9 Ahrefs Brand Radar Alternatives for SaaS Teams Without an Ahrefs Plan (2026)

The Ahrefs Brand Radar alternative we would point a B2B SaaS team to first, if it does not already pay for Ahrefs, is Cituna: it tracks all 7 AI engines on your own buyer questions every day, Claude and Grok included, writes the fix for every gap, shows which AI crawlers read your pages and publishes to your CMS, from $49 a month, with Google Search Console built in. Brand Radar's AI Visibility Index starts at $199 a month and is re-tested monthly, its custom prompts are metered in checks, and Grok is not on its list. For other needs, Promptwatch puts four models you choose, MCP, an API and a Search Console integration on a $95 plan, Rankscale covers more than 17 engines on credits from $99, and AthenaHQ starts with a free plan. Otterly.AI ($29), Peec AI ($95), SE Visible ($99) and the Semrush toolkit ($99) include neither Claude nor Grok on their entry plans, and Profound suits a team ready for an enterprise contract.

Prices and limits come from each vendor's own pages, recorded between 24 September and 24 October 2026, with Brand Radar's read on 24 October 2026. A tool tells you where you stand. If you want a team to get your product found in Google and recommended by the AI engines buyers ask first, book a 30-minute call.

The 9 alternatives next to Brand Radar

Prices are billed monthly. "Read" is the date the vendor's own page was recorded.

#	Tool	Best for	Cheapest plan	Engines on it	Free plan or trial	Read
1	Cituna	Your buyer questions on seven engines daily, with Search Console	Starter, $49/month	7, checked daily	3-day trial, card required	24 Oct 2026
2	Promptwatch	Four chosen models with MCP, API and Search Console	Essential, $95/month	4 models you choose	7-day free trial	8 Oct 2026
3	Rankscale	The longest engine list, on credits	Pro, $99/month	More than 17, on credits	7-day trial of Pro	17 Oct 2026
4	AthenaHQ	A free plan, then 11 models	Starter, $295/month	11 models	Free Essential plan	24 Sep 2026
5	Otterly.AI	A small prompt set on a small bill	Lite, $29/month	4, with 3 more as add-ons	Free trial, length not stated	24 Sep 2026
6	Peec AI	A seat for everyone on the team	Starter, $95/month	3 models you choose	Free trial, length not stated	17 Oct 2026
7	SE Visible	200 prompts for marketing and PR reporting	Basic, $99/month	5	10-day free trial	24 Sep 2026
8	Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit	Teams already on Semrush	$99/month	4	No free trial of the toolkit	24 Sep 2026
9	Profound	An enterprise contract with prompt-volume data	Enterprise, by quote	3 on the trial, up to 9 on Enterprise	7-day free trial	24 Sep 2026
-	Ahrefs Brand Radar (baseline)	Benchmarking any brand without setup	Custom prompts from $50/month; AI Visibility Index from $199/month	6 platforms, Claude on custom prompts	No trial listed	24 Oct 2026

What Ahrefs Brand Radar is, and what it costs

Brand Radar is Ahrefs' AI visibility product, and it works in two ways.

• The AI Visibility Index looks up any brand, yours or a rival's, across Ahrefs' own database of prompts, with no setup. Ahrefs puts that database at more than 496 million prompts a month across Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and ChatGPT, about 280 million of them in AI Overviews. Its FAQ says the question sets are re-tested monthly on a 90-day reporting window.
• Custom Prompts track the questions you choose, daily, weekly or monthly for each platform. Claude is available here, and each Claude update uses 8 checks.

Brand Radar also reports YouTube, TikTok and Reddit results, which the page lists as free in beta for Ahrefs customers, and it offers free Web Analytics and a Bot Analytics view that is free while in beta.

What it costs (read 24 October 2026):

• AI Visibility Index: from $199 a month for one platform. Ahrefs' help centre lists all platforms at $699 a month, with 2,500 custom prompt checks included.
• Custom prompt packages: $50 a month for 2,500 checks, $100 for 7,000 and $250 for 25,000, with overage charged per check.
• Included with Ahrefs plans: Lite includes 5 tracked prompts and 150 checks a month, Standard 10 and 300, Advanced 20 and 600. Lite was $129 a month when read on 7 October 2026.
• Trial: none is listed. The page offers a free AI Visibility Checker preview instead.

Sources: Brand Radar page and Ahrefs help centre article on Brand Radar, read 24 October 2026; Ahrefs pricing, read 7 October 2026.

Where Brand Radar wins

Give Brand Radar its due before you leave it:

• Index scale. More than 496 million prompts a month, and any brand looked up without writing a single prompt. For sizing a category, or a rival you have never tracked, before you commit to a prompt set, that is the reason to choose it.
• Ahrefs data in one place. For a team already on Ahrefs, AI visibility sits beside the search and web data it already uses, the YouTube, TikTok and Reddit views are free in beta, and the Lite plan includes 5 tracked prompts plus API and MCP access (read 7 October 2026).
• Microsoft Copilot. The index covers Copilot, which Cituna does not track.

If those three are what you need, keep Brand Radar. The rest of this guide is for the team that needs something else.

Why SaaS teams look for a Brand Radar alternative

• Their own buyer questions, every day. The index answers Ahrefs' prompts and re-tests them monthly. If your buyers ask long, specific questions, the index may not hold them: Ahrefs says it may have limited coverage for brands with little or no search volume (Brand Radar page, read 24 September 2026). Custom prompts close the gap, but they are metered.
• Claude and Grok. Claude costs 8 checks per update and Grok is not listed. By our arithmetic, 10 prompts a day on the six index platforms use 1,800 checks a month, inside the $50 package. Add Claude and the same 10 prompts use 4,200 checks, which needs the $100 package, and Grok is still missing.
• Search Console in the same tool. A SaaS team usually wants a lost AI answer read next to the Google queries for the same page. Cituna builds Search Console into its paid plans, AthenaHQ integrates it on Starter, and Promptwatch lists it among its integrations.
• Price for a team not on Ahrefs. Without an Ahrefs plan, the index starts at $199 a month and reaches $699 for all platforms. Every alternative below except AthenaHQ and Profound starts between $29 and $99 a month.

How we chose these 9

This is a desk comparison of published pages, not a hands-on test. Every fact comes from the vendor's own pricing, plans or product page on the date in the table. How this site treats rival claims is set out in our guide to SaaS alternatives and comparison pages.

The bar. A tool is on the list if all three hold:

1. Its pages say it tracks a brand's mentions or citations in at least three AI answer engines.
2. A team can start it alone, on a published plan, a free plan or a free trial.
3. Its pages were recorded within 30 days of this guide's date.

The order. We scored each tool's cheapest monthly-billed plan on the four reasons above: it tracks your own prompts daily, it includes Claude, it includes Grok, and it lists a Search Console integration. A model you pick counts as included, an add-on or Enterprise extra does not. Most passes first, then the lower price, then more engines on the entry plan. "Not stated" means the vendor pages recorded for this guide do not say.

Tool, cheapest plan	Your prompts daily	Claude	Grok	Search Console	Of 4
Cituna Starter, $49	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	4
Promptwatch Essential, $95	Yes	Pick	Pick	Yes	4
Rankscale Pro, $99	Yes, frequency you set	Yes, 2 credits a check	Yes	Not stated	3
AthenaHQ Starter, $295	Not stated	Yes	Yes	Yes	3
Otterly.AI Lite, $29	Yes	Add-on	Not offered	Not stated	1
Peec AI Starter, $95	Yes	Enterprise	Enterprise	Not stated	1
SE Visible Basic, $99	Yes	Coming soon	Not listed	Not stated	1
Semrush toolkit, $99	Yes	Not listed	Not listed	Not stated	1
Profound trial	No, a set you cannot change	Enterprise	Not listed	Not stated	0
Brand Radar custom prompts, from $50	Yes, metered	Yes, 8 checks an update	Not listed	Not stated	2

Brand Radar is the baseline and is not ranked. The count is a lens for a SaaS team, not a score of data quality.

The 9 alternatives, one by one

1. Cituna: best for your buyer questions on seven engines daily, with Search Console

Cituna asks seven AI engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode) the buyer questions you track, every day, on every plan. Google Search Console is built into the paid plans, so a lost answer can be read beside the Google data for the same page. AI crawler analytics, on every plan, show which AI crawlers read each page next to the answers that cite it, and it runs unlimited page audits and generates fixes such as schema, FAQs and llms.txt. AutoSEO writes articles, 30 a month on Starter as drafts by default, and publishes them to WordPress, Shopify, Sanity, GitHub or any CMS by webhook, with approval or automatically. API keys come with every paid plan, and its MCP server has 22 read tools from Starter and 9 write tools on Pro and Max.

• Best for: a SaaS team not on Ahrefs that wants its own buyer questions checked daily on seven engines, Claude and Grok included, beside Search Console.
• What it costs (read 24 October 2026): Starter is $49 a month for 1 brand, 10 prompts and 1 seat. Pro is $119 for 3 brands, 30 prompts and 5 seats, and Max is $399 for 10 brands, 90 prompts and 15 seats. Annual billing charges 10 months for 12. The 3-day trial needs a card, is not charged during the trial, and covers 1 brand and 5 buyer prompts on all seven engines, with the top 3 re-asked daily.
• Where it falls short: it does not track Microsoft Copilot, which Brand Radar's index covers. Starter tracks 10 prompts for one brand, and the trial has no MCP access and no Search Console.

Source: Cituna's pricing page, read 24 October 2026.

2. Promptwatch: best for four chosen models with MCP, API and Search Console

Promptwatch tracks four models you choose from OpenAI, Perplexity, Google, Claude, Gemini, Meta, DeepSeek and Grok, checked daily, on a flat fee rather than credits. Its first plan includes an MCP server and API access, and its integrations list Google Search Console. Professional adds Agent Analytics, its view of AI crawler visits, and AEO articles.

• Best for: a team whose engineers want AI visibility data in their own tools from the first month, with Claude and Grok among the four models.
• What it costs (read 1 October 2026, plan contents re-read 8 October 2026): Essential is $95 a month for 50 prompts and 6,000 responses on 4 models in one project, with a 7-day free trial. Professional is $245 for 150 prompts. Business is $579, sold through a demo.
• Where it falls short: four models at a time, so ChatGPT, Claude and Grok leave one slot for everything else. Microsoft Copilot is not among the models its pricing page names, and Essential holds one project.

Source: Promptwatch's pricing page, read 1 and 8 October 2026.

3. Rankscale: best for the longest engine list, on credits

Rankscale monitors more than 17 AI engines, among them ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Mistral, Copilot and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. You pay in credits and set how often each prompt runs, from hourly to monthly. Citation and sentiment analysis, page audits of any URL and an MCP server come on every plan.

• Best for: a team that wants Brand Radar's Copilot coverage plus Claude and Grok on one plan, and is happy to manage credits.
• What it costs (read 17 October 2026): Pro is $99 a month billed monthly, or $84 billed yearly, for 1,200 credits, 10 brand dashboards and 50 page audits, with a 7-day trial. Essentials is $17 a month, billed yearly only ($204). Pro+ is $229 and Growth, with white-label dashboards, $385.
• Where it falls short: a Claude check uses 2 credits against 0.25 for ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Mode, so the bill depends on the engine mix. The REST API starts on Pro+.

Source: Rankscale's pricing page, read 17 October 2026.

4. AthenaHQ: best for a free plan, then 11 models

AthenaHQ tracks how a brand appears in AI search and suggests what to change. Its Starter plan covers 11 models, among them ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot and Grok, and bills in credits, where one credit is one AI response. It adds content recommendations, a content optimisation agent and integrations with Google Analytics and Search Console.

• Best for: trying AI visibility tracking free, then 11 models with Search Console in the same tool.
• What it costs (read 24 September 2026): Essential is free, with $25 of credit (300 credits) on ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot; the page does not say whether the credit renews. Starter is $295 a month billed monthly, or $245 billed annually, for 3,600 credits. Enterprise is custom.
• Where it falls short: nothing sits between $0 and $295. By our arithmetic, 3,600 credits cover about 11 prompts a day when each runs on all 11 models. API access is a paid add-on priced on request, and its published plans list no MCP integration (read 1 October 2026). Our AthenaHQ alternatives compare nine plans below $295.

Source: AthenaHQ's plans page, read 24 September and 1 October 2026.

5. Otterly.AI: best for a small prompt set on a small bill

Otterly.AI runs your prompts daily on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, and reports brand mentions, website citations and a visibility index. It audits single URLs for generative engine optimisation and gives three recommendations a week on Lite.

• Best for: a small team that wants daily tracking of a handful of prompts, Copilot included, for under $30 a month.
• What it costs (read 24 September 2026, plan prices checked again 20 October 2026): Lite is $29 a month billed monthly, or $25 billed annually, for 15 prompts and unlimited team members. Standard is $189 for 100 prompts, API and MCP access and unlimited workspaces. On Lite, Google AI Mode and Gemini are add-ons from $9 a month each and Claude from $29.
• Where it falls short: Claude is an add-on, so Lite with Claude costs at least $58 a month by our sum, and Grok is not offered (read 1 October 2026). The trial's length is not stated.

Source: Otterly.AI's pricing page, read 24 September, 1 October and 20 October 2026. Our Otterly.AI alternatives set eight tools against Lite.

6. Peec AI: best for a seat for everyone on the team

Peec AI charges by the prompts it runs each day and lets you choose the models, with unlimited users on every plan. Self-serve plans pick 3 models from ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI. It analyses the sources AI answers cite, runs a gap analysis with recommended actions, reports AI crawler visits and includes an MCP server on paid plans.

• Best for: a marketing team where several people need the same source analysis.
• What it costs (read 17 October 2026): Starter is $95 a month billed monthly, or $80 billed annually, for 50 prompts on 3 models in 1 project. Pro is $245 for 150 prompts and Advanced $495 for 350. An extra model on Starter is $35 a month.
• Where it falls short: Claude and Grok are tracked only on the custom Enterprise plan, which also holds API access and SSO.

Source: Peec AI's pricing page, read 17 October 2026. Our Peec AI alternatives cover eight more options.

7. SE Visible: best for 200 prompts for marketing and PR reporting

SE Visible is SE Ranking's AI visibility product. It runs prompts daily on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, logging mentions, sentiment, competitors and the domains and URLs cited, from answers gathered through each platform's own interface. Every plan includes unlimited users.

• Best for: marketing and PR teams that report on how AI answers describe a brand and want a large prompt set for the money.
• What it costs (read 24 September 2026): Basic is $99 a month billed monthly, or $79 billed annually, for 200 prompts and 3 projects. Core is $189 for 450 prompts, and Plus is $355 for 1,000 prompts, sold through a demo. A 10-day trial is offered.
• Where it falls short: Claude is listed as coming soon and Grok is not listed. Country tracking covers seven countries in five languages.

Source: SE Visible, read 24 September 2026.

8. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit: best for teams already on Semrush

Semrush's toolkit scores a brand's AI visibility against competitors, tracks chosen prompts daily on platforms such as ChatGPT and Google AI Mode, and audits whether AI crawlers can read a site. Its competitor research lists the prompts and topics where rivals are cited and you are not.

• Best for: a Semrush customer that wants AI answers beside its keyword and audit data, the same argument Brand Radar makes for Ahrefs customers.
• What it costs (read 24 September 2026): $99 a month for 25 prompts and 1 domain for Brand Performance reports. Semrush One Starter, which bundles SEO and AI visibility, is $199 a month billed monthly with 50 daily prompts.
• Where it falls short: no free trial of the toolkit, each user needs a licence, and 50 more prompts cost $60 a month. Brand Performance reports refresh weekly, and the toolkit article lists neither Claude nor Grok.

Source: Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit article, read 24 September 2026.

9. Profound: best for an enterprise contract with prompt-volume data

Profound tracks how a brand and its rivals appear in answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and other engines. Prompt Volumes estimates what people ask AI assistants, which is the closest thing here to Brand Radar's market-wide view, and an agent called AI Marketer researches, writes and reports from that data.

• Best for: an enterprise team that wants prompt-volume data and agents on a contract, with procurement and SSO.
• What it costs (read 24 September 2026): a 7-day free trial runs 50 prompts a day on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews from a recommended set that cannot be customised. After that, brands buy Enterprise by quote, listing up to 9 answer engines, an API and SAML SSO.
• Where it falls short: there is no published brand price, and the trial shows Profound's prompts on three engines, not your own buyer questions on Claude or Grok. Our Profound alternatives compare ten tools that publish a plan.

Source: Profound's pricing page, read 24 September 2026.

Which Brand Radar alternative tracks Claude and Grok?

Four of the nine include both. Cituna checks both daily on every plan from $49, beside five other engines. Promptwatch lets you pick both among its four models at $95, Rankscale includes both on credits from $99, with a Claude check at 2 credits, and AthenaHQ includes both on its $295 Starter. Peec AI keeps both for Enterprise, Otterly.AI sells Claude as an add-on and does not offer Grok, and SE Visible lists Claude as coming soon. What each engine reads before it names a product is covered in our guides to getting cited by Claude and getting cited by Grok.

Which Brand Radar alternative connects to Google Search Console?

Cituna builds Search Console into its paid plans from $49, Promptwatch lists it among its integrations at $95, and AthenaHQ integrates Search Console and Google Analytics on its $295 Starter. Search Console's own generative AI report counts impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode only, so it adds to a tracker rather than replacing one; our note on Search Console's generative AI report sets out what it shows and what it misses.

Should you keep Brand Radar if your team already pays for Ahrefs?

Often, yes. If you are on Ahrefs Lite or above, you already have 5 to 20 tracked prompts and the index is priced as an extra, so the question is whether those prompts cover your buyer questions and the engines your buyers use. If they do not, pair Ahrefs with a dedicated tracker for the daily prompt set and keep the index for benchmarking. If you are not on Ahrefs, a dedicated tracker from $29 to $99 a month covers your own questions for less than the index's $199 entry.

Which should you pick?

• Your own buyer questions on seven engines daily, Claude and Grok included, with Search Console: Cituna, from $49.
• Four models of your choice with MCP and an API on the first plan: Promptwatch, $95.
• The longest engine list, Copilot included: Rankscale, from $99 on credits.
• A free plan before paying: AthenaHQ Essential.
• A handful of prompts on the smallest monthly bill: Otterly.AI Lite, $29.
• Unlimited users: Peec AI, from $95.
• A large prompt set for reporting: SE Visible, 200 prompts at $99.
• An existing Semrush account: the Semrush toolkit, $99.
• Prompt-volume data on a contract: Profound.

For the full category, see our best AI visibility tools, and for connecting a tracker to Claude or Cursor, our guide to AI visibility tools with an API or MCP server.

Some listings on this page may be paid placements.