How can I track competitor visibility in AI search? A step-by-step guide
How to track competitor visibility in AI search: build a prompt set, measure share of voice and citations, and the tools that automate each step, with pricing.
You can track competitor visibility in AI search by running the same set of buyer prompts repeatedly across the engines that matter, recording which brands each answer names, and comparing how often and how prominently each competitor appears. Do it by hand once to understand the shape of the data. Then use a tool, because answers vary and a manual spreadsheet cannot keep up.
This guide explains the method first, then ranks the tools that automate it. Prices and features are sourced, and where a figure could not be verified, we say so.
The method in six steps
1. Choose your real competitors
Start with the brands your buyers compare you with, not the ones your sales team fears. Add a few that show up in AI answers even if you do not consider them rivals. Engines often name unexpected brands, and that is part of what you are measuring.
2. Build a prompt set
Write 30 to 50 prompts in the words buyers use. Mix four types: category ("best project management software for agencies"), comparison ("[you] vs [competitor]"), problem ("how do I stop missing client deadlines") and brand ("is [competitor] worth it"). Tag them by topic.
3. Run them repeatedly
AI answers vary between runs, between countries and with wording. One run is an anecdote. Daily runs over several weeks give you a distribution.
4. Record the right metrics
Four measures matter. Mention rate, the share of runs in which a brand is named. Share of voice, a brand's mentions as a fraction of all brand mentions across the prompt set. Position in answer, where a brand appears when several are listed. Sentiment, how the engine describes it.
5. Look at the sources
Citations explain why a competitor wins. Record which pages and domains are cited for each prompt. If a rival is named because a review site ranks them first, that is a different problem from a rival whose own blog is cited.
6. Read the trend, not the day
Compare periods. A competitor rising across four weeks is a signal. A one-day swing is noise.
What the tools should automate
All six steps. In particular, look for auto-discovery of competitors, a view that compares brands across engines and topics, citation tracking on competitor pages, and exports you can hand to a client or boss.
The ranking
1. Promptwatch: best for competitor tracking end to end
Promptwatch automates all six steps. Competitor visibility, Share of Voice and position are tracked per prompt, with sentiment scored per response on a 1 to 100 scale. Competitors are auto-discovered, and brand merging combines aliases. Competitor heatmaps compare any two dimensions, such as brands by model, topics by country or brands by topic. A/B period comparison handles step six.
For sources, citation analytics show page and domain citations with URL positions, and Page Tracker follows specific URLs, yours or a competitor's. Reddit, YouTube and LinkedIn citation reports separate community sources. Offsite mentions show where a brand is named on third-party pages without a link. Ads Radar, on Business and every agency plan, captures sponsored ads inside ChatGPT Search, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode for tracked prompts, so you can see which competitors are paying to appear.
Prompt Explorer suggests prompts from Search Console, ranking keywords, People Also Ask or any page. Monitoring covers ChatGPT (Search), Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, Amazon Alexa and Meta AI through real interfaces, plus API models.
Pricing: Explore is free (10 prompts, ChatGPT only), Essential $95, Professional $245, Business $579. Agency plans from $199.
2. AthenaHQ
AthenaHQ offers unlimited competitors and unlimited topics and prompts on Starter at $295 a month, across 11 models with 3,600 credits. Credits are used per response, and Starter is single-country.
3. Scrunch AI
Scrunch AI Core is $250 a month for 125 prompts on four LLMs, with sentiment analysis. Enterprise adds nine LLMs.
4. Evertune and Profound
Evertune benchmarks brands across 11 models, sampling each prompt up to 100 times, sold through demos with no published price. Profound is an enterprise AI marketer with custom pricing, earlier estimated at about $40k a year.
5. Suites
Semrush AI Toolkit compares you with competitors across AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, listed at $99 a month per domain, not re-verified. Ahrefs Brand Radar includes Custom Prompts on paid plans with small daily quotas.
Comparison table
| Tool | Entry price | Auto-discovered competitors | Competitor citation tracking |
|---|---|---|---|
| Promptwatch | Free; $95/mo | Yes | Page Tracker, citations |
| AthenaHQ | $295/mo | Unlimited competitors | Not published |
| Scrunch AI | $250/mo | Competitor tracking | Not published |
| Evertune | Not published | Benchmarking | Not published |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Included on paid plans | Not listed | AI index |
Who should pick which
If you want the whole method automated and reportable, use Promptwatch. If you want a heavily sampled benchmark for executives, price Evertune. If your team lives in a suite, start with its add-on.
Do it by hand first
Take ten prompts and run them in ChatGPT and Google yourself. Note who is named. Then run the same ten in a tool. If the numbers differ wildly, ask the vendor how answers are collected. No tool can control what engines say, so treat every metric as a trend.