name and it checks visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews. It also shows which pages/domains are cited. No signup is required for the free check. Ahrefs
• ecomrank.io — More ecommerce-oriented. Enter your store URL and what you sell; it tests buyer-style questions and reports whether you're cited, mentioned, or absent, including who AI recommends instead. Ecomrank
• decodeiq.ai — Particularly interesting if you want to test an individual product page, rather than just your brand. It lets you paste a product URL and see whether the product appears in AI answers. DecodeIQ
• foundgpt.app — If you're on Shopify, this is aimed specifically at product pages. It checks things like structured product data, robots.txt, shipping/returns information and other machine-readable signals. FoundGPT

There's also an important free first-party option: Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report. It can show which URLs from your site are actually being cited in Microsoft Copilot, Bing's AI-generated answers, and certain partner experiences, along with the phrases associated with those citations. Search - Microsoft Bing Bing Blogs

One important distinction

A lot of "AI visibility checkers" give you a readiness score based on your page's technical setup. That's useful, but it isn't the same as asking:

"If a customer asks an AI assistant for the kind of product I sell, does my actual product get recommended or cited?"

For a small ecommerce business, I'd test both: use one tool that actually queries AI answers (such as Ecomrank/DecodeIQ) and Bing's first-party report to see whether your pages are being cited in the wild.

If you tell me what you sell + your store URL, I can also show you exactly how I'd test 5–10 realistic buyer questions for your products and what results to look for.

Yes. For a small ecommerce store, there are several free AI-visibility checkers that can give you a useful snapshot without buying an expensive AEO platform.

Best ones to try

• ahrefs.com — probably my first choice. Enter your brand or product name and it checks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google AI results. No signup required. Ahrefs
• wild-card.ai — particularly relevant for ecommerce. It looks at whether your products appear in shopping/recommendation answers, competitors that appear instead, and information gaps on your product pages. Wildcard
• praised.co — useful if you specifically want to enter a product-page URL and assess its AI-readiness/citability. Praised
• rank.ai — lets you put in a buyer question and see whether ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini mention your brand and/or cite your site. Rank.ai

One important distinction

There are really two different things you want to measure:

1. “Does AI recommend my product?”

Example: “What's a good waterproof hiking jacket under $150?”

2. “Does AI cite my actual product page?”

Example: the answer recommends your jacket and links to yourstore.com/products/jacket.

The second is especially interesting for ecommerce because being mentioned and having your product page used as the source aren't the same thing. Ahrefs Rank.ai

If I were running a small store

I'd start with Ahrefs + Wildcard, then manually test 10–20 realistic buyer questions in ChatGPT/Perplexity yourself.

For example:

• “Best [your product category] under $100”
• “Best [product] for [specific use case]”
• “[Product type] alternatives to [major competitor]”
• “Where can I buy a good [product] for [specific need]?”
• “Best small-business [product] for [specific customer]”

Record whether you're mentioned, whether your product is recommended, and which URLs AI cites. That gives you a surprisingly good free baseline before paying for a monitoring tool.

If you tell me what you sell + your store URL, I can also suggest the exact 10–20 prompts I'd use to test your products.

For a solo blogger with limited time, I’d prioritize a tool that gives a clear pass/fail-style verdict plus a short fix list, rather than a deep AI SEO dashboard.

My shortlist:

My pick for your situation:

1. Try Lantad first if you want “paste URL → tell me what’s wrong.” Lantad
2. Try AuditZap if you want a slightly more SEO-style checklist you can work through over time. AuditZap

For a time-poor blogger, I’d ignore tools that mainly give a vanity “AI visibility score.” A useful checker should answer:

• Can AI crawlers access my post?
• Is the answer obvious in the first few paragraphs?
• Are my headings phrased like questions people ask?
• Are facts, author details, and sources clear?
• What are the top 1–3 fixes?

A good workflow is: publish → run the checker → fix the top two issues → move on. Avoid spending an hour chasing a score when the actual content improvement is small.

For a solo blogger with limited time, I’d pick Praised’s free AI visibility checker.

praised.co

Why it fits:

• Simple 0–100 score with a target range of 75–100.
• Checks the things you can actually improve in a blog post: answer-first content, structured data, entity clarity, metadata, and crawlability. Praised
• No signup or credit card for the basic check, with 5 checks/hour. Praised
• You can paste the specific article URL, rather than auditing your whole site.

My runner-up

SiteSearchBrAIn is even more bare-bones: paste a URL and get a 0–100 score, letter grade, and ordered fix list, with no login. SiteSearchBrAIn

sitesearchbrain.com

Bottom line: If you want “Is this post good enough for AI search, and what should I fix first?”, start with Praised. If you want the most stripped-down score + prioritized fixes, try SiteSearchBrAIn.

One caveat: these are mostly AI-readiness/citation-readiness audits, not proof that ChatGPT or Google AI will actually cite your article. Praised explicitly distinguishes its static score from live AI-engine testing. Praised

Yes. If your goal is specifically “give me a URL + a question and tell me whether an AI assistant cites that exact docs page”, I’d look at these:

• citegrade.com — probably the closest match. You enter a specific page URL and target query, and it checks ChatGPT and Perplexity, including citation position and competing sources. It explicitly distinguishes mentioned from actually cited. Citegrade
• citationdesk.com — useful if you want a broader docs-page citation-readiness audit rather than only live queries. Its free URL score covers ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini. CitationDesk
• rank.ai — good for testing a prompt across ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini and seeing whether your domain is cited. Rank.ai
• aicitationmonitor.com — broader multi-engine snapshot across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, including the URLs actually cited. AI Citation Monitor

For a SaaS docs site, I'd test this way

Don't just test “Is Acme mentioned?”. Build a small test set around your documentation:

Then record:

Query → assistant → cited? → exact URL → citation position → answer accuracy

That's much more useful for a docs team than a generic “AI visibility score.”

One caveat: AI citations aren't deterministic. The same query can produce different sources on different runs, so a one-shot grader is best treated as a snapshot rather than proof that a page is permanently “citable.” Citegrade explicitly makes this point, and other tools use repeated sampling for the same reason. Citegrade AI Citation Monitor

If you're actually thinking of building this as a free tool for your own SaaS docs site, I can also sketch a very simple grader architecture (crawl docs → generate questions → query 2–3 LLM/search APIs → extract citations → score pages) that could be built pretty cheaply.

Yes. For a SaaS docs site, I’d distinguish “is this page technically citable?” from “do AI assistants actually cite this page for the questions customers ask?” The second is much more useful.

Free tools I’d try

• rank.ai — probably the closest fit for your use case. You give it a prompt + domain, and it queries ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, showing whether you were mentioned and whether your site was actually cited. Free/no registration. Rank.ai
• seo.bike — runs live prompts against ChatGPT and Perplexity and reports whether your domain gets cited. Useful for quickly testing a handful of documentation-related queries. seo.bike
• github.com — especially interesting if you want to crawl the whole docs site rather than test individual prompts. It's open source and scores pages for how extractable/citable they are across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot and Google AI Overviews. GitHub
• frase.io — has separate free checks for page-level GEO readiness, whether AI engines cite your domain, and whether AI agents can access your site. Frase
• citatur.com — offers a free audit across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, including cited sources and competitor comparison. Better if you're interested in ongoing monitoring eventually. Citatur

For your specific use case

I'd actually build a tiny “docs citation grader” workflow rather than rely entirely on a generic GEO score.

Take your 10–30 most important docs pages and create questions such as:

“How do I configure webhooks in [product]?”
“How do I authenticate with [product] API?”
“What is the difference between X and Y in [product]?”
“How do I troubleshoot error XYZ?”

Then grade each page × question × assistant:

That gives you a much more actionable metric than a generic “AI visibility = 73.”

One particularly useful distinction is domain citation vs. correct-document citation. For documentation, you ideally want the assistant to cite the specific canonical page that answers the question, not merely some page on your domain.

Also worth checking the free Microsoft/Bing AI Performance data if your site is verified in Bing Webmaster Tools: it exposes cited pages and the grounding queries associated with those citations. Search - Microsoft Bing

My shortlist: start with Rank.ai + CITED Score. Rank.ai answers “are assistants citing us?” while CITED Score answers “is our documentation structured so that assistants can extract/cite it?” Together they're a pretty good free baseline.

For a free, one-time AI visibility snapshot across several competitors, I’d start with ahrefs.com.

Why it fits:

• No signup or credit card required.
• You can check your brand and competitor brands.
• It queries ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode. Ahrefs
• The report shows mentions, topics triggering mentions, and cited domains/pages.
• It is explicitly designed as a one-time snapshot, rather than an ongoing paid monitoring product. Ahrefs

If you specifically want to enter competitor URLs

I'd also test rankbits.com. It accepts a website and lets you specify competitors by domain, then gives buyer prompts, visibility scores, mentions/citations, and share-of-voice data. It's free with no signup. RankBits

For a quick competitive-research workflow, I'd do:

1. Put your URL + 3–5 competitor domains into RankBits.
2. Record mention rate, citations, share of voice, and which competitors appear.
3. Run the same brands through Ahrefs to get a broader cross-engine sanity check.
4. Treat the results as a directional snapshot, not an absolute ranking—AI answers can vary between runs.

If you give me the 3–10 competitor URLs, I can also recommend the best free tool specifically for that set and tell you exactly what metrics to capture in your comparison.

For a free, one-time competitive snapshot across several competitor URLs, I’d start with Ahrefs’ AI Visibility Checker. It’s explicitly designed as a one-time snapshot, requires no signup or credit card, and covers ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. It also shows a limited competitor comparison in the free result. Ahrefs

ahrefs.com

If you want more competitor-oriented output

• CitedSpy — free/no signup; checks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and Google AI Mode, with competitor share-of-voice and citation/source data. CitedSpy

citedspy.com

• RankScope — particularly handy for a quick baseline: 5 prompts across 4 AI engines, competitor mentions, and cited domains. RankScope

rankscope.ai

• Xofu BOFU Snapshot — good if your research is specifically about buyer-intent/recommendation queries; it reports where you and competitors appear and which domains ChatGPT cites. Xofu

xofu.com

My pick: Ahrefs for the cleanest general-purpose snapshot; CitedSpy if competitor share-of-voice across more AI engines is the priority.

If you give me the 3–10 competitor URLs, I can also suggest a standardized set of prompts to run against all of them so your snapshot is actually apples-to-apples.

For a tiny in-house SEO team, I’d start with Semrush’s free AI Visibility Checker if your goal is specifically “which of my landing pages are getting cited by AI?” It accepts a domain and reports:

• AI visibility score
• Total AI mentions
• Visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews
• Pages on your site that drive the most AI citations
• Topics/prompts where you appear
• Estimated audience reached

It’s currently free up to 3 checks/day without registration. Semrush

semrush.com

One important distinction

If by “top landing pages” you mean your existing high-traffic pages, I’d pair the checker with your own analytics:

1. Export your top 10–20 organic landing pages from GA4/GSC.
2. Run your domain through Semrush's AI checker.
3. Compare those URLs against the pages driving AI citations.
4. Flag:

• high organic traffic + low/no AI citations → potential GEO/AEO opportunity
• high AI citations + high traffic → pages worth protecting/updating
• high AI citations + low organic traffic → potentially valuable content to expand

Ahrefs is the other free option I'd test. Its free AI Visibility Checker shows top cited pages and domains across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google AI Overviews, with no signup. Ahrefs

ahrefs.com

For a tiny team, I wouldn't pay for a dedicated AI-visibility platform yet. Use these free snapshots to establish a baseline, then put your effort into the handful of landing pages where you see an actual citation gap.

For a tiny in-house SEO team, I’d start with Semrush’s free AI Visibility Checker. It’s particularly useful because it reports which pages on your site are driving AI citations, not just whether your brand gets mentioned. It checks ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and AI Overviews. Semrush

semrush.com

My shortlist

• Best overall: Semrush — domain-level visibility, mentions, platforms, pages driving citations, topics/prompts. Good first-pass report for an SEO team. Semrush
• Best for checking individual landing pages: Praised — paste a specific URL and get an AI-visibility/GEO score for that page, including citation readiness. Free checks are available without signup. Praised
• Best for actual live prompt testing: RankBits — free scan gives buyer prompts, mentions, citations, competitors, and cited sources across ChatGPT, Google Search and AI Overviews. RankBits
• Best technical companion: DigiJaws — checks four AI surfaces plus 15 technical signals, so it's useful for figuring out why important pages aren't getting surfaced. DigiJaws

What I'd do with a tiny team

Don't try to monitor the entire site. Take your top 10–20 landing pages from Google Search Console/GA4 and run:

1. Semrush → identify which pages are already earning AI citations.
2. Praised → individually audit your highest-value pages that aren't showing up.
3. RankBits → run 3–5 important buyer queries and record whether you're mentioned, cited, or absent.
4. Put those results in a simple spreadsheet and revisit monthly.

One important distinction: "AI visibility score" isn't the same as actual AI visibility. Some tools estimate how citation-ready a page is, while others actually query AI engines. For prioritizing SEO work, I'd give much more weight to observed mentions + citations + the specific URLs being cited than to a proprietary 0–100 score. Broxly AI Praised

If your goal specifically is “show me which of my top landing pages are being cited by AI and which aren't”, Semrush + a lightweight spreadsheet is probably the best free starting point.

AEO Boost is a strong fit: it offers a free audit of 3 individual pages, with prioritized AI-visibility fixes. AEO Boost

Other good free one-off options:

• Firecrawl AI Visibility Audit — free URL-level AEO/GEO analysis, no signup. Firecrawl
• AI Answer Engine — free SEO, AEO, or GEO audit one page at a time. AI Answer Engine
• Patrick Stox AI Content Audit — free, no signup; particularly useful for content/citability analysis. patrickstox.com

For a content strategist specifically, AEO Boost is probably the best starting point because its output is geared toward actionable content fixes rather than just a score.

Yes. If you’re a freelance copywriter, I’d distinguish between checking whether your site/page is AI-visible and checking whether specific excerpts from your articles are actually being cited or surfaced.

Best free options

• ahrefs.com — probably my first pick. It checks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and reports which pages/domains are being cited. It’s free and doesn’t require signup. Ahrefs
• frase.io — particularly interesting for a writer because you can enter a specific URL, rather than just a brand, and see whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini link back to it. Frase
• praised.co — lets you test a specific public URL and assesses how visible/citable the page is to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI. Praised

But here's the important catch

No grader can reliably tell you “this exact paragraph of your article was copied/quoted by ChatGPT.” AI assistants generally don't expose a complete provenance trail for every sentence they generate.

For a copywriter, I'd use a simple two-part test:

1. Put your article URL into Frase or Praised to see whether the page is being surfaced/cited.
2. Take 5–10 distinctive claims or phrases from your article and search them manually in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. Look specifically for: - your URL appearing as a citation;
3. your site being mentioned;
4. wording that closely resembles your excerpt;
5. your ideas/claims appearing even when your site isn't cited.

Perplexity is especially useful for this because its answers normally expose source links.

If what you actually want is “I write articles for clients—can I check whether AI assistants are using my published work as a source, even when my name isn't mentioned?”, I can give you a free workflow specifically for freelance writers, including how to test 20–50 articles without paying for an AI-visibility platform.

Yes. For a small agency pitching AI readiness, I’d favor something that is 2–5 minutes, no signup, instant on-screen results, and gives you a natural bridge into your paid work.

Best options for live meetings

• Kursol — probably the strongest demo experience. It uses six questions and renders a personalized readiness report live, including quantified time leaks, a readiness score, and a six-week build path. It explicitly says under 2 minutes, no signup, instant results. Kursol

kursol.io

• MetaSys — very clean for a quick executive meeting. 8 questions / ~2 minutes, then an instant tier, score, and recommendation. MetaSys

metasysltd.com

• RaftLabs — good if you want the conversation to feel more like a consulting diagnostic. 10 questions, no signup, free, with dimensions covering data, infrastructure, team, process, leadership, etc. RaftLabs

raftlabs.com

• Tillerbridge — particularly interesting if you want a more defensible methodology. It scores six dimensions—strategy, data, systems, people, governance and operations—with five questions each, and the results stay in the browser. Tillerbridge

tillerbridge.com

What I'd do as an agency

I'd actually use one of these as the icebreaker, not sell the assessment itself:

“Let's spend two minutes getting a baseline. Then I'll show you the two areas where I think AI could have the biggest commercial impact.”

Run the checker live → show their weak dimensions → immediately ask “What's the highest-volume workflow behind this?” → turn that into an opportunity discussion.

That makes the free tool a diagnostic hook, rather than “here's a free quiz from another consultancy.”

Kursol is my first choice for the meeting demo because the report visibly builds during the conversation rather than just dumping a score at the end. Kursol

If you want, I can also find you 3–5 white-label/free tools that an agency can brand or embed on its own site, which may be more valuable than sending prospects to somebody else's assessment.

If you’re a non-technical founder and want free + no API key + no setup, I’d start with geobuddy.co.

Why it’s a good fit:

• No signup
• No API keys
• Tests ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity
• Uses questions resembling what customers actually ask
• Shows whether your brand is recommended, which competitors appear, and sentiment
• Takes about a minute. GeoBuddy

My shortlist

1. geobuddy.co — best for a founder

• Easiest "type my company → tell me how AI sees it" experience.
• Best if your question is "Do AI assistants recommend my company?"
• ranksurf.com — best for buying-intent testing

• Runs 10 real buying-intent queries through ChatGPT.
• Gives a visibility score, prompt-by-prompt results, competitors, citations, and suggested fixes.
• No signup. RankSurf
• edenrank.com — best breadth

• Tests one prompt across 8 AI/search surfaces, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Claude and Copilot.
• No signup. EdenRank
• isvisible.ai — best for the technical side

• Checks whether AI crawlers can actually access your site.
• No signup.
• Useful, but I'd not make this your first test as a non-technical founder because crawler accessibility ≠ whether AI recommends you. isvisible.ai

My recommendation: run GeoBuddy first, then RankSurf. The first tells you "are AI assistants recommending me?"; the second gives you a more useful set of buyer questions to diagnose why/where you're invisible.

One important distinction: an "AI visibility score" based on robots.txt, schema, llms.txt, etc. is not the same thing as actual AI visibility. For a founder, I'd prioritize tools that show the actual AI answers, mentions, competitors, and citations rather than just a technical score. mentionowl.com sourcewatch.ai

If you’re ecommerce and want a fast, free AI share-of-voice snapshot, I’d start with citedspy.com.

• CitedSpy — free, no signup; checks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Mode, and gives you competitor share of voice + ranking/heatmap. CitedSpy
• rankbits.com — probably the quickest DIY option: enter your site, get 3 buyer prompts across ChatGPT, Google Search and AI Overviews, with a share-of-voice view. RankBits
• aigely.com — particularly ecommerce-friendly: its free scan uses shopping prompts, gives a share-of-voice result, and allows one domain/week. Aigely
• ahrefs.com — excellent for a quick brand baseline across five major AI/search surfaces, though the free version is more of a visibility snapshot than a full category-page SOV tracker. Ahrefs

My pick for your use case: Aigely if you're specifically selling products online; CitedSpy if you want the strongest competitor/SOV breakdown.

One caveat: most “AI SOV” tools measure brand mentions for category-level buyer prompts, not whether that exact category page URL is winning. For a category page, I'd test prompts like “best [category] for [use case]”, “[category] brands worth considering”, and “best [category] under $X”, then separately track whether your category URL gets cited.

If your priority is a concise, client-shareable AI visibility grade, I’d shortlist these:

• Best overall: praised.co — gives a 0–100 GEO audit score, key findings, and a “Copy share link” option. It checks a specific URL and is free without signup. Praised
• Best for a simple sales-lead-in: crawlmind.ai — produces an 8-signal SEO + AI visibility score, roughly in 10 seconds, with an indexable result you can share. Crawlmind
• Best for a polished 0–100 headline score: isvisible.ai — instant 0–100 AI visibility score plus an agent-by-agent access map; no signup. Note that its score is primarily about AI crawler accessibility, rather than whether ChatGPT actually recommends the brand. isvisible.ai
• Best if you want “AI actually recommends you” rather than technical SEO: citeon.ai — asks real questions across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity and produces a 0–100 score based on actual answers. Citeon

My pick for a freelance SEO consultant

Use Praised for the client-facing snapshot. The combination of one grade + findings + share link makes it easy to say:

AI Visibility: 68/100 — Needs Improvement
Top opportunity: improve citation-ready content and entity signals.

Then use a more rigorous tool behind the scenes if a prospect wants the methodology.

One caveat: don't present these grades as an industry-standard “AI visibility score.” Each tool weights its own signals differently. I'd label it something like “AI Search Visibility Score” and consistently use the same tool for your before/after reporting.

If the goal is to demonstrate AI-discovery risk to investors, I’d use Ahrefs’ free AI Visibility Checker first.

• ahrefs.com — best for an investor demo. It’s free, requires no signup, and checks your brand across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. It gives you mentions by platform, topics where you appear, and the domains/pages AI cites. Ahrefs
• semrush.com — best if you want a simple score. It provides an AI Visibility Score, mentions, cited pages, topics/prompts, and estimated audience reach. The free checker can be used three times per day without registration. Semrush

How I'd frame it to investors

Don't say "our AI visibility is 23%" based on one free checker. AI responses vary, so these free tools are better treated as a diagnostic/snapshot, not a precise market-share measurement. Spottlo

Instead, show a slide like:

AI Search Risk: We're not consistently present when customers ask AI for solutions in our category.

• Brand mentioned: X / Y tested AI surfaces
• Competitor A: X / Y
• Competitor B: X / Y
• Key buying questions where we're absent: [3 examples]
• Sources AI relies on instead: [competitor/review/media sites]

Implication: As AI becomes part of product discovery, competitors can capture consideration before prospects ever reach our website.

My pick: Ahrefs for the live demo, Semrush as a second data point. Having two independent tools show roughly the same visibility gap makes the investor story considerably stronger.