GEO, getting a business named in AI answers, has two costs. Tracking it costs $29 to $489 a month on the tools that publish prices: Otterly.ai runs from $29 to $489, Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit is $99, and AthenaHQ's Starter plan is $295. Fixing it, when someone else does the work, is priced like a service: in our agency model, $500 to $2,000 for an audit and $800 to $3,000 a month for a retainer.
You can also do the tracking yourself. Asking ChatGPT your customers' questions by hand costs nothing but time, and running the same checks through ChatGPT's API cost us about 1.2 cents per question in our own tool.
How much do AI visibility tracking tools cost?
Published prices run from $29 to $489 a month. Otterly.ai charges $29 for 15 questions, $189 for 100 and $489 for 400, across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit is $99 a month. AthenaHQ's Starter plan is $295 a month for 3,600 credits.
| Tool | Price per month | What is included | Engines named on the page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly.ai Lite | $29 ($25 billed yearly) | 15 search prompts | ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot |
| Otterly.ai Standard | $189 ($160 billed yearly) | 100 search prompts | The same four |
| Otterly.ai Premium | $489 ($422 billed yearly) | 400 search prompts | The same four |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | $99 | Prompt tracking and AI visibility reports | Google AI Mode and ChatGPT named as examples |
| AthenaHQ Starter | $295 | 3,600 credits a month | ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot and more |
| Profound | Custom | Free trial: 50 prompts, daily for 7 days | ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews on the trial |
Prices from each tool's own pricing or help page, 11 October 2026. US dollars. Semrush's figure is from its knowledge-base page for the toolkit.
A "prompt" in these tools is one question you want tracked, such as "best emergency plumber in Leeds". The tool asks it on a schedule and records whether your business is named, and who is named instead.
Want to sell this as a service, not just buy it? The AI Visibility Service walkthrough lays out the business step by step.
What does GEO tracking cost per question?
On Otterly.ai's published plans, tracking one question costs $1.93 a month on Lite ($29 for 15), $1.89 on Standard ($189 for 100) and $1.22 on Premium ($489 for 400). That is the fairest way to compare tools, because the monthly price only means something next to how many questions it covers.
The per-question view also tells you what you need. A local business rarely has more than 15 to 30 questions that matter: "best [service] near me", "how much does [service] cost in [town]", and a handful about its specialities. That is the Lite plan, or two of them, not Premium.
A marketing team tracking hundreds of questions across many products is a different buyer, and that is who the $295 and custom plans are priced for.
Can you track AI visibility yourself for free?
Yes. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google, ask the 10 to 20 questions your customers ask, and write down who is named. It costs $0 and about two hours, and it is the same check a paid tool runs, without the history and the charts.
The limit is repetition. AI answers change from one day to the next, so one check is a snapshot. To see a trend you have to repeat it every week, which is where the hours add up and where tools earn their price.
There is a middle route. Asking ChatGPT through its API, with web search switched on, cost us about 1.2 cents per question including the step that reads the answer, measured in October 2026 while building the AI Visibility tool on IdeasRepay. At that rate, 30 questions checked every day for a month is about $11. It needs your own API key and a tool to run it.
How much does a GEO agency charge?
In our agency model, an AI visibility audit costs $500 to $2,000, a 60-to-90-day fix project $1,500 to $6,000, and a monthly retainer $800 to $3,000 for a local business. That is the pricing in the IdeasRepay AI Visibility Service walkthrough, a model rather than a market survey: few GEO agencies publish fixed prices.
The gap between a $29 tool and an $800 retainer is the work. A tool tells you that a competitor is named and you are not. Someone still has to find out why, and change it. Most of that work happens off the business's own website: getting it listed, reviewed and mentioned on the pages AI engines cite, and keeping its facts identical everywhere. Why on-site fixes alone rarely move the answer is in the three problems in AI visibility work.
The audit is usually the first sale because it answers the question a business owner can feel: when a customer asks ChatGPT for someone like me, who does it name? That is the subject of the AI is recommending your competitor.
Is paying for GEO worth it for a small business?
For tracking, start free; the $0 manual check answers the first question. Pay $29 a month for a tool only when you need the trend, and pay a service only when you know you are missing from answers your customers ask and have no time to fix it.
The case for acting at all is that the answer is short. A Google results page shows ten links; an AI answer often names three businesses, sometimes one. Being the business named is worth more than being the fifth link, and being absent costs the whole enquiry.
What changes a business's odds is mostly not a tool. It is what the AI engines can read about you, which is the subject of how to get recommended by ChatGPT.
The honest hard part
Tracking is cheap and easy to buy. The hard part is that a good score does not move on its own, and tools make it tempting to watch a number instead of changing what the engines read.
The second hard part is noise. The same question asked twice can return different businesses, so a single week's drop can be chance. Read trends over weeks, not days.
The third is what this page cannot see. Profound and Peec AI do not show a readable price, and many agencies quote only after a call. Treat the figures here as the visible part of the market, checked on one day.
