Answers that name a competitor

If you want a free, one-off check on individual articles, I’d start with AI Search Visibility. It lets you paste a URL and get an AI-readiness score plus prioritized fixes; the free tier currently includes 5 page audits/month, with no credit card required. AISearchVisibility

aisearchvisibility.ai

Two other good zero-cost options:

• AuditZap — especially useful for articles because it checks the actual URL for crawler access, semantic structure, freshness, author attribution, schema, and question-style headings. No signup, free forever. AuditZap
• Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker — better if you want to see whether your brand appears in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google AI Overviews. It's a free one-off check with no signup. Ahrefs

For a small content studio on a tight budget: use AI Search Visibility for the article itself, then manually test a few target questions in ChatGPT/Perplexity to see whether the article actually gets cited. That gives you a useful baseline without committing to a monthly GEO/AI-monitoring subscription.

For a small content studio on a tight budget, I’d start with a free one-off checker rather than a full AI visibility platform. The best choice depends on whether you want to check a specific article/page or your brand’s presence in AI answers.

Best free options for a one-time article check

1. Firecrawl AI Visibility Audit — best for individual articles
   • Paste a URL to a blog post/article.
   • Checks things like AI crawler access, structure, schema, content citability, and “AI readiness.”
   • No signup required for the basic audit. www.firecrawl.dev
   • Good fit if your studio publishes lots of client articles and wants quick page-level feedback.

2. HubSpot AEO Grader — best for a quick brand snapshot
   • Useful if you want to know whether AI systems recognize and describe your company/client brand.
   • It’s more about brand visibility than judging the quality of one article. cituna.com

3. Semrush AI Search Visibility Checker — best if you already do SEO work
   • Gives an AI visibility snapshot and competitor context.
   • Better for measuring presence across AI search rather than auditing a single piece of content. cituna.com

My pick for your situation

For a small content studio, I’d use:

1. Run your strongest article through Firecrawl’s audit first.
2. Check your brand/client name with HubSpot’s AEO Grader.
3. Manually test a few prompts in ChatGPT/Perplexity, such as:
   • “What are the best [service/category] companies?”
   • “Who publishes reliable content about [topic]?”
   • “What sources should I read for [topic]?”

Free tools are mostly snapshots, not ongoing monitoring, so use them to find obvious weaknesses rather than as a permanent ranking system. cituna.com

For a content studio, the biggest wins usually come from making articles easier for AI systems to quote: clear headings, direct answers near the top, original data/examples, author credibility, and well-structured pages. www.firecrawl.dev

For a local business, I’d start with insites.com.

Why it’s a good fit:

• Free and no signup
• Enter your website, rather than just a brand name
• Checks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Grok
• Gives a local AI visibility score
• Shows whether AI can find you, whether your business details are accurate, and how positively you're described. Insites

Two other quick ones worth trying

• ahrefs.com — best if you want a broader brand-level check across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google AI Overviews. Free, no signup. Ahrefs
• cheers.tech — particularly geared toward local service businesses and checks real buying-intent queries involving your city across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Cheers

My recommendation: run Insites first, then manually ask ChatGPT/Perplexity something like “What are the best [your service] businesses in [your city]?” Don't search for your own business name—that tests whether AI recommends you, which is the more useful metric.

If you tell me your business type + city, I can also suggest the 5–10 exact AI queries I'd use to benchmark you against local competitors.

Yep. If you're making client-facing SEO reports, there are a few free options worth knowing about:

• ahrefs.com — probably my first choice. You can enter a brand/domain, and it shows AI mentions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews. The free report is limited, but it's genuinely useful for a client snapshot. Ahrefs
• rankbits.com — particularly relevant to what you're asking: it accepts a website, checks several AI surfaces, and explicitly reports share of voice, mentions, citations, and competitors. It's free/no signup and uses 3 buyer prompts. RankBits
• therankagent.com — another simple free option. You enter the website + category/search intent + optional location, and it calculates your AI recommendation share versus competitors from five buyer questions. RankAgent
• bluejar.ai — offers a free audit with 60 prompts and specifically includes AI share-of-voice/competitor benchmarking. More agency-oriented, although ongoing monitoring is paid. BlueJar

For your use case

I'd use RankBits or Ahrefs for a quick report.

One important distinction: "AI visibility score" ≠ "AI share of voice." If you're putting a number in a client's monthly SEO report, I'd label it something like:

AI Share of Voice: 18%
Your brand appeared in 18% of relevant AI responses/impressions compared with tracked competitors.

That's more meaningful than saying "AI visibility = 72/100." Ahrefs, for example, defines AI SOV as your percentage of AI impressions relative to competing tracked brands. Ahrefs Help Center

If you tell me what kind of clients you have (local businesses, SaaS, ecommerce, etc.), I can also find you the best genuinely-free tool that lets you put the result into a recurring client report, rather than just a one-off checker.

Yes — there are a few free options now, and some are actually useful for client SEO reports.

Best free options

1. RankBits AI Visibility Checker — probably the closest match to what you're asking for. You enter a website and it checks ChatGPT, Google Search, and Google AI Overviews, then gives you a visibility score, share of voice, mentions/citations, competitors, and a prompt-by-prompt breakdown. It says it's free with no signup. rankbits.com

2. Lantern free AI visibility report — enter a URL and get a free report covering ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, including visibility scores and share of voice versus competitors. No account required. www.asklantern.com

3. RankAgent AI Share of Voice Matrix — specifically designed around AI SOV. You give it the business/category + website and it asks five buyer questions, then calculates your share of recommendations against competitors. Free/no login for the snapshot. www.therankagent.com

4. Frase AI Visibility Checker — accepts a domain or individual URL and checks whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini cite it. It also calculates share of voice, citations, momentum and sentiment. The free checker is more limited than the paid platform. www.frase.io

5. Semrush AI Visibility Checker — another good client-report-friendly option. It accepts a domain/URL and reports an AI visibility score, mentions, citations, platforms and topics/prompts. www.semrush.com

For your use case

If you're a freelancer and want something you can drop into an SEO report, I'd start with:

RankBits → RankAgent → Lantern

They're better suited to producing a quick "AI Share of Voice: X%" type metric rather than just an AEO technical audit.

One important distinction: AI "share of voice" isn't a universal standardized metric. Each tool defines/calculates it from its own set of prompts, AI engines, competitors, and sampling. So for client reporting, I'd label it something like "AI Search Share of Voice (tool methodology)" rather than presenting it as an objective industry-wide percentage.

If you tell me what you want the report to look like (e.g. URL → AI SOV % → competitors → citations → ChatGPT/Perplexity/Gemini breakdown), I can find the best genuinely-free tool for that exact workflow, including ones that let you run multiple client domains.

Yes. Since you only need to test a handful of blog pages, I’d favor URL-level tools rather than expensive ongoing “AI monitoring” platforms.

• aisearchvisibility.ai — probably my first pick. It audits one URL at a time, gives a citation-readiness score, and has a free first audit with no signup. AI Search Visibility
• frase.io — good for individual articles. It grades a page for AI-search readiness and suggests improvements; the first result is free without signup. Frase
• auditzap.io — useful if you want technical diagnostics: crawler access, semantic structure, schema, freshness, author attribution, etc. It says it's free, with no signup, and accepts individual page URLs. AuditZap
• aisearchready.app — particularly nice for a small blog because it's deliberately plain-English and allows 3 free audits/day. AI Search Ready
• ahrefs.com — better for answering a slightly different question: Does my brand/domain actually appear in AI answers? It checks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Ahrefs

What I'd do for your blog

For each of your 5–10 strongest articles, run AI Search Visibility or Frase and record:

1. AI-readiness/citation score
2. Whether the page is crawlable
3. Whether the article has clear, quotable passages
4. Author/expertise and trust signals
5. Schema/structured data issues
6. Whether the page is actually being cited, not merely technically accessible

That last distinction matters: a page can be perfectly crawlable yet never get cited by ChatGPT or Perplexity.

If you tell me what niche your blog is in, I can also recommend the best 2–3 free checkers specifically for that type of content and explain what scores/results I'd pay attention to.

Yes. For a niche blog and only a handful of pages, I’d favor page-level checkers over expensive ongoing “AI share of voice” platforms.

My picks

1. Frase GEO Score Checker — probably the best starting point. It specifically scores an individual URL for readiness to be cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude, and says the first result is free with no signup. www.frase.io

2. GrowRanko AI Search Visibility Checker — good if you want more technical feedback. It accepts individual blog-post URLs and checks things like crawler access, llms.txt, schema, passage citability, headings, lists/tables, and semantic structure. It currently advertises 5 free checks/day. growranko.com

3. AEOCheck — another strong page-level option. It advertises 25 AEO/GEO checks covering schema, metadata, content clarity, trust signals, and AI readiness, with no signup. www.aeocheck.co

4. Rank.ai AI Visibility Checker — use this for a different question: whether AI assistants actually mention your site. You provide a prompt + domain, and it checks ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini side-by-side for mentions and citations. www.rank.ai

5. Ahrefs Free AI Visibility Checker — useful for a broader brand/domain snapshot across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews. The free version gives a limited report, including cited pages and topics. www.aeocheck.cowww.rank.aiahrefs.com

What I'd do for your blog

For 5–10 articles, I'd run:

Frase → GrowRanko/AEOCheck → Rank.ai

That gives you three complementary signals:

• Can AI understand/cite the page?
• Are there technical/content obstacles?
• Does AI actually mention/cite your site when asked relevant questions?

One important distinction: a page getting a high “AI readiness” score doesn't mean AI engines actually cite it. Those are separate measurements, so I'd avoid tools that collapse them into one magic score.

If you tell me your blog niche + roughly how many pages you want to test, I can narrow this to the best 1–2 free options and suggest the prompts to use for a meaningful visibility test.

For a quick, one-off competitor URL check, I’d use ahrefs.com first.

• Best overall: Ahrefs — free, no signup, and checks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews. It also shows which domains/pages get cited, which is the useful part for competitor research. Ahrefs
• Best if you want a truly URL-centric citation snapshot: rankbits.com — accepts a website URL and reports mentions, citations, competitors, and cited URLs. RankBits
• Best multi-engine quick test: edenrank.com — one prompt across 8 AI surfaces, with the actual answers and citations returned. EdenRank
• Best if you want competitor-vs-competitor benchmarking: yogoo.ai — gives citation rates and the competitors being cited instead. Yogoo

My pick for an agency strategist: Ahrefs for the polished, defensible snapshot; EdenRank if the goal is “show me exactly what this competitor URL gets cited for right now.”

One caveat: these are snapshots, not stable rankings. AI answers are nondeterministic, so for client reporting I'd run the same prompts multiple times rather than treating one check as a definitive citation rate. citationradar.ai

Yes. For a small ecommerce store, there are a few free tools that can give you a rough idea of whether your products are appearing in AI assistant answers (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, etc.). They are still an emerging category, so no tool can guarantee exactly what every AI user sees, but they can provide useful signals. Ahrefs Ecomrank

A few worth trying:

• ecomrank.io — built specifically for ecommerce. You enter your store URL and product category; it tests buyer-style questions and shows whether your store is cited or recommended by AI answers. Ecomrank
• ahrefs.com — good for checking whether your brand appears in AI answers across several AI search surfaces. It is more brand-focused than individual SKU-focused. Ahrefs
• aipeekaboo.com — aimed at individual product pages; it checks product-page signals like pricing, benefits, schema markup, and trust information. Peekaboo
• wild-card.ai — provides an ecommerce-oriented audit looking at where products appear across AI answers and what gaps to fix. Wildcard

For a small store, I’d also do a simple manual test because it is free and often more revealing:

1. Pick 10–20 questions a real shopper might ask: - “What are the best _ for _?”
2. “Where can I buy a ___?”
3. “Compare _ vs _”
4. “Best affordable ___”
5. Ask those questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
6. Record: - whether your brand appears
7. whether your product page URL appears/cited
8. which competitors appear instead
9. what information those competitors have that you lack

For product pages specifically, the biggest things that often affect AI visibility are:

• clear product name and category
• complete specs (size, materials, compatibility, use cases)
• visible pricing and availability
• reviews/trust signals
• structured product data (schema)
• comparison-style content (“best for,” “vs,” “how to choose”) Peekaboo copymosaic.com

If you tell me your ecommerce platform (Shopify, WooCommerce, Etsy, custom site, etc.) and whether you care more about ChatGPT recommendations or AI search traffic generally, I can suggest the best checker/workflow.

Yes. For a small ecommerce store, there are now several free AI-visibility checkers that can tell you whether your products/site are being mentioned or cited in AI answers.

Best options

• Ecomrank AI Visibility Checker — probably the best fit for you. Enter your store URL + what you sell. It tests buyer-style questions against ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews and shows whether you're cited, who gets recommended instead, and which questions you're missing from. Free/no signup.
• AI Peekaboo Product Visibility Checker — particularly useful if you want to test individual product pages. Paste a product URL and it checks things like price, benefits, product schema, "best for" positioning, and other signals that affect AI recommendations.
• Wildcard's free ecommerce AI audit — broader ecommerce audit covering ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews, including which products appear in tested answers.
• Ahrefs Free AI Visibility Checker — good for checking your brand/product name across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews. No signup for the free check.

One important distinction

There are really two different things you want to measure:

1. "Can AI read my product page?"

→ Check crawlability, schema, product data, etc. Tools like AI Peekaboo are useful for this.

2. "When someone asks AI for the type of product I sell, does it actually recommend/cite me?"

→ Ecomrank/Wildcard are more useful. This is the metric I'd care about most as an ecommerce owner.

For example, if you sell handmade leather wallets, don't just test "Is my product page visible?" Test questions such as:

"What's the best handmade leather wallet under $100?"
"Best minimalist leather wallet for men?"
"Where can I buy a vegetable-tanned leather wallet?"

Then see which products and domains ChatGPT/Perplexity actually recommend.

If you give me your store URL and what you sell, I can also help you come up with the 10–15 buyer questions I'd test to see whether you're showing up in AI answers.

For a SaaS docs site, I’d look for tools that measure URL-level citation, not just “does the AI know my brand?” A docs site can be mentioned while the actual API/reference/tutorial pages never get surfaced.

A few options:

• HubSpot’s AI Search Grader — good quick baseline. It gives a snapshot of how AI assistants perceive your brand/content, but it is more brand-level than docs-page-level. Cituna
• ahrefs.com — useful if you already use Ahrefs; free checks can show AI visibility signals across several AI surfaces. Cituna
• semrush.com — similar: good for seeing whether your site appears in AI answers and comparing competitors. Cituna
• citationdesk.com — specifically positioned around citation readiness and checks for whether pages are likely to be cited by assistants. CitationDesk
• rank.ai — lets you test a prompt and see whether assistants mention/cite your domain. Rank.ai

For a SaaS docs site, I’d probably also build a lightweight internal grader rather than rely only on tools:

1. Pick 50–200 real user questions:

• “How do I authenticate with API X?”
• “How do I migrate from Y?”
• “Does product support feature Z?”
• For each question, run:

• ChatGPT
• Claude
• Gemini
• Perplexity
• Record:

• Did the answer mention your company?
• Did it cite your docs URL?
• Which page was cited?
• Was a competitor cited instead?
• Was the answer correct?
• Score each docs page:

• Citation rate
• Mention rate
• Correctness rate
• Competitor displacement rate

For SaaS docs specifically, the biggest levers are usually:

• Put the answer directly near the top of pages (AI systems often prefer extractable passages).
• Add stable canonical URLs for docs pages.
• Avoid hiding critical info behind JS-only interactions.
• Add structured metadata where appropriate.
• Make “comparison,” “migration,” and “how-to” pages very explicit, since those map closely to buyer questions.

If you want a free-only stack, I’d combine:

• one AI visibility checker for broad monitoring, and
• a spreadsheet + manual monthly runs for your top 50 docs queries.

That will usually tell you more than a generic domain score because you’ll know exactly which docs pages are winning or losing citations. amicited.com

For a free, one-time competitive AI-visibility snapshot across several URLs, I’d start with citedspy.com.

• Why it fits: no signup, free, and it checks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Grok live. It reports visibility score, competitor share of voice, prompt-level rankings, sentiment, and the sources AI cites. CitedSpy
• Competitive angle: it can automatically identify competitors, rather than requiring you to build the comparison manually.
• For several competitor URLs: run each competitor/domain through the checker and put the resulting scores, mention rates, and cited domains into a simple comparison sheet.

Good alternatives

• ahrefs.com — probably the safest established-vendor choice. It's explicitly free, requires no signup, and is designed as a one-time snapshot; the free version has a limited preview. Ahrefs
• citegauge.com — particularly convenient if you want to enter your site plus up to 3 competitors in one audit. It checks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity and is free/no-signup. CiteGauge
• pagelens.ai — another no-signup snapshot, with 10 buyer prompts across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity and competitor/citation analysis. pagelens.ai

My pick: CitedSpy for breadth; CiteGauge if you specifically want a quick you vs. 3 competitors comparison.

One caveat: these are snapshots, not a definitive measurement of “AI visibility.” Different runs/prompts can produce different results, so for competitive research I'd keep the exact prompts, date, engines, mention/rank, and cited URLs alongside the scores.

For a tiny in-house SEO team, I’d start with Ahrefs’ free AI Visibility Checker.

ahrefs.com

Why it’s the best fit:

• Free, no signup, and checks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Ahrefs Ahrefs
• Crucially for your question, it shows the top cited pages associated with your brand—not just a generic visibility score. Ahrefs
• You can use it to identify which of your landing pages are already getting cited, then prioritize the pages that should be getting cited but aren't.

If you want a second free check

Semrush AI Search Visibility Checker is also excellent and gives you an especially useful view of which pages from your site drive AI citations, plus topics/prompts and estimated reach. It's free up to three checks/day. Semrush

semrush.com

One caveat

Neither free checker is really a page-by-page AI visibility tracker. They're better for discovering which URLs are being cited. For a tiny team, I'd combine that with your top landing pages from Google Search Console and make a simple spreadsheet:

Landing page → target topic → AI mentions → AI citations → competitors cited → action

That gives you a surprisingly useful lightweight GEO/AEO prioritization system without paying for an enterprise platform. Ahrefs' paid Brand Radar is the step up if you eventually need ongoing tracking, competitor benchmarking, and historical data. Ahrefs Help Center Ahrefs

If your real goal is “take my top 20 organic landing pages and tell me which ones are visible/cited in AI search”, I can also suggest the cheapest workflow to do exactly that.

For a tiny in-house SEO team, I’d start with Semrush’s free AI Search Visibility Checker. It accepts a domain/URL and reports AI visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and AI Overviews, including which pages on your site drive the most AI citations. It’s free up to 3 checks/day without registration. Semrush

semrush.com

My shortlist

• Best overall: Semrush — strongest fit if you specifically want to identify top cited pages/landing pages, rather than just get a technical AI-readiness score. Semrush
• Best broad snapshot: Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker — covers ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, AI Overviews and AI Mode, and shows top cited pages. The free version is a limited snapshot. Ahrefs
• Best page-by-page diagnostic: Frase GEO Score Checker — paste an individual landing-page URL and it grades that page's readiness to be cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude. Useful when you've already identified your priority pages. frase.io
• Best genuinely lightweight option: SEOmonitor — lets you enter a domain, keyword, URL, or question and see whether ChatGPT/AI Overviews mention or cite you. The first report is free without an account. seomonitor.com

One important distinction: tools like Frase/VisibilityIQ are mostly asking “is this landing page technically/content-wise ready for AI citation?”; Semrush/Ahrefs are closer to “are AI systems actually mentioning/citing us, and which pages are getting cited?” frase.io visibilityiq.io

So if your goal is “take our top 20 landing pages and figure out which ones have AI visibility and which ones don't,” I'd use Semrush first, then run the weakest/highest-value pages through Frase.

If you mean “Can I paste my article URL or excerpt somewhere and see whether ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini are likely to surface or cite it?”, there are a few free tools, but none can perfectly prove that a specific excerpt is already appearing inside AI answers. AI assistants don’t expose their full training data, and visibility depends on the query, model, date, and whether the assistant is using web search.

For a freelance copywriter, I’d try these:

• ahrefs.com — good for checking whether a brand/site is being mentioned or cited across AI search experiences. Better for your portfolio site or client domains than individual paragraphs. Ahrefs
• rank.ai — lets you test prompts and see whether AI assistants mention a domain and cite it. Useful for asking things like “What are the best sources for [topic]?” and seeing whether your site appears. Rank.ai
• isvisible.ai — more of a technical AI-readiness check (crawler access, AI visibility signals, etc.) than a “did my paragraph show up?” checker. isvisible.ai
• aisearchvisibility.ai — checks a specific URL for factors related to whether AI systems may cite it. AI Search Visibility

For article excerpts specifically, the most practical free test is still manual:

1. Take a distinctive 8–15 word sentence from your article (something unlikely to appear elsewhere).
2. Search it in quotation marks on Google/Bing.
3. Ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini: - “What sources discuss [your topic]?”
4. “Can you find articles that mention this phrase: ‘[unique excerpt]’?”
5. Check whether your URL is cited.

A useful distinction:

• “AI can access my article” → crawler/visibility graders test this.
• “AI cites my article when answering questions” → AI visibility trackers test this.
• “My exact words are in a model’s training data” → there is generally no public checker that can verify this.

For a copywriter building AI-era credentials, I’d track citations and mentions of your published URLs, not whether a model memorized a sentence. That’s the signal clients can actually act on. Ahrefs semrush.com

Yes. But there’s an important distinction: most free “AI visibility” graders check whether your site/brand is mentioned or cited—not whether a specific excerpt from your article is actually being reproduced or used by an AI assistant.

For a freelance copywriter, I’d use these:

1. Ahrefs Free AI Visibility Checker — probably the best first stop. It checks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Google AI results, and reports mentions plus the pages/domains being cited. No signup is required for the free check. ahrefs.comanswervisibilitylab.comisvisible.ai

2. EdenRank Free AI Visibility Checker — particularly useful if you want to test one specific question/prompt across eight AI surfaces, including ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI. It shows the answers and citations. edenrank.com

3. Answer Visibility Lab — more of a page-level audit. It checks whether AI systems can discover, understand and cite your website, including things such as extractability and citation-worthiness. answervisibilitylab.com

For your particular use case

If you're asking:

“I wrote this article. Is ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity actually pulling information from it or citing it?”

I'd not rely on an AI grader's score alone.

Instead, take 5–10 distinctive facts, phrases, or questions from the article and test them directly in several assistants. Then look for:

• Does the assistant mention the site?
• Does it link/cite the article?
• Does it reproduce a distinctive fact or statistic from it?
• Does it attribute the information correctly?
• Does it give a competing source instead?
• Does the article appear among the sources when you ask the question in different ways?

That distinction matters because “AI can access my article” ≠ “AI actually uses my article.” Some free graders primarily measure crawlability/readiness, while others measure actual AI mentions/citations. ahrefs.comanswervisibilitylab.comisvisible.ai

If you give me the URL of one of your articles, I can also check which free tool is most appropriate for that specific article and give you a simple test you can repeat for your freelance portfolio.

For a non-technical founder who wants free + no API keys + no setup, I’d start with a simple AI visibility grader, not a full SEO platform.

My picks:

🥇 Best overall: hubspot.com

Best for: “Does ChatGPT/Gemini/Perplexity know my company exists?”

• ✅ No API keys
• ✅ No technical setup
• ✅ Fast, founder-friendly report
• ✅ Gives you a simple score and explanations
• ❌ Not ongoing tracking

This is probably the one I’d give to a first-time founder. Cituna Visibility Audit

🥈 Best if you want competitor comparison: semrush.com

Best for: “Why is my competitor showing up in AI answers but I’m not?”

• ✅ No API setup
• ✅ Shows AI visibility signals and competitor context
• ✅ More marketing-oriented
• ❌ Eventually pushes you toward Semrush’s paid ecosystem

Cituna## 🥉 Best if you want broader AI engine coverage: ahrefs.com

Best for: founders already thinking about SEO/content.

• ✅ Simple input
• ✅ Covers multiple AI surfaces in its visibility checks
• ❌ The deeper features are part of Ahrefs’ paid tools

Cituna## My “15-minute founder test” (no tools required)

1. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
2. Ask: - “What are the best companies for [your category]?”
3. “Who are the alternatives to [your company]?”
4. “What should I use for [problem you solve]?”
5. Check: - Are you mentioned?
6. Are competitors mentioned?
7. Are the sources citing your website?

The tools above are useful, but AI visibility is still noisy — a score is a starting point, not a definitive ranking. Cituna

If you’re a bootstrapped founder with a small website, I’d use:

1. HubSpot grader → baseline
2. Manual ChatGPT/Perplexity tests → reality check
3. Fix website/content gaps → re-test monthly

No API keys, no engineering work.

If you want quick + free + ecommerce-focused, I’d start with ecomrank.io. It’s free, no signup, takes about a minute, and tests buyer questions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, showing which stores get recommended instead of you. Ecomrank

A few good alternatives:

• rankbits.com — particularly useful if you specifically want a share-of-voice breakdown and competitor list. It checks 3 buyer prompts across ChatGPT, Google Search, and AI Overviews. RankBits
• citedspy.com — broader engine coverage (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok) and gives a competitor SOV breakdown plus prompt-level rankings. CitedSpy
• ahrefs.com — excellent for a quick brand baseline; free and no signup, with mentions, topics, and cited domains/pages. Its full competitor SOV tracking is part of the paid Brand Radar product. Ahrefs

My pick for a category page: Ecomrank for the fastest practical check; RankBits if SOV itself is the metric you care about most.

One caveat: these tools generally measure brand/product mentions in AI answers, not whether that exact category URL is being cited. If you're trying to answer “Is my /category/shoes page winning AI citations vs competitors?”, that's a more specific test.

Yes. If your goal is “paste client URL → get one simple grade → share it in an audit/proposal,” I’d shortlist these:

• Best overall: CitationDesk — gives a 0–100 AI Visibility Score, no signup, in about 90 seconds. It grades SEO foundation, GEO readiness, entity coherence, and AI-crawler health, and is explicitly designed around ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. CitationDesk citationdesk.com
• Best for a genuinely client-friendly shareable report: RankBits — produces a 0–100 score, mentions/citations, competitor landscape, and a public shareable report URL. RankBits rankbits.com
• Best if you want the score to reflect actual AI recommendations: EdenRank — runs a prompt across 8 AI/search engines and gives a 0–100 visibility score plus a shareable scorecard. EdenRank edenrank.com
• Best established SEO-brand option: Semrush AI Visibility Checker — free and gives an AI Visibility Score plus brand mentions, citations, topics, and pages generating citations. Semrush semrush.com

What I'd use as a freelance SEO consultant

CitationDesk for a quick prospect/client audit, and RankBits when you want something visually/shareably packaged.

One caveat: don't present an AI visibility grade as equivalent to a Google ranking. These tools measure different things—some measure technical readiness to be cited, while others measure whether AI engines actually mention/cite the brand. That's an important distinction when putting the number in a client report. CitationDesk RankBits

If you want, I can also give you the 3 best free tools specifically for generating a polished “AI SEO scorecard” you can put in client proposals, ranked by how professional the output looks.

If the goal is “show investors that AI/search visibility is a measurable competitive risk”, I’d use Ahrefs’ free AI Visibility Checker first.

ahrefs.com — it’s free, requires no signup, and checks your brand across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews, and AI Mode. It gives you mentions, platforms, topics, and the domains/pages AI is citing. Ahrefs

For an investor demo, I'd do this

1. Run your startup through Ahrefs.
2. Run 2–3 competitors through the same checker.
3. Use real buyer prompts such as: - “Best [category] startups for [use case]”
4. “[Category] companies investors should know about”
5. “Alternatives to [major incumbent]”
6. “Best tools for [specific customer problem]”
7. Screenshot the results showing you absent while competitors appear.
8. Frame the risk as: “AI is becoming a discovery layer, and today our brand isn't consistently represented in the answers our buyers may be using.”

That is much more compelling to an investor than a generic “GEO score.”

Two good alternatives

• Rank.ai — particularly good for a live demo because it runs the same prompt across ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini and shows mentions/citations side-by-side. Rank.ai rank.ai
• EdenRank — useful if you want a broader screenshot: it says its free check covers 8 AI engines, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot and Google AI surfaces. EdenRank edenrank.com

My pick: Ahrefs for credibility + Rank.ai for the punchy live demo.

One caveat for investors: don't present a single AI visibility score as an objective “market share” metric. AI answers can vary between runs. Present mention rate, competitor presence, citations, and repeated buyer-intent prompts as the evidence.

If the goal is “show investors that AI search is already a discoverability risk”, I’d use Ahrefs’ free AI Visibility Checker first. It’s particularly good for an investor demo because it checks your brand across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and shows mentions, topics, and cited domains/pages. No signup is required. ahrefs.com

Ahrefs Free AI Visibility Checker

My shortlist

1. Ahrefs — best investor-facing baseline
   • Multi-platform
   • Uses search-backed prompts
   • Shows competitor/source context
   • Easy to screenshot or turn into a before/after metric ahrefs.com

2. Rank.ai — best for a quick live demo
   • Runs the same prompt across ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini
   • Shows whether you're mentioned and whether your site is cited
   • Free, no registration www.rank.ai

3. EdenRank — best “wow, we're invisible” demo
   • Runs one commercial/buyer-intent prompt across 8 AI engines
   • Gives a 0–100 score plus the actual answers and citations
   • Free/no signup edenrank.com

4. Startup Buffer — best if you want to explain the underlying problem
   • Free startup-specific GEO diagnostic
   • Focuses on whether AI can correctly understand, categorize and summarize your company
   • Useful for showing why visibility may be poor, rather than just showing a score startupbuffer.com

For an investor deck, I'd do this

Don't present “our AI visibility score is 27/100” as if it's an established market KPI. Instead, demonstrate the risk with a concrete buyer question:

“Ask ChatGPT: What are the best [category] companies for [target customer/use case]?”

Run that question for your company and 3–5 competitors, then show:

• Who gets recommended
• Your position in the answer
• Whether your website gets cited
• Which sources AI trusts instead
• The percentage of relevant prompts where you're absent

That makes the investor story much stronger: “Customers are increasingly using AI as a discovery layer, and today our competitors are being surfaced while we're not.”

If you give me your startup + category + 2–3 competitors, I can also suggest the 5 exact prompts I'd use for an investor-quality AI visibility test.