Alternative · researched 26 July 2026

An Ahrefs Brand Radar alternative without stacking add-ons

Brand Radar is genuinely impressive on database scale. The catch is the invoice: it is an add-on that needs an Ahrefs base plan underneath it, and the AI indexes are priced per platform. Here is what that adds up to, and the alternative if you only wanted the AI-visibility job.

Sailiently in one minute

Sailiently answers one question — does AI recommend you? — and then helps you change the answer. The AI Visibility Tracker measures your buyers’ real questions across six engines and tells you where you are cited, mentioned, absent, or where nobody owns the answer yet. Citation Radar shows the open web those answers are drawn from. The GEO Optimization tools then audit the competitor pages that won, and draft the page that beats them. Re-run and see what moved.

What sets it apart against Ahrefs Brand Radar and the rest of the category: it is pay-per-use — $1 = 1 credit, no subscription, a quiet month costs nothing — and it ends in a fix, not a dashboard. Every score is reproducible: paste any URL, including a rival’s, and check it yourself.

AI Visibility TrackerCitation RadarGEO Optimization15 free credits, no card

What Ahrefs Brand Radar costs, and what that buys

Reported pricing, 2026. Ahrefs publishes its plans, so these are firmer than most in this category — but check the current page before you budget.

PlanReported priceNotes
Ahrefs base (Lite)from $129/moBrand Radar is an add-on and requires an active base subscription.
One AI index$199/moPriced per platform index.
All six AI indexes$699/moBundled across the six AI surfaces.
Realistic all-in$828-$1,148/moIndependent 2026 reviews put typical configurations in this band.

For context, a 2026 market survey put the average price of a dedicated AI-visibility tool at about $337 per month. A full Brand Radar deployment lands near 2.5 times that, before you count the value of the wider Ahrefs suite.

Where the gap usually shows up

You are buying an SEO suite to get an AI feature

If you already run Ahrefs, the marginal cost is smaller and the integration is real. If you do not, you are buying a platform to reach an add-on. A URL audit here costs 5 credits and needs nothing underneath it.

Per-index pricing means engine coverage is a budget decision

Sailiently measures all six engines in one job, with no per-index line.

Independent testing has flagged accuracy gaps

Reviewers in 2026 documented discrepancies in its AI-mention counts, and noted Claude is not among the tracked surfaces. We measure Claude, and every signal we report is one you can reproduce yourself.

What Sailiently does instead

Why Sailiently

One job, six engines, no stack underneath

  • No base subscription required. Brand Radar needs an Ahrefs plan beneath it; this needs nothing.
  • No per-index pricing. All six engines are measured in the same job — engine coverage is not a budget decision.
  • About $85 for a full site pass, against a reported $828–$1,148 a month all-in.
  • Claude is included, and every signal we report is one you can reproduce yourself by pasting the URL.

Start with the Tracker

Every question the AI Visibility Tracker measures comes back as one of four states: It runs across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode, over multiple passes, because a single query is noisy.

CITED  MENTIONED  ABSENT  OPEN  

A ten-prompt, six-engine run is 15 credits; thirty prompts is 35, or 45 with the LLM Mentions add-on, which shows the domains AI keeps drawing on across your whole category — including sites you would never have thought to check. That is what turns outreach into something targeted rather than guesswork.

Then fix what it found

Sailiently is pay-per-use. There is no monthly fee and nothing to cancel. You run a job, it costs credits, and the output is work you can hand to a client — measured across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode.

JobCostWhat you get back
Site CheckFreeCrawler-by-crawler access matrix — can AI engines reach you at all.
AI Visibility run15–45 creditsYour buyers' questions across six engines, multi-pass. 10 prompts × 6 engines is 15; 30 prompts is 35, or 45 with the LLM Mentions add-on.
URL Audit5 creditsPer-engine readability score for one page, with the evidence behind every factor and a ranked fix list.
Gap Analysis5 creditsBenchmarks your page against named competitor pages, gap by gap.
Page Rewrite10 creditsA publish-ready draft grounded strictly in your own content. Never auto-published.
Audit + Rewrite together12 creditsThe pair, priced below buying them separately.
Citation Radar5–20 creditsCitations or Mentions 5 each; Rankings or AI Overviews 10 each; Citations + Rankings 15; All-in-One 20.

$1 = 1 credit. Volume bundles: 100 credits for $85 · 250 credits for $175 · 500 credits for $350 · 1,000 credits for $700. A seven-page site pass is 7 × 12 = 84 credits ($84 at list), so the 100-credit bundle at $85 covers it with credits to spare. Every account starts with 15 free credits and no card.

Where Ahrefs Brand Radar is genuinely stronger

We would rather you buy the right tool than buy ours. These are real advantages:

Who should switch, and who should stay

Switch if…

You wanted the AI-visibility job, not an SEO platform subscription plus per-index add-ons, and you want the audit to end in a fix list and a draft.

Stay if…

Ahrefs is already your platform, or the scale of the historical prompt database is the specific thing you are buying.

Don’t take our word for it — reproduce it

Every signal we measure is a checkable fact: crawler access, structured data, server-rendered content, sitemap declaration. Paste any URL — ours, theirs, or a client’s — and reproduce the result. A Site Check is free and needs no card.

What we do not claim

Frequently asked questions

Is Sailiently a direct replacement for Ahrefs Brand Radar?

Not in every case, and we say so above. Ahrefs Brand Radar is stronger on the points listed in the section above. Sailiently replaces it well if you want per-project economics and a fix list rather than a monitoring dashboard.

How much does Sailiently cost?

There is no subscription. $1 = 1 credit. A URL audit is 5 credits, a gap analysis 5, a page rewrite 10. A seven-page site pass is 7 × 12 = 84 credits ($84 at list), so the 100-credit bundle at $85 covers it with credits to spare. Every account starts with 15 free credits and no card.

Which AI engines do you measure?

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. All six are included; there are no per-engine add-ons.

Do you guarantee I will get cited?

No, and you should be wary of any tool that does. Citation depends on factors beyond your page, including off-domain authority we do not measure. We report what is measurable and hand you the highest-impact fixes.

Do credits expire?

Credits are bought as bundles and drawn down as you run jobs. There is no monthly fee underneath them, so there is nothing to cancel if you go a month without a project.

Try it on the page you were going to audit anyway

Run a free Site Check, then spend 5 credits on a URL Audit and compare the output to what Ahrefs Brand Radar gives you.

Start free — 15 creditsSee how it compares
About this comparison. Everything stated here about Ahrefs Brand Radar is drawn from that company’s own public pages and from dated third-party reviews and round-ups, gathered on the date shown at the top of this page. We have not purchased or independently tested every plan described. Pricing, packaging, engine coverage and features in this category change frequently, and figures are reported rather than verified by us. Always check the vendor’s own live pricing page before making a decision — the date on this page tells you when we looked, not that the information is still current. We correct errors promptly: if anything here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will fix it. No liability is accepted for errors or omissions, or for decisions taken on the basis of this page. Details of Sailiently’s own pricing and behaviour are accurate as at the same date and can be verified on our pricing page.