| Quick answer |
|---|
| For most AI product teams the best AEO tool is MaxAEO, at $19 a month for 10 prompts and $149 for 100 across four engines. AIclicks is the closest rival at $59 for 30 prompts, and Writesonic is the pick if you want content generation in the same tool. |
| How we compare |
|---|
| Prices were read from each vendor’s own pricing page in September 2026, and attributed to a named third party wherever the vendor publishes none. Ranking is by cost per tracked prompt, the unit every plan here is sold by. We did not run a head-to-head lab test of citation accuracy. Every price was re-checked against the vendor’s own pricing page in September 2026, and figures available only from third-party trackers are marked as reported. No vendor paid for placement or saw this page first. |
Table of Contents
Why AI product companies have a harder AEO problem
If you sell an AI product, the assistants your buyers ask are also your competitors’ distribution channel. The category is new enough that few brands have entrenched authority, so an answer to “best tool for X” is assembled from whatever the engine can retrieve — which is often a competitor’s comparison page or a Reddit thread, not a vendor site.
That has two consequences for tool choice. You need comparison prompts tracked, not just category prompts, because “your product vs theirs” is where AI product buyers actually land. And you need to see which sources the answer cited, because in this category the citation is usually somebody else’s page and that is the thing you have to change.
Best AEO tools compared
| Tool | Entry price | Prompts | Engines | Cost per prompt | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MaxAEO | $19/mo (Starter) | 10 | 4 of 8 available | ~$1.90 | Cheapest way to start measuring |
| MaxAEO Growth | $149/mo | 100 | 4 of 8 available | ~$1.49 | Best value once you scale prompts |
| AIclicks | $59/mo (Starter) | 30 | 3 models | ~$1.97 | Clear published ladder to 300 prompts |
| Writesonic | $79/mo (Starter, annual) | Bundled | ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews | n/a | Tracking plus content in one subscription |
| Scrunch AI | $250/mo (Starter, annual) | 350 | Not confirmed at Starter | ~$0.71 | Adds site audits and three seats |
| Goodie AI | Custom, reported ~$495/mo annual | Not published | Not published | n/a | Managed service buyers |
The tools in detail
MaxAEO
Cheapest credible entry in the category. MaxAEO lists Starter at $19 a month for 10 search prompts, Growth at $149 for 100 and Pro at $399 for 400, each covering four platforms from a set of eight including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
AIclicks
AIclicks is a prompt-tracking platform with the clearest published ladder: Starter $59 a month for 30 prompts on three models, Pro $189 for 150 prompts on four, Business $499 for 300 prompts on six. Pricing scales on prompts, engines and answers analysed.
Writesonic
Combines content generation with AI visibility tracking, which suits small teams that would otherwise buy two subscriptions. Starter is $79 a month billed annually, Basic $199 and Growth $399, all tracking ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. All ten platforms are Enterprise-only.
Scrunch AI
Scrunch AI lists Starter at $300 a month, or $250 billed annually, for 350 prompts and three seats, with extra seats at $25; Growth is $500, or $417 annually, with five. The site-audit component is what separates it from pure monitors. Sitecore acquired Scrunch in June 2026, so ask about the roadmap before a long contract.
Goodie AI
Goodie AI is positioned as a managed AEO platform rather than a self-serve tracker. Pricing is custom and not published; one third-party comparison lists roughly $495 a month on annual billing. Expect a sales conversation rather than a signup form.
Otterly.AI
Otterly.AI is not an AEO tool so much as a monitor, but it is the price anchor everything else is judged against: $29 a month for 15 prompts with daily tracking across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot. Useful as a second opinion on another tool’s numbers.
Cost per prompt-engine: the number that makes these plans comparable
Cost per prompt is the obvious unit, but it flatters any vendor that covers fewer engines. A prompt tracked on three models is less coverage than the same prompt tracked on six, at any price. So divide the monthly price by prompts, then divide again by the number of engines the tier actually includes. We have not seen a vendor publish this figure; the arithmetic below is ours and every input comes from the pricing pages linked above.
| Plan | Monthly ÷ prompts | Engines in tier | Cost per prompt-engine |
|---|---|---|---|
| MaxAEO Pro | $399 ÷ 400 = $1.00 | 4 | $0.25 |
| AIclicks Business | $499 ÷ 300 = $1.66 | 6 | $0.28 |
| AIclicks Pro | $189 ÷ 150 = $1.26 | 4 | $0.32 |
| MaxAEO Growth | $149 ÷ 100 = $1.49 | 4 | $0.37 |
| MaxAEO Starter | $19 ÷ 10 = $1.90 | 4 | $0.48 |
| Otterly.AI | $29 ÷ 15 = $1.93 | 4 | $0.48 |
| Scrunch AI Starter (annual) | $250 ÷ 350 = $0.71 | Not confirmed | — |
| AIclicks Starter | $59 ÷ 30 = $1.97 | 3 | $0.66 |
The spread is 2.6x, from $0.25 to $0.66 per prompt-engine per month, and it does not follow headline price — AIclicks Business at $499 buys cheaper coverage than AIclicks Starter at $59. At the entry end, MaxAEO Starter and Otterly.AI land at the same $0.48, so the $10 difference between them buys five extra prompts rather than better value. Scrunch Starter has no engine split because its engine count at that tier is not confirmed, and Writesonic and Goodie AI are excluded because neither publishes a prompt allowance at the tiers concerned, and we will not estimate one.
What to check before you buy
- Does it show cited sources, or only your presence? Knowing you were absent is half a finding. Knowing that a competitor’s comparison page was cited instead tells you what to write.
- How many engines are in the plan versus available? MaxAEO’s tiers cover four platforms of eight; Writesonic reserves all ten for Enterprise; AIclicks scales models with price. Count the engines you need, then price.
- Can you write your own prompts? A vendor-generated prompt set will flatter you, because it tends to include your brand name.
- Does it audit the page as well as the answer? Scrunch includes site audits; most of the cheaper monitors do not. Without that, the tool tells you that you have a problem and stops.
- Is the discount permanent? Several listed prices in this category are struck-through promotional rates. Check what renewal costs.
The tool is the smaller half of the job
Every product here measures, and only Scrunch and Writesonic reach meaningfully into fixing. Getting cited is content work: an extractable answer near the top of the page, specific numbers worth quoting, and presence on the third-party pages assistants retrieve. Our guides to answer engine optimisation tools, generative engine optimisation and ranking in ChatGPT cover that side in detail, and the broader AI search monitoring tools roundup places these AEO products next to the general-purpose monitors they compete with. If you are writing the pages rather than buying the tracker, our LLM optimisation strategies are the practical next step.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best AEO tool for AI product?
MaxAEO is the best value for an AI product team, at $19 a month for 10 prompts and $149 for 100 across four engines. AIclicks is the closest alternative at $59 for 30 prompts, Writesonic bundles content generation from $79 billed annually, and Scrunch adds site audits at $250.
What is the difference between GEO, AEO and SEO?
SEO optimises for a ranked list of links. AEO, answer engine optimisation, optimises to be the extracted answer — featured snippets, People Also Ask, and now assistant replies. GEO, or generative engine optimization, targets generated answers specifically: being named and cited inside prose that no longer contains ten blue links. In practice AEO and GEO overlap almost entirely, and the tools in this category sell both labels.
How do you get cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity?
Four things do most of the work. Be crawlable and renderable without JavaScript. Answer the question in the first 50 words of the page, before any preamble. Include specific, quotable facts — prices, dates, named limits — because generic prose is not worth citing. And earn mentions on the third-party pages these engines retrieve from, particularly review sites and forum threads, since assistants frequently cite those instead of you.
Does schema markup actually affect AI citations?
There is no confirmed direct effect, and no engine has published one. What schema reliably does is make your page unambiguous to a parser: what the entity is, what it costs, who wrote it, what question the FAQ answers. Treat it as removing a reason not to cite you rather than as a ranking lever, and never let schema contradict the visible page — mismatched FAQ markup breaches Google’s structured data guidelines.
How long does it take to appear in AI-generated answers?
It depends on how the engine reaches your page. Assistants that retrieve live, such as Perplexity — which has its own optimisation quirks — and ChatGPT with browsing, can cite a page within days of it being indexed. Answers drawn from model weights lag by however long it is between training runs, which is months. Because of that split, a new page can appear in one engine and be absent from another for a long time, which is exactly why you track engines separately.
Conclusion
Start on MaxAEO Starter at $19 with ten prompts: five category questions, three comparison prompts naming your closest competitor in both directions, and two problem-led prompts that never mention your brand. That is enough to establish whether you are absent, mentioned, or cited — three very different situations. If AEO is one line in a wider plan, our roundup of AI tools for marketers covers what sits around it.
Scale to MaxAEO Growth or AIclicks Pro when ten prompts stop covering your buyer questions, and only consider Scrunch or Goodie once you have proof the measurement is driving content decisions. For an AI product in a young category, the cheapest useful measurement beats the most complete one you will not act on.
