Comparison · researched 26 July 2026

An AI visibility tool with no subscription

Almost every tool in the AI visibility category — trackers, monitors and GEO platforms alike — bills monthly. That is the right shape if AI visibility is a standing job with alerts and dashboards. It is poor value if the work happens in bursts — per client, per launch, per quarter. This page does the arithmetic honestly, including where the subscription wins.

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 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
Why Sailiently

What you get without a monthly bill

  • A free Site Check, every time, with no card and no trial clock.
  • 5 credits to audit a page across all six engines, with the evidence behind every factor.
  • A quiet month costs nothing. There is no plan underneath the credits to keep paying for.
  • The job ends in a fix — an impact-ranked list and a draft grounded in your own content.

What the category charges

What the category chargesSource
A benchmark of more than 30 AI search monitoring tools put the category's average price at about $337 per month.Rankability, Jun 2026
Published entry prices run from roughly $20–29/mo to $295–399/mo, with enterprise custom-quoted into the thousands. Serious multi-engine tracking generally starts near $200–500/mo.Acromatico, 14 Jul 2026

Figures are reported from dated public sources, not from our own testing of each vendor’s checkout. Verify current pricing with the vendor before you buy — packaging in this category changes often.

The arithmetic of a quiet month

Take a realistic year. You take on AI-visibility work for six clients, spread unevenly — three in one quarter, none in another. A subscription bills all twelve months. Pay-per-use bills six jobs.

Over twelve monthsSubscription at category averagePay-per-use
Six client site passes~$4,044 (12 × $337)~$510 (6 × $85)
Two quiet monthsbilled$0
One page you want to checkbilled$5

The $337 figure is the category average from a 2026 survey of more than 30 AI search monitoring tools, not a specific competitor’s price. Cheaper subscriptions exist — the point is the shape of the bill, not the size of it. If your work is continuous rather than project-based, the arithmetic reverses and you should buy the subscription.

When a subscription is genuinely the better buy

Honestly, sometimes it is. Buy the subscription if:

Frequently asked questions

Is there really no monthly fee?

No monthly fee. $1 = 1 credit, and you buy credits in bundles. A quiet month costs nothing.

What does a typical job cost?

A Site Check is free. 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.

How does that compare to the category?

A 2026 benchmark of more than 30 AI search monitoring tools put the average at about $337 per month, and a July 2026 round-up found serious multi-engine tracking generally starting near $200-500 per month. Those are reported figures; verify with each vendor.

Which engines are included?

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode — all six, with no add-on tiers.

When should I buy a subscription instead?

When you need continuous daily monitoring, client-facing dashboards, or your volume is high enough that a flat fee beats per-job pricing. We would rather say that plainly than sell you the wrong shape of tool.

Start with the free check

A Site Check costs nothing and needs no card. If it is useful, a URL Audit is five credits.

Start free — 15 creditsSee how it compares
About this comparison. Everything stated here about the vendors named above 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.