The best generative engine optimization tool depends on which budget you are short on: the budget for sampling AI answers, or the budget for publishing the pages that change them. We priced five tools, OtterlyAI, Peec AI, Scrunch, Profound and our own product Aeolo, on one shared unit: monthly price divided by the AI answers each plan collects. On pricing listed as of October 2026, OtterlyAI and Peec AI sample answers for roughly 1 to 2 cents each and Scrunch's Core plan for about 5 cents, while Profound now quotes custom contracts. Aeolo costs about 9 to 15 cents per tracked answer because it checks weekly, but every paid plan includes article production. Pick a dedicated tracker if measurement depth is your gap. Pick Aeolo if the gap is shipping pages.
Disclosure: Aeolo publishes this blog. Our earlier guide split the category into monitoring and optimization tools. This one puts a price on each side.
Why price GEO tools per tracked answer
AI answers change from run to run, so a GEO tracker is a sampling instrument. In research published in January 2026, Rand Fishkin of SparkToro and Patrick O'Donnell of Gumshoe.ai ran 12 brand-recommendation prompts 60 to 100 times each on ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI surfaces. ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews returned the same brand list less than 1% of the time (Search Engine Journal). The researchers found that how often a brand appears across many runs is more consistent than its ranking position, which makes the appearance rate the number worth buying (SparkToro).
That makes sample size the core capacity of a monitoring plan. Our formula: cost per tracked answer equals monthly price ÷ (prompts × engines × runs per month).
We count a daily plan as 30 runs a month and a weekly plan as about 4.33. Peec AI itself counts usage as prompts × engines × days (AnswerMentions). For OtterlyAI we assume one run per prompt per engine per day, based on its stated daily tracking frequency.
This unit measures capacity only. It does not measure answer-parsing quality, how a tool separates mentions from citations, or how useful its recommendations are. Billing bases also differ, as noted under the table. For those qualitative checks, see our guide to vetting AI brand mention tools.
Cost per tracked answer, October 2026
| Tool and plan | Listed price | Prompts | Engines included | Runs | Answers per month | Cost per answer | Article creation in plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OtterlyAI Lite | $29/mo | 15 | 4 | Daily | 1,800 | 1.6¢ | No |
| OtterlyAI Standard | $189/mo | 100 | 4 | Daily | 12,000 | 1.6¢ | No |
| OtterlyAI Premium | $489/mo | 400 | 4 | Daily | 48,000 | 1.0¢ | No |
| Peec AI Starter | $95/mo | 50 | 3 | Daily | 4,500 | 2.1¢ | No |
| Peec AI Pro | $245/mo | 150 | 3 | Daily | 13,500 | 1.8¢ | No |
| Peec AI Advanced | $495/mo | 350 | 3 | Daily | 31,500 | 1.6¢ | No |
| Scrunch Core | $250/mo | 125 | 4 | Stated as 5,000 responses | 5,000 | 5.0¢ | Basic content generation |
| Aeolo Starter | $99/mo | 30 | 5 | Weekly | about 650 | 15.2¢ | About 8 articles |
| Aeolo Pro | $299/mo | 100 | 5 | Weekly | about 2,170 | 13.8¢ | About 33 articles |
| Aeolo Max | $699/mo | 300 | 6 | Weekly | about 7,800 | 9.0¢ | About 93 articles |
| Profound Trial | Free | 50 | 3 | Daily for 7 days | 1,050 total | n/a | Limited AI Marketer credits |
| Profound Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Up to 9 | Daily | Custom | n/a | Agents, custom credits |
Sources and billing notes:
- OtterlyAI: monthly-billing prices, with 15% off for annual billing. Base engines are ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini are paid add-ons (OtterlyAI pricing). Adding all three brings Standard to $416 a month, which by our formula (100 prompts × 7 engines × 30 days) raises its cost to about 2.0¢ per answer (AI Peekaboo).
- Peec AI: monthly-billing prices as of October 2026, with three engines of your choice tracked daily (AnswerMentions). Extra models cost $35 to $165 a month depending on tier (Indexly).
- Scrunch: Core lists 125 unique prompts, 5,000 responses a month, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot, five site audits a month, AI bot traffic tracking, one page optimization a month and "Basic" content generation (Scrunch pricing). We used Scrunch's own response count rather than our formula.
- Aeolo: $99, $299 and $699 a month, or $990, $2,990 and $6,990 a year. Prompts are questions checked weekly, and the article counts are the page's own estimates of what each plan's monthly credits produce, per Aeolo's pricing page.
- Profound: as of October 11, 2026, the pricing page lists only a free Trial (50 prompts run daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews) and custom Enterprise with up to 9 answer engines (Profound pricing). Reviews from earlier in 2026 describe $99 and $399 self-serve tiers (Rankability), so ask sales which plans you can still buy.
Best GEO tool at each budget
Under $100 a month
- OtterlyAI Lite ($29) is the cheapest way to start a daily sample on four engines. Fifteen prompts is a narrow set, and Lite is capped at three recommendations a week (Prefer).
- Peec AI Starter ($95) collects 2.5 times the answers of Lite (4,500 against 1,800) across three engines you choose.
- Aeolo Starter ($99) collects the fewest answers here, about 650 a month, and is the only plan in this band that includes article production, at about eight articles a month, per Aeolo's pricing page.
If you can spend about $130, OtterlyAI Lite plus Aeolo Starter ($128 together) gives you a daily sample from a dedicated tracker and a weekly writing loop.
$190 to $300 a month
- OtterlyAI Standard ($189) and Peec AI Pro ($245) both deliver more than 12,000 answers a month at under 2 cents each.
- Scrunch Core ($250) costs more per answer. In return it bundles site audits, AI bot traffic tracking and a single monthly page optimization, which suits teams whose problem is how AI crawlers read the site (Scrunch pricing).
- Aeolo Pro ($299) tracks 100 questions weekly across two markets and includes about 33 articles a month.
$490 to $700 a month
- OtterlyAI Premium ($489) has the lowest cost per answer we calculated, at about 1 cent, before engine add-ons.
- Peec AI Advanced ($495) collects about 31,500 answers a month and adds multi-country tracking and Looker Studio integration (Indexly).
- Aeolo Max ($699) covers five markets, 300 weekly questions and about 93 articles a month.
Custom contracts
Profound Enterprise and Scrunch Enterprise both sell custom prompt volumes. Profound's Enterprise tier adds up to nine answer engines, API access, SSO and dedicated support (Profound pricing). Scrunch Enterprise expands coverage to nine LLMs and adds its Agent Experience Platform (AXP) and API access (Scrunch pricing). Without a published price, no cost-per-answer comparison is possible, so ask for the monthly answer count in the quote and run the same formula.
The second budget: what it costs to act on a gap
Tracking is the cheap half: 1 to 5 cents an answer on dedicated trackers. The harder step is publishing a page an engine can retrieve and cite, and the tools differ most here:
- Peec AI reports and recommends, and leaves execution to the customer (Mavek).
- OtterlyAI gives recommendations, capped at three a week on Lite (Prefer).
- Scrunch Core includes basic content generation and one page optimization a month. Advanced content generation sits on Enterprise (Scrunch pricing).
- Profound runs Agents on AI Marketer credits. The Trial has limited credits and Enterprise credits are custom (Profound pricing).
- Aeolo prices writing in credits: 15 credits per blog article, or 25 in its highest-quality mode. Extra credits cost $25 for 25 on Aeolo's pricing page, so an extra standard article costs about $15 on top-up credits.
This is the tradeoff to weigh. Aeolo's weekly checks produce far fewer answers than a daily tracker, so a visibility rate from a 30-question Starter set is a coarser read than Peec's or OtterlyAI's. Running an extra check outside the schedule costs 2 credits per question per engine. If you already have writers and need a tighter measurement of many prompts, a dedicated tracker is the better buy. If gaps pile up faster than your team publishes, the article allowance matters more than the extra samples.
How to choose in four questions
- How many answers do you need each month? Multiply the prompts you care about by the engines your buyers use and by 30. Then find the cheapest plan in the table that covers that number with the engines included.
- Do you need engines that are add-ons? Price Claude, Gemini or Google AI Mode before you compare, because add-ons can more than double OtterlyAI's base price.
- Who writes the pages? If nobody on the team does, count the tracker's price plus your writing cost, or choose a plan that includes articles.
- Is your problem site readability or missing content? Scrunch's audits and bot traffic data address the first. Article volume addresses the second.
FAQ
Is there a free GEO tool?
Aeolo has a free plan with one market, 10 weekly questions and a one-time grant of 10 credits, with no card required, according to its pricing page. Profound offers a free Trial of 50 prompts tracked daily for 7 days (Profound pricing), and Scrunch Core starts with a 7-day free trial (Scrunch pricing).
Is daily tracking always better than weekly?
Daily tracking collects more answers for the same prompt set, and SparkToro's research found that appearance rates across many runs are the consistent signal (SparkToro). Weekly tracking collects fewer answers from the same prompts, so treat its visibility rate as a coarser read.
If your main bottleneck is turning tracked gaps into published articles, compare the plans on Aeolo's pricing page and start with the free plan before you commit.
