Best AEO tools in 2026: an honest comparison

The AEO tool market grew from ~3 products in early 2024 to 30+ by mid-2026.¹ Most of them are SEO tools with an AEO module bolted on; a few are purpose-built. This post compares the seven we'd actually consider using, with honest takes on where each one wins and where it doesn't.

Disclosure: FixAEO is one of the tools listed. We've kept the comparison fair — including pointing out where competitors are stronger for specific use cases. If you want zero-bias coverage, also check the G2 AEO Software grid.

What to look for in an AEO tool

Before the comparison, here's the framework. A serious AEO tool should at minimum do five things:

1. Heuristic audit — schema, robots.txt, llms.txt, OpenGraph, FAQ structure, sitemap
2. Live LLM brand recognition — actually ask ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini about your brand
3. Prompt tracking — monitor a set of buyer-intent prompts over time
4. Competitor benchmarking — see how you stack up against named competitors
5. Actionable fixes — not just a score, but a ranked list of what to change

Bonus features that matter at scale:

• API access for integrating into your own dashboard
• Daily/weekly automation rather than on-demand scans
• White-label reporting (for agencies)
• Citation tracking (which third-party sources feed AI answers about you)

The 7 tools, ranked by fit

1. FixAEO

Best for: indie founders, indie marketers, and small teams who want fast, useful audits without committing to a $99+/mo tool.²

The model that makes it work: free for daily heuristic scans, with paid tiers unlocking multi-engine LLM queries and weekly tracking. The free tier is genuinely free — three scans per day per IP, no card on file.

Free tier	3 scans/day, 1 LLM engine (Gemini), heuristic checks
Pro	$19/mo — 100 scans, all 6 engines, weekly tracking, 3 brands
Agency	$49/mo — 1,000 scans, daily tracking, 25 brands, API, white-label
What we do well	Speed (5-second scans), price, transparent scoring methodology, free API
What we don't	No agency-team seats yet, no deep citation graph (vs Authoritas), no built-in editor (vs Frase)

Run a free scan.

2. Authoritas AEO

Best for: enterprise SEO teams already on the Authoritas platform.

Authoritas added an AEO module on top of their long-running SEO product. The advantage: it integrates with their existing rank tracker, so you can see SEO position and AEO mention rate in one dashboard. The disadvantage: pricing assumes you're already a customer; standalone AEO use is expensive.

Price	Custom, starts ~$500/mo
What they do well	Citation source graph, agency reporting, large prompt-library
What they don't	Steep learning curve, overkill for sub-$1M ARR companies

3. Profound

Best for: brands tracking sentiment over time across many AI engines.

Profound's wedge is sentiment analysis — they go deeper than "are you mentioned?" into how AI engines talk about you. Useful for PR-conscious brands and reputation monitoring.

Price	$99–$499/mo
What they do well	Sentiment depth, weekly digest emails, share-of-voice tracking
What they don't	Limited heuristic auditing, no free tier

4. Otterly.ai

Best for: marketing teams that want a turnkey "AI search ranking" dashboard.

Otterly was one of the earliest in the space (mid-2023). Mature product, clean UI, leans heavily on Perplexity and ChatGPT tracking. Less focus on heuristic site audits.

Price	$129/mo for the entry plan
What they do well	Beautiful dashboard, mature API, accurate mention tracking
What they don't	No free tier, less depth on schema/llms.txt auditing

5. Brand24 (AI Mention Tracking)

Best for: PR and brand monitoring teams who already use Brand24 for social listening.

Brand24's AI module came late but the existing infrastructure (alerting, sentiment, share-of-voice) translates well. Best if you're already a customer.

Price	$99–$399/mo (add-on to social listening plan)
What they do well	Alert/notification system, Slack integration, historical archive
What they don't	Weak on the technical SEO side (no schema audit)

6. Frase

Best for: content teams writing AEO-optimised articles inside the same tool that does the audit.

Frase pivoted from SEO content generation to including AEO scoring. Useful integration if your content workflow already lives in Frase. The audit side is thinner than purpose-built tools.

Price	$44–$179/mo
What they do well	In-editor AEO scoring while you write, GPT-driven outline generation
What they don't	Limited live LLM brand recognition (mostly heuristic)

7. Mentionlytics

Best for: agencies tracking multiple client brands with budget-conscious pricing.

Like Brand24 but cheaper and more agency-oriented. Mention tracking is solid; site audits are basic.

Price	$59–$299/mo per workspace
What they do well	Multi-brand management, white-label reports
What they don't	Less mature AEO module than the others

Which one should you pick?

A decision matrix by stage:

You are…	Pick
An indie founder doing first AEO audit	FixAEO Free — start with one scan, see where you stand
A 5-50 person SaaS, $10K-100K/mo MRR	FixAEO Pro or Profound
A growth-stage SaaS, $100K-1M/mo MRR	FixAEO Agency or Profound + Frase for content
A marketing team at an enterprise	Authoritas (if you're already on their SEO stack) or Profound
An agency tracking 10+ client brands	FixAEO Agency + Mentionlytics for sentiment, or Authoritas Agency
A PR / comms team focused on sentiment	Profound or Brand24

The one thing none of these tools can do

Pick the right prompts to track. This is the single hardest part of AEO measurement — knowing what your buyers actually ask AI assistants. Every tool listed above tracks the prompts you feed it; none will tell you the right starting list.

Three rules:

1. Reformulate your top 10 SEO keywords as questions. "Best CRM" → "What is the best CRM for a 5-person team?"
2. Add 5 problem-statement prompts. "I'm overspending on CRM software, what should I do?"
3. Add 5 comparison prompts. "X vs Y" — including your direct competitors.

That's a starter list of 20. Refine quarterly.

What we won't tell you

This is a buyer's-guide post and we are one of the tools. So one honest disclaimer: most AEO tools will tell you the same handful of things on your first scan. The real differentiator over months is whether the tool keeps tracking the right prompts and surfaces changes — that's where you find the moments where your competitor just earned a Wikipedia mention and your mention rate quietly dropped 8 points.

That tracking work is where AEO tools earn their subscription. The one-time audit is almost commoditised.

FAQ

Are AEO tools worth paying for?

Yes, if you have an active brand to defend. The 30-second scan is free everywhere. The week-over-week tracking is the paid value.

Can I do AEO without a tool?

Partially. You can manually audit robots.txt, schema, llms.txt, and check a few prompts on ChatGPT yourself. But tracking change over time across N engines manually is a 4 hour/week job — usually cheaper to pay $19/mo than burn that time.

Why is FixAEO so much cheaper than the others?

Two reasons: we charge less because our infra is leaner (Cloudflare Pages + Go on a $0/mo VM, not AWS Enterprise), and we're newer. Once we have an agency-team feature parity, expect prices to move.

Will Google's AI Overviews replace these tools?

No. AI Overviews are one engine of many. AEO tools track across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, and DeepSeek — Google AI Overviews is a slice.

Does the engine list matter?

Yes — but maybe less than you'd think. We've found correlation between mention rates across major engines is ~0.7. Sites that rank well in one usually rank decently in others. Track at least 3 engines; tracking all 6 is diminishing returns unless you're a comms team.

In one paragraph

The AEO tool market has matured fast. Pick FixAEO if you want the cheapest, most-transparent free-tier audit and you're sub-$1M/mo MRR. Pick Profound if sentiment depth matters more than heuristic auditing. Pick Authoritas if you're already in their SEO ecosystem. Start with a free FixAEO scan — 30 seconds, no signup, and you'll know exactly where you stand before paying anyone anything.

Footnotes

1. G2: AEO software category. Browse the AEO grid. ↩

2. FixAEO pricing — see plans. ↩