AI brand monitoring now means two different jobs, and most tool lists only cover one. The first job is finding what people post about you on the web and social media. The second is checking what ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI answers say when someone asks about your brand. I rebuilt this guide around both, with real prices from free to $249 a month.
⚡ Short answer: The best AI brand monitoring tool for web and social mentions is Brand24, from $199 a month billed yearly. For what AI chatbots say about you, Otterly.AI is the cheapest dedicated tracker at $29 a month. A small business can start free: Google Alerts for mentions, plus the 8-prompt check in this post for ChatGPT and Perplexity.
🆕 What changed in this update (October 22, 2026)
- Split this AI brand monitoring guide into two jobs: web and social mentions, and AI answers.
- Added five AI search trackers: Otterly.AI, Frase, Writesonic, Peec AI and the Semrush and Ahrefs add-ons.
- Rechecked every price, including Brand24's new plans.
- Added a free 8-prompt AI brand check with copy buttons, a small-business section and a 30-second picker.
- Dropped Mention, which no longer lists a self-serve plan.
Some links are affiliate links · they support this site at no extra cost to you · Full disclosure
What is AI brand monitoring?
Short answer: AI brand monitoring is software that finds where your brand is mentioned and uses AI to sort those mentions by sentiment, reach and urgency. Since chatbots started answering buying questions, it also covers a second job: checking whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews mention your brand, and what they say.
The classic job of AI brand monitoring hasn't changed. A tool scans news sites, blogs, forums, reviews and social platforms for your brand name, then flags a spike in angry posts before it becomes a crisis. The AI part is the sorting: sentiment labels, topic clusters and short summaries instead of 2,000 raw mentions.
The new job is different in kind. Nobody posts a ChatGPT answer for a crawler to find, so the tools send your buyers' questions to each AI engine on a schedule and record the replies. That's why this guide has two shortlists, and why one AI brand monitoring tool rarely does both well.
AI brand tracking vs brand monitoring: what's the difference?
Short answer: Brand monitoring watches mentions as they happen, so you can reply, fix a complaint or thank a fan. AI brand tracking measures how often AI answers recommend you for a fixed set of prompts, as a share of voice against competitors. The first is customer service; the second is closer to SEO rank tracking.
| Brand monitoring | AI brand tracking | |
|---|---|---|
| Question it answers | Who is talking about my brand, and are they happy? | Do AI answers recommend my brand, and over whom? |
| Where it looks | News, blogs, forums, reviews, social posts | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode |
| How it works | Crawls public pages and social APIs | Sends your prompts to each AI engine on a schedule |
| Main metric | Mentions, sentiment, reach | Mention rate, position, share of voice, cited sources |
| What you do next | Reply, escalate, thank, fix | Update pages, earn listings on cited sites |
| Example tools | Brand24, Vista Social, Google Alerts | Otterly.AI, Peec AI, Writesonic, Frase |
Key idea: decide which question keeps you up at night. Angry customers in public need brand monitoring; losing deals to a rival that ChatGPT recommends needs AI brand tracking.
AI brand monitoring tools compared
Prices are US list prices on each AI brand monitoring tool's cheapest plan that does the job, checked October 22, 2026. “Yearly” means the monthly rate when you pay for a year up front.
| Tool | Job | Cheapest plan | AI engines or sources | Free access | Affiliate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand24 | Web + social mentions | $199/mo yearly · $249 monthly | Web, news, blogs, forums, reviews, social; AI Visibility add-on | 14-day trial, no card | No |
| Vista Social | Social + reviews + listening | $99/mo + $75 listening | Social, web and news (add-on); Google and Facebook reviews | 14-day trial, no card | Yes |
| Google Alerts | Web mentions | Free | Web pages, news, blogs | Free | No |
| Otterly.AI | AI answers | $29/mo (15 prompts) | ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot | Free trial | No |
| Frase | AI answers + SEO writing | $39/mo yearly | ChatGPT, Google AI | 7-day trial, no card | Yes |
| Writesonic | AI answers + fixes | $79/mo yearly · $99 monthly | ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews | Free trial, no card | No |
| Peec AI | AI answers, multi-country | $95/mo (50 prompts) | 3 of: ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Copilot | Free trial | No |
| Semrush / Ahrefs add-on | AI answers inside an SEO suite | $99/mo · from $199/mo | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI | No | No |
“Affiliate: yes” means I earn a commission if you buy through my link. It doesn't change how I rank these AI brand monitoring tools: Brand24 tops the mentions list and pays me nothing.
Which tools track what ChatGPT says about your brand?
Short answer: For AI brand monitoring inside chatbot answers, Otterly.AI is the cheapest dedicated tracker at $29 a month. Frase adds basic AI tracking to an SEO writer for $39. Writesonic tracks 50 prompts a day across three engines from $79. Peec AI suits teams tracking several countries, and Semrush or Ahrefs users can add AI tracking to the suite they already pay for.
All five of these AI brand monitoring tools work the same way: you list the prompts your buyers ask, such as “best bakery POS for a small shop”, and the tool runs them on a schedule. Then it reports whether you appeared, where in the answer, which competitors showed up and which sources the engine cited.
1. Otterly.AI 💸 Cheapest AI tracker🔎 Researched
Dedicated AI brand monitoring for chatbot answers on a small budget
Otterly.AI does one job: it runs your prompts in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot and shows your brand's mentions, ranking inside the answer and the websites each engine cites. Gemini, Google AI Mode and Claude are paid add-ons; on Lite they cost $9, $9 and $29 a month.
Lite covers 15 prompts, enough for one brand and its five or six most important buying questions. Standard jumps to 100 prompts for $189 a month, and yearly billing takes 15% off. Its pricing page showed two different Lite prices on the day I checked, $29 and $25, so confirm before you buy.
- Lowest entry price for real AI tracking
- Shows which sites AI engines cite
- Adds engines one at a time
- 15 prompts runs out fast
- Big jump from $29 to $189
- Gemini and AI Mode cost extra
2. Frase 📝 Track + write✓ I use it
SEO writer with basic AI brand monitoring built in
Frase is an SEO content tool first. It researches, drafts and scores articles, then publishes to WordPress, and it now shows whether ChatGPT and Google's AI features mention your site. I use its basic features for my own drafts, so it's the one tool on this list I know from the inside.
Its AI tracking is lighter than a dedicated tracker: fewer engines and fewer reports. The point is the loop. When you find an AI answer that skips you, the same tool helps you write the page that fixes it. Starter costs $39 a month billed yearly.
- Tracking and the fix in one tool
- Cheapest option that also writes
- WordPress publishing
- Only two AI engines
- Not a brand mention tool
- Article cap on Starter
3. Writesonic 🔍 Daily AI tracking✓ Scanned my site
Daily AI brand monitoring plus articles, audits and fixes
Writesonic rebuilt itself around AI search. Starter checks 50 prompts every day in ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, shows which rival brands appear instead of you, and bundles 15 AI articles and site audits to close the gaps. Enterprise widens tracking to eight engines.
It costs $79 a month billed yearly or $99 month to month. Sentiment analysis starts on the $399 Growth plan, which matters if you want to know whether the AI talks about you positively, not only whether it names you.
- Daily refresh on every plan
- Shows competitor mentions
- Writing and audits included
- Sentiment only from $399
- One market per self-serve plan
- Pricey if you only want tracking
4. Peec AI 🌍 Multi-country🔎 Researched
AI brand monitoring across countries for marketing teams
Peec AI tracks visibility, position and sentiment for your prompts, with clean competitor charts and prompt suggestions. On Starter you pick three engines from ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode and Copilot. Higher plans add projects and multi-country tracking.
Peec's own pricing page lists plans and prompt counts but hid the dollar amounts when I checked. Two independent reviews put Starter at $95 a month for 50 prompts and Pro at $245 for 150, with 15% off yearly. Treat those as a guide until you see the checkout.
- Strong competitor and sentiment views
- Any supported country at no extra cost
- Prompt suggestions
- Only 3 engines below Enterprise
- Prices not shown on its page
- More than a solo owner needs
5. Semrush or Ahrefs add-on 🧰 If you have a suite🔎 Researched
AI brand monitoring inside the SEO suite you already pay for
If you already pay for Semrush, its AI Visibility Toolkit adds tracking in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI features for about $99 a month per domain, on top of a plan that starts around $140. Ahrefs sells Brand Radar from $199 a month, with custom prompt packs from $50.
Neither makes sense as a first purchase: a Semrush Pro plan plus the toolkit costs about $239 a month. But if your SEO data already lives there, one dashboard beats a second login. Ahrefs' cheapest full plan, Lite, costs $129 a month.
- AI and SEO data side by side
- Large existing keyword data
- No new tool to learn
- Base plan required
- Most expensive route here
- Billed per domain or prompt pack
What does an AI visibility scan show?
Short answer: An AI brand monitoring scan shows how often AI engines mention your brand for the prompts you track, which competitors they name instead, and which sites they cite as sources. I ran Writesonic's scan on aidigitalspace.com during the free trial; the dashboard below is what came back.
📸 From my own scan: the AI visibility dashboard for this site.
The most useful part of AI brand monitoring isn't the score; it's the list of cited sources. If ChatGPT keeps citing the same three review sites and roundups for your category, those are the pages where you need to be listed. That's a concrete to-do list, which a mention count never gives you.
Two cautions. AI answers shift from one run to the next, as I explain in why AI answers change, so read every score as a trend line. And Google's guide to its AI features says no special markup is needed to appear in them: helpful, crawlable pages are what count.
Which tools track brand mentions on the web and social?
Short answer: For AI brand monitoring of web and social mentions, Brand24 is the most complete: web, news, forums, reviews and social, with AI sentiment and summaries, from $199 a month billed yearly. Vista Social is the better value if you also schedule posts and answer reviews. Google Alerts is free and covers web pages and news, but not social platforms.
6. Brand24 📡 Best for mentions🔎 Researched
Real-time AI brand monitoring across web, news and social
Brand24 collects mentions from news sites, blogs, forums, podcasts, reviews and social platforms, then labels each one positive, negative or neutral. From the Pro plan up, its AI Brand Assistant answers questions about your data in plain English, and AI Insights writes the weekly summary for you.
Its plans were repriced. Individual costs $199 a month billed yearly ($249 monthly) for 3 keywords, 2,000 mentions and updates every 12 hours, with one user. Team at $299 yearly adds hourly updates and 10,000 mentions; the AI Brand Assistant starts on Pro at $399. AI search tracking is a separate AI Visibility add-on.
- Widest source coverage here
- Sentiment and alerts on every plan
- Unlimited users from Team up
- Price nearly doubled for entry users
- AI assistant only from Pro
- AI visibility costs extra
7. Vista Social 🏪 Best for small business🔎 Researched
Scheduling, inbox, reviews and listening in one plan
Vista Social is a social media manager first: scheduling, one inbox for comments and messages, and review management. Professional covers Facebook and Google Business reviews; Advanced adds Yelp, TripAdvisor, Trustpilot and the app stores. Listening on your own profiles is free.
For brand monitoring beyond your own pages, the listening add-on covers social, web and news for $75 a month. Professional costs $99 a month, or $950 a year, for 15 profiles and two users. That's about $174 a month for posting, reviews and listening together.
- Posting, reviews and listening together
- Cheaper than Brand24 for a small team
- Free listening on your own profiles
- Listening is a paid add-on
- Fewer sources than a dedicated tool
- No AI search tracking
8. Google Alerts 🆓 Free✓ Free
Email alerts when Google finds new pages that mention you
Google Alerts emails you when Google indexes a new page that matches your search. Put your brand name in quotes, set “How often” to “As it happens” and “How many” to “All results”, and you'll catch news coverage, blog posts and many forum threads.
It has no sentiment labels, no dashboard and almost no reach inside social apps, and it can miss pages. As a free first layer under any AI brand monitoring setup it's still worth the two minutes, and it pairs well with the free AI check in the next section.
- Free and quick to set up
- Good for news and blogs
- Alerts by email or RSS
- No Instagram, TikTok or Facebook
- No sentiment or reports
- Misses some mentions
How to do AI brand monitoring for free
Short answer: Free AI brand monitoring has two parts: a Google Alert for your brand name, and once a month run the same 8 prompts in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Mode. Log whether you're mentioned, in what position, with what tone and which sources are cited. It takes about 30 minutes and gives you the same signals a paid tracker sells.
- 1
Set your Google Alert
Go to google.com/alerts, type your brand in quotes, and add a second alert for your name plus your main product.
- 2
Fill in the 8 prompts below
Replace the brackets with your brand, category, a rival and your city. Keep the wording identical every month.
- 3
Run each prompt in four engines
Use ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Mode in a temporary or logged-out chat, so your history doesn't steer the answer.
- 4
Log five things
Mentioned yes or no, position in the list, tone, wrong facts, and the sources the engine cites.
- 5
Fix one thing a month
Correct the wrong facts on your own pages, then get listed on the sites the engines cite most.
Prompts 2, 6 and 7 matter most, because they're the questions buyers ask before they know your name. If you don't appear there, my guide on how to appear in AI search walks through the fixes, and the GEO guide covers the SEO side.
Key idea: a free monthly check beats a paid AI brand monitoring tool you never open. Upgrade when the log gets too long to keep by hand, usually past 20 prompts or two brands.
Best AI brand monitoring tool for small business
Short answer: For small business AI brand monitoring, start free with Google Alerts and the monthly prompt check. If customers talk about you on social media or review sites, Vista Social with listening is the best value at about $174 a month. If you're losing deals to rivals that chatbots recommend, Otterly.AI at $29 a month is the cheapest way to track it.
Here's what each AI brand monitoring route costs over a year. I took each tool's cheapest plan that does the job, used yearly billing where it's offered, and multiplied by 12.
The pattern: AI brand monitoring of chatbot answers is cheap to start, and social mention tracking isn't. A café or a solo consultant rarely needs Brand24. If you're adding a tool to an existing stack, my free AI subscription cost calculator shows the yearly total of everything you pay for.
Which tool fits you? Pick in 30 seconds
Answer three questions and the picker names one AI brand monitoring setup. It runs in your browser; nothing is saved or sent.
My verdict: which AI brand monitoring setup to choose
Short answer: Choose Brand24 if your brand is mentioned daily and you need to catch complaints fast. Choose Vista Social if you're a small business that also posts and answers reviews. Choose Otterly.AI or Frase if your worry is what ChatGPT recommends. And if you're not sure yet, run the free 8-prompt check first.
Back to the opening point: AI brand monitoring is two jobs. One tells you what people say about you; the other tells you what AI says when they ask. Decide which one costs you more today, and pay only for that.
Frequently Asked Questions — AI Brand Monitoring
I write every guide on this site myself and recheck prices when vendors change them. For this AI brand monitoring guide I scanned my own site with an AI visibility tracker and checked every plan on the vendors' pages; tools I haven't paid for are marked as researched.